OUT OF TOILET PAPER
Sydney is not on lockdown. Well, not yet. It is currently on shut down, which means places where people can gather such as restaurants, pubs, cafés, casinos, and even places of worship have been closed. So far, we have been able to live normally, except for the lack of toilet paper and hand sanitizers. It’s not normal for us to go to gathering places anyway so social distancing is not really an issue.
That being said though the effect in Sydney is more large scale and long term. I personally can’t feel it yet but a lot already have. Thank God we are still living normally. I realize that we don’t really do much. We are fine staying home and not eating out. Biggest heartbreak was the travel ban as it ruined our holiday plans and we look forward to this every year.
Never in my life have I been concerned about running out of toilet paper. At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, I found we were down to our last two rolls. When I got to the store, my normal eight-pack purchase had run out and available only was the 24-pack, which I reluctantly bought. This has been my single most valuable purchase since the covid-19 crisis, so valuable that my work colleague offered to trade it for a bag of rice.
At the same store a week later, I overheard an elderly couple, probably in their 80s, arguing. The lady told her husband she should go back after paying for two 24-packs of toilet paper to get more, defying the two-pack restriction imposed by supermarkets. Her husband told her, “We cannot do that. We need to leave some for others.”
The couple reminded me of what most of us are probably debating within ourselves: To hoard or not to hoard. Our instinct tells us to hoard till kingdom come while our heart tells us to hold back and think about others in this time of dire need. Self or others? What would we really choose when worse comes to worst? Most of us have already made that choice.