provisioning in the plague

Grocery shopping has become a whole new adventure.

I’m shopping for three at the moment, even though I’m living alone while The Stallion cares for his mother in another city. It’s a simple thing to buy a few extra groceries for the immunocompromised friend and senior neighbor, but it makes a big difference in helping them to minimize their personal risk. Experts remind us daily at this point that the fewer excursions we all need to make into public space, the less likely we are to come into contact with the virus. But at some point, somebody has to go get food.

About half of the population of the United States has come under stay-at-home orders over the past 10 days. California’s came first, March 19, with New York and New Jersey quickly following suit. New Hampshire’s order took effect just yesterday. Montana joins us tomorrow. So far, 24 states have issued similar restrictions.

We’re still allowed to venture out for groceries. And while I’m limiting the number of trips I need to take, I ate chickpeas with lemon and salt on them for lunch yesterday because I’ve run out of everything else. I mean, it wasn’t bad but tuna is way better. It was time.

Plus, things are bad, but not critical in Los Angeles this week so it seems prudent to get what my neighbor, friend and I need now -- in case the picture is different next week. Again, my grandmother’s wisdom comes back to me: Don’t put off to tomorrow what you can do today. I never really understood that before. It was always good advice, but she knew it on a deeper level. Her generation preceded mine through a moment in history when you couldn’t count on tomorrow.

This week, the global center of this pandemic has begun to shift to New York City and the United States moved to the top of the worldwide virus count charts, with 101,000-plus confirmed cases today. It’s getting closer. Just a week ago, the heart of this tragedy was overseas in Italy, the psychological buffer of an ocean away.

Our perceptions are progressing just one step behind the virus. Ten days ago the sight of empty shelves at the grocery store brought me to tears. Now I have come to expect it. However, my latest grocery excursion presented a new challenge to my sense of what “normal” is supposed to look like: line-ups.

The latest figures from Statista indicate the average American shops for groceries 1.6 times per week. In the new-normal of the Coronavirus era, the CDC recommends cutting down the number of shopping trips to no more than once a week. When shopping, they advise, minimize face-to-face contact. Maintain a social distance of at least six feet. Wipe down any shopping cart or basket being used. Avoid picking up items unless you’re planning to purchase them. Keep your hands away from your face.

Casing two local Whole Foods, a Trader Joe’s and a Ralphs yesterday, I found long lines of customers suffering the latest assault on routine. Grocery stores are now spacing customers on the way in to give people the option to maintain distance indoors. It was California cold yesterday -- which is to say, in the low 60s and a little windy -- and the people outside the stores looked chilly. And too close together.

I remembered a Gelson’s located out-of-sight, out-of-mind in the basement of a relatively new shopping plaza nearby. The entrance is from an underground parking garage, so I figured even if I had to get in line for a half-hour or so, at least I would be sheltered from the wind.

It was a good call. I drove down the ramp, parked at the door, and walked right inside where the experience all seemed very normal. The only concessions to the crisis were that workers wore face masks and gloves, and red tape marked six-foot intervals in front of the registers to help people keep their distance while waiting to check out. Aside from the persistent shortages of baker’s yeast and paper goods, the shelves were mostly full and I got everything on all three of my lists. I used to take that for granted but yesterday, it felt like a real victory. My fellow shoppers were respectful with the exception of one 20-something guy who crowded over my shoulder while I crouched down to inspect canned goods on a lower shelf.

Mid-shop, the store rang out with dozens of cellphones simultaneously blasting out an emergency alert. It was an uncomfortable, Orwellian moment as we all pulled out our phones to read the statewide emergency safety notice. Beaches and trails, trailheads, piers, beach bike paths and beach access points are closed to public access. The local government is warning a crisis to rival New York’s is looming in this city and our movements outside the home are now restricted to trips for medical care, work deemed essential, and errands to pharmacies and markets for necessary supplies.

