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| ONLY THE ESSENTIALS: In response to the coronavirus, the food court at the Costco Business Center was closed. A favorite item was the 18-inch pizza with vegetables for $9.95. |
Toilet paper sells out because
people "are scared shitless"
By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR
HACKENSACK, N.J. -- Public schools were closed on Friday out of "abundance of caution" as more cases of the coronavirus were reported in Bergen County, the most populous of New Jersey's 21 counties.
So, we made a small list and my wife, who didn't have to report to work as a school-crossing guard, drove over to the Costco Business Center for a handful of items, including bottled spring water and toilet paper.
Meanwhile, I dressed for my usual 4-hour stint on Fridays as a volunteer at a nearby hospital.
When my wife got to Costco, she couldn't find any shopping carts outside or in the lobby. She entered the warehouse, only to find it packed with shoppers.
She seemed to be saying the panic buying was even worse than what I encountered when I made a video on March 7:
She saw other shoppers without a cart following those with a cart to their vehicles so they could take the cart from them, enter the warehouse and shop.
She returned on Saturday, but the warehouse still was out of toilet paper and bottled spring water.
I shopped today at Aldi in Hackensack and the Super H Mart in Ridgefield, N.J.
Volunteer office closed
Meanwhile, I went to Lowes in Paramus, N.J., on Friday to discuss a fence project for our home, then set out for the hospital where I have been volunteering twice a week since March 2012.
As I was leaving Lowes, I went to see if the store had any toilet paper (the shelf was empty), then stopped to ask a cashier if more was due to come in.
She asked, as have many people, why people are buying so much toilet paper, and I related a joke I heard from satirist Bill Maher last Friday night:
"[Toilet paper is] the first thing that sells out because people are scared shitless.
"There's even a new song about it by that new band, 'Panic at Costco,'" Maher cracked.
As I was driving on Cedar Lane in Teaneck, I got a call from the hospital informing me that so few volunteers showed up on Friday the volunteer office would be closing.
I went in on Wednesday, and got a good workout pushing patients in wheelchairs, fetching blood from the Blood Bank and taking specimens to the lab.
No patient visits
But on Wednesday, because of the coronavirus, I wasn't able to visit any patients recovering from open-heart surgery, as I've done as a member of the hospital's Visiting Hearts program since March 2012.
I joined the volunteer program after recovering from my own open-heart surgery for a new aortic valve in September 2011.
National emergency
President Trump declared a national emergency on Friday, two days after a confused and confusing televised speech in which he mistakenly said no goods from Europe would be allowed into the United States.
The president's initial response minimizing the virus, also known as COVID-19, and his many lies and false statements caused the stock market to tank and oil prices to drop.
The Nov. 3 presidential election can't come soon enough for millions of Americans who have seen the nation torn apart by Trump's racism, praise of white supremacists and tax cuts for the 1%.
Meanwhile, for the second year in a row, New Jersey homeowners like me are only able to deduct $10,000 of their property taxes from what's due the federal government (that's only half my yearly bill).
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