It all started with toilet paper. You're laughing, I'm sure, but it did. I went to Costco with a friend of mine one Thursday, like we often do when our children are in preschool together, and the place was packed. People were throwing toilet paper and bottled water into their carts like it was going out of style. My friend and I laughed quietly to ourselves. Silly people hoarding stuff. The next week, when my friend had a couple rolls of toilet paper left, in her house, and she genuinely needed more toilet paper, we went back to Costco. They were sold out. We were calling stores, hunting down toilet paper. We finally found some at Macey's. We grabbed one of the last boxes they had, and split it between the two of us.
Because Coronavirus was near. There was panic. Over the next couple days, grocery stores started getting picked clean. We couldn't find bread. We couldn't find flour. My husband went grocery shopping, and came home with an eclectic mix of lunchables, individually packaged, microwave-ready stroganoff bowls, and individual applesauce cups. My mom went ahead and home-baked four loaves of bread. We gave a couple away to neighbors who couldn't find bread either.
Because there were good people giving away stuff too. The local restaurant added extra flour and yeast to their regular order, and sold them at discount to neighbors. A Facebook page was created called "Eagle Mountain Helpers," where people posted updated lists of what grocery stores had in stock, and were able to ask for things they needed, and give what they had in surplus. (It's how I got my hands on some hand sanitizer finally! I asked, and over 6 people volunteered extra hand sanitizer.)
The grocery stores are only now starting to look a little more normal, as people finally feel that they have hoarded enough, for the end of days. But, as we knew they would, from other countries who went through the virus before us, the grocery stores have remained open, and people can still get what they need, just like they always have been able to. This is not, in fact, the end of times.
What inspires people to this sort of hoarding? This sort of panicked buying of essentials? Utah has it the worst.
Years ago The Church just couldn't stop talking about food storage. (I actually haven't heard it for a couple years. Interested to hear what they say next month for General Conference.) Food storage, food storage, food storage. One year supply, they recommended. I grew up with my mom being the ward, maybe stake, I can't remember, canning and food storage specialist. We had a massive pantry downstairs, full of number ten cans of rice, wheat, you name it. We cooked with it, we used it. If there was an apocalypse, my mother wouldn't have batted an eye, and I would have been sprouting sprouts in one of her, apparently, two sprouters. (We also composted and slaved away in a large garden every weekend. We were cool.)
I think this is why we see panic purchasing. Utah Mormons remember these days of commanded food storage. There were veiled threats that you'd die if you didn't have it. Mormons bought and stored cigarettes in their food storage as well, to use for bartering for goods, come the end of times. They were prepared, or, at least, they knew the goal was to be. We haven't forgotten. So when the pandemic hit, everyone remembered.
FOOD STORAGE!!!! screamed the lizard-brain, terrified of its own demise. So it went out and bought toilet paper and bottled water. (Because, apparently, your own kitchen tap won't work tomorrow, and surely you have nothing else you could possibly wipe your butt with, if push comes to shove.) The problem with this, was after the first week, people's brains started to kick in, and they realized that TP and water wouldn't actually be enough to sustain life, so they hit the shelves again, this time hoarding medications, canned goods, flour, milk, etc. (Why hoard milk? It goes off! Who the heck knows.)
There are people in this world who live paycheck to paycheck, and these people were royally hosed, because of all the panic purchasing. People couldn't buy FOOD. I do my grocery shopping once a week, and I couldn't buy food to make MEALS. I was fortunate that we still had plenty, and ate just fine, but if I felt I was in dire straights, in the upper-middle class, I can't imagine what dire straights lower income families were actually in.
Medications. When you need them, you absolutely need them. The stores near me were cleaned out of children's medications, resulting in panicked mothers begging for children's Tylenol on the Eagle Mountain Helpers page. The Relief Society put out a plea for a mother who needed infant cough medication, and couldn't find any. I read in the news that Lupus patients are having a hard time getting their medications, etc.
