Panic At The Costco

Just how bad are people freaking out over the coronavirus? Here's a picture of the bottled water section at our local Costco. Normally there is a mountain of plastic bottles here. On this day, there were almost none.

It wasn't just water that people are starting to hoard. In our supermarket, an entire row of vinegar was nearly empty. Usually the giant one gallon jugs of vinegar are left languishing at the bottom of the store shelf as who needs a whole gallon of vinegar at one time. Now they are all gone.

I'd like to think that my neighbors are all well educated and level headed. But the steady bombardment of news about the coronavirus is starting to sow anxiety and trepidation into people who usually don't give into their worst primal fears of survival.

Never mind that so far less than 3,000 people around the world have died from Covid-19. Most of those are in countries with suboptimal healthcare systems and afflicted mainly the elderly and frail. By comparison, the U.S. had over 40 MILLION people with the flu and over 40,000 deaths just from this past flu season alone. Yet we have to spend millions of dollars in public service announcements to get people to take their flu shots.

So as the stock market keeps crashing lower every day (BUYING OPPORTUNITY!) and meetings around the world get cancelled, let's try to keep this virus outbreak in perspective. The most common symptoms for people who are healthy are just mild flu-like illness. This is not the end of the world like some Hollywood science fiction movie. We will all get through this just fine. After all, we still have ten more years to go of living on this earth before we all succumb to climate change.