Coronavirus Commentary: Store situation March 1 2020

Having hiked and camped a great deal in the past, there is a good amount of overlap in stuff I have and "prepping" material needed in an extended emergency.  That said, despite the amount of batteries, hiking stoves, water purification etc. with the ongoing emergency I opt to hit Home Depot, REI, and the supermarket last week to add some cushion.

I headed to Home Depot on Thursday, picking one I knew to be relatively slow.  I had a few goals in mind:

• 5 gal buckets for storage
• Contractor bags
• Disposable gloves
• sanitation wipes
• safety googles
• N95 masks(filed under "would be nice", I already had a box in the closet)

The store was about as empty as I expected it to be on a weekday afternoon, which is good because it's exactly the reason why I picked it; there were a couple 5 miles or so away that always seemed slammed.  The mask/respirator aisle was essentially bare; folks had worked though it beforehand obviously.  Everything else was easy to find, although it looked as if folks had been raiding goggles as well.

Out of curiosity I went over and it looked as if all the tyvek suits had been bought.


After Home Depot I swung by the vet to buy up some kibble for the animals, it was still well stocked.  Then I headed to Safeway.  The goals at Safeway were:

• Rice
• beans
• lentils
• crackers
• multivitamins
• more toilet paper
• (generic)sudafed
• knorr packs 
• dehydrated mash potatoes

The last two are sort of an influence of planning for long distance section hiking; cheap easy to make calorie dense food.  I was able to get everything but Sudafed there.  I also got some kielbasa and stuck it in the back of the freezer.  Interestingly, the rice and beans in the regular "white people" section has clearly been worked over, but not on the international foods aisle.

All of this was done on Thursday, and the places were fairly empty of customers.  

At REI the list was shorter; 

• Butane
• water storage

We were able to get both.  We also ended up getting a Harmony house backpacker's kit as well, think a mix of dehydrated veggies you can toss in Ramen or something to add to it. While the place was empty of customers at the time and fairly well stocked, the cashier reported that there had been a steady flow of folks buying in preparation of a pandemic. We then proceeded to the ABC store, which was about as busy as you would excpect on a Friday.

Today(Sunday) we went to Harris Teeter and, again, it was about what we expected for a mid-Sunday afternoon.  The rice & beans had been really worked over, interestingly the bottom shelf of 5+lbs bags were the least touched. I went ahead and grabbed another bag and more mash potatoes, as well as some dehydrated beef & chicken bouillon and instant ramen.

The main take away is that, in the DC area, regular supermarkets do not seem to be seeing the traffic the news is reporting on the West Coast or at plkaces like CostCo.  That isn't to say people aren't doing anything about it; we saw evidence that more dried goods were being grabbed than usual,  but it may be we're in a spot where not as many people are yet panicking.

At home out our "quarantine pack" looks something like this:



Not very Doomsday Prepperish, but just fine if there is a two week quarantine.

A lot of people are finding even this to be crazy talk, which I find odd.  If you can afford it, a few hundred bucks now is better than dealing with it later.  Don't forget your animal friends in your prepping.