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As the Grocery Store Goes, So Goes Society
Something was going on with the grocery stores.
It was the middle of a Sunday in early March when I arrived at my local King Soopers market for the first time since the coronavirus’s rapid and inexorable spread became the lead story on every cable evening news show. The novel coronavirus is what they called it, a disease with a mortality rate ten times greater than a flu virus that kills more than sixty-thousand American people per year. No one was safe, especially members of our elderly and minority populations, within whom the disease has discovered the most opportunity to wreak havoc.
I’d watched intently as bug-eyed cable television anchors and pundits begged for a more robust response from the United States, the erstwhile undisputed leader of the free world before the arrival of Donald Trump. When we did finally summon the will to act to save ourselves, we were at a loss at exactly how to respond. For there was no reliable treatment plan or certified vaccine, no agreed upon method to control and eliminate the spread of the bug, and no coordination amongst local municipalities and the federal government. Most Americans were trying to figure out how to exist within this pandemic sans guidance from the people in charge. It was a veritable Wild Wild West out there in the world. When I took a step beyond my door I sensed the change, our world…
