We’re now ten days into Coronavirus Madness and there’s still no toilet paper anywhere! This includes, Randall’s, Target, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Costco, even Home Depot, the Dollar Store and every drug store in Galveston County. There’s not even any available online unless you have $29 to spend for a twelve pack of Charmin! With a population of approximately 340,000, I suppose my county’s population will seem small potatoes to my friends and family in LA, San Bernardino and Orange Counties, or even my immediate family in King County (Seattle). But this is all the more reason why I’m baffled about the scarcity of toilet paper, as well as bleach, hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes and of all things, meat! Truly, how much of these does any family really need?
In the 15 months I’ve lived on Galveston Island, I’ve purchased only three 36 packs of toilet paper from Sam’s Club. That’s one pack every five months. I do live alone, but still, even with occasional visitors, I have yet to deplete the supply I bought at the end of December 2019.
Other than the assumption that they’re suffering from Coronavirus Derangement Syndrome, why on Earth do people feel the need to hoard toilet paper when COVID-19 is an upper respiratory virus? My guess is that 1) Americans are greedy; or 2) we’re a society of mindless lemmings that unthinkingly follow the irrational acts of others, even if it causes severe stress. I believe it’s the stupid belief that “we’ve got to do something” even if that something is irrational!
A few months ago during my Paralegal degree program, (in a psychology course) we learned that fear of the unknown is one of the most stress-inducing circumstances humans can experience. In these cases we imagine the worst outcome, even if we pause to contemplate the irrationality of our conclusion and have concrete facts to the contrary.
What I’ve observed from reading the posts on several Galveston Facebook pages I follow, people will reach out for comments from strangers before they’ll open the Galveston city or county web sites or even turn on their local TV news to debunk something they heard in passing or read on the internet. In the last few days I’ve seen several posts that have made me believe Coronavirus Derangement Syndrome is a thing! I read one post from a woman who heard while standing in line at the Dollar Store, that the causeway (the only road/bridge that leads off the island’s east end where the city of Galveston lies) was blocked by the National Guard, preventing people from entering or exiting the island. Instead of posting to Facebook, she could have done any number of things like use her smart phone to 1) check traffic on the bridge; or 2) log on to the Galveston city or county web pages; or 3) call the local police either by dialing 911 or the Galveston Police non-emergency phone number. The responses to her post mostly made fun of her, but there were a fair amount of people who also believed it, while offering seemingly rational explanations for such a situation.
What really happened was a motorcyclist death on a transition road leading north onto the causeway that takes vehicles off the island. The bridge wasn’t even blocked, just the entrance ramp heading north. Comments to this woman’s post are still going on, but now the conversation has morphed into an insult match, one side making jokes about her stupidity and/or lack of critical thinking skills, the other side declaring how mean those jokes are. I tend to side with the jokesters (because some of the posts are really funny!), but at some point I hope the page admins turn off comments so Facebookers can move on to some other non-sensical, time-gobbling argument. Or God forbid, use this forced isolation to enrich themselves through healthy spiritual, intellectual or physical pursuits, spend valuable time with family and close friends, or catch up on chores around the house that are generally ignored.
For me, I’ll continue writing, cooking, hanging out with my big, sweet dog, as well as riding my bike as fast as possible on a desolate seawall with no tourist interference!
Ta-ta for now!
Chatty-Catty