The hope is that the closures will keep active Californians seeking respite from our own living rooms from packing too densely into outside space, which they did last weekend along many popular trails and costal areas. I live in a pretty little neighborhood along canals just two blocks from the beach. It’s a sight-seeing destination – at least, it used to be – and I hope they don’t close our sidewalks, as well. 

In an effort to avoid handling a shopping cart, I carried a pair of reusable bags into the store: one to fill with groceries for myself and the senior neighbor, and the other to pack up supplies destined for the immunocompromised friend. At the register, when the clerk accepted the bags to pack up my things, he told me that it was the last day they would accept reusable bags. It reminded me of the start of all this, and a disorienting interaction with a barista at a coffee shop who refused to touch my personal cup. That time, I made some crack about the environment. This time, I just nodded.

As I loaded goods into the trunk of my car, I realized I don’t have a good way to clean the inside. I haven’t seen disinfectant wipes for sale in weeks, and I’m not sure they’ll work on the Alcantara steering wheel or carpeted trunk anyway. So, I suppose that turns my car into a personal passage control. Like the airlock in a hospital quarantine unit, it serves to convey me and my contaminated shopping to my clean home. 

The adventure didn’t end when I got my groceries unloaded. The New England Journal of Medicine sparked concern a couple of weeks ago when it released a study that said the virus could live as long as three days on plastic and stainless steel surfaces, and up to 24 hours on cardboard. That calls into question not only the safety of packages arriving via delivery drivers from Amazon warehouses, but also the load of groceries I held in my hands.

Viruses have been known to survive 30,000 years – the subject of both science fiction writers and study for scientists working with ancient woolly mammoth carcasses thawing out of the not-so permafrost. So, I searched online for what I might do to keep the Coronavirus out of my freezer.

A YouTube video uploaded by Michigan doctor Jeffrey VanWingen three days ago has already drawn 16 million views. You could say it’s “going viral” but that seems in poor taste at the moment. He compares the virus to glitter. While demonstrating for viewers how to process groceries using the techniques medical professionals practice to create sterile space, he explained the goal is to keep the “glitter” out of your house, off your hands, and away from your face. I hope this virus isn’t as sticky as glitter. I’ve discovered flakes on my own cheeks months after mailing a sparkly birthday card to a friend’s five-year-old.

The CDC indicated yesterday that there’s no evidence showing the virus transmits via food and its packaging, but I decided to try following Dr. VanWingen’s advice anyway. After visiting my neighborhood’s weekly open air market in the morning to pick up fruit, vegetables, and my weekly bunch of tulips, I brought my shopping home and dumped everything into a sink of tepid, soapy water and washed it all for 20 seconds before rinsing it thoroughly – since I’m reasonably certain the flavor of brussels sprouts isn’t improved by dish soap. At the end of the process, my dish rack was a cornucopia of drip-drying produce. Note to self: green onions don’t enjoy warm, sudsy baths.

I repeated the same protocol with the rest of the items from Gelson’s. Almond milk, canned tuna, deli meats, green tea and a couple of bottles of wine for my immunocompromised friend. (She appreciated the irony of my selecting The Prisoner as an upgrade for one of her choices. One of my favorites and highly recommended for anyone’s quarantine cellar).

Unpacking took nearly an hour. I dumped cans of beans and cola into my sink of sudsy water for their 20 second wash and rinse. I wiped down the coffee tin, bag of chocolate chips, and the juice bottle with a paper towel soaked in a disinfectant cleaner. I decanted cookies into a clean Tupperware dish, and pulled out a dozen clean mason jars to store pantry items like dried beans and sugar. As I worked through my provisions, it occurred to me that it was the first time I’ve ever been more concerned about cleaning the outside of a package of raw chicken than about the potential danger of salmonella in the meat.

It was after 8 p.m. by the time I finished, and I was exhausted. I love to cook, and food shopping has long been one of my favorite things to do. In this new world, I’m relieved I won’t be provisioning again for another two weeks.

I opted not to disinfect the tulips. Pink ones, this week. They look pretty on the sill beside the jars of dry goods.