Because people are being greedy. People are allowing their fear to drive their own worries into acting absolutely manic and selfish, leaving people, who otherwise would have been fine, without. There has never been a problem with toilet paper shortages. The stores have never just "run out." If one store runs out, you go to the next one, and they have it. But when fearful people run around and buy ALL OF IT, OH MY HECK, FOOD STORAGE!!!!!! then we run out. People begin to suffer, because of the fear of a few.
In my first year of college I had a roommate who wanted us to have a year supply of food storage. No joke. Four roommates, together for three months, and she wanted us to have a year supply of food storage in our apartment. (She also kept a loaded rifle in the back of her truck. She was very Mormon.) We convinced her that no, the invitation to have a year supply of food storage did not apply to college students. (Frankly, I moved out the next semester. She was a little too much for me, even back then.)
I spoke with my mom, the food storage expert, about this. When the apocalypse comes, and everyone is supposed to be surviving on their year supply of food storage, what about the college students? What about the renters? What about the people who live in tiny homes, and genuinely cannot have a year supply of food? What about the newlyweds? What about them?
She smiled, and told me that her opinion had always been that we weren't supposed to use our food storage just for ourselves. She encouraged other people to have food storage so the whole neighborhood wouldn't be dependent on just her. But we were always meant to use our surplus to share, and to help others.
Lightbulb, Utah. You failed the test. You were so busy hoarding supplies for yourself, that you literally starved out your neighbor. You forgot what this whole "Christian" thing is really about - loving other people more than yourself. You let fear drive you to be unthinkably thoughtless and cruel. You left your neighbor to feel helpless, hopeless, and alone.
I have been grateful to see good people sharing, in this situation. But I've been heartbroken, too. I know for a fact that I am not the only person who has left a grocery store and then cried, for feeling so helpless when all the world is going crazy. I cried, too, when I saw the spike in gun sales this month - it reminded me of all those Idaho Mormons swearin' on their lives that they'd protect their food storage come Armageddon, come Hell or high water! They would shoot you, before offering your starving family a potato. I heard that from people - this attitude of "killin' people to protect what's RIGHTFULLY mine!"
That is not what Christ wants. That was never the intention behind "Prepardness," a better word I hear the Church using, these days, to describe the message they were trying to instill with the old "food storage" vocabulary.
The Bible tells us to do good. The Bible describes God as being one who "harvests where He did not sow." When Christ's disciples worried about having enough to eat, drink, and wear, Christ responded by telling them that God was aware of them. Their first priority was to seek the kingdom and His righteousness, and all those things would be added unto them. The priority is a Christlike life, first, however.
Proverbs 11:4 teaches - "Riches profit not in the day of wrath: but righteousness delivereth from death."
1 Timothy 6:17-19 teaches us that the "riches" we are to seek, that will be our foundation against the time to come, is good works. "That they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate."
Proverbs 21:26 - "The righteous giveth and spareth not."
Proverbs 3:27 - "Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act."
Things are going to get worse, with this virus, before they get better. That's a fact. All of us will feel it closely. People will continue to die. That social distancing will turn into house arrest. You're going to hate it. Absolutely. But before you start thinking about what you can do to help yourself in this situation, look outward. Think about the people around you. See if there is something God needs you to do to help someone else, "when it is in your power to act."
My husband's work had layoffs, directly related to coronavirus. He missed the cut. He still has a wonderful job, is working from home, and our lives are going on much as normal. We are beyond fortunate in this. As a family we've discussed what God would like us to do. I need a chipped tooth fixed. We have a couple medical bills coming in. We're buying a new house. We definitely can come up with a bunch of excuses for why we can't or shouldn't help people. Surely God is blessing us so we can be absolutely comfortable, right?
I don't think so. We will not be luxuriously comfortable if it is within our power to lighten another's heavy load. That's true consecration - a law I promised to live. My hope is that as the next few months roll by, with all their twists, turns, surprises, and heartbreaks, we look outside of ourselves, and do what we can do to help others, especially when we have been blessed ourselves.
And freaking stop buying all the toilet paper and masks.
