Coronavirus in Hintonburg: Week One

One full week after heavy coronavirus restrictions started getting implemented in Ottawa, the world is a different place.

The week started pretty grim.  The last time I visited a grocery store and there was a palatable sense of dread in the air. All toilet paper was gone off the shelves, as was rice and most pasta.  Seriously, this is the first time in my life I felt scared...at a grocery store.
 
This past Saturday though things were a different story. I returned to the store to find that it had implemented reasonable limits on how much customers could buy of particular products (generally two or less).

No more stockpiling crackers

There were still some products that were mostly drained, but as 99% of food items were available. There was even a few packages of toilet paper, the holy grail of hoarded items.

On the right, pasta. On the left, a few lonely packages of toilet paper were left.

Despite being lectured by our Prime Minister today, I think boring ol' Canadians are for the most part rule followers. We generally don't see the crazy scenes you see in Australia or the UK over here. Maybe things will change, but for the most part I think Canadians are ahead of the game when it comes to implementing reasonably tough rules that allow for life to somewhat go on. We'll see where things stand next week though!

p.s. I do want to give a shout out to grocery store employees everywhere. They are true heroes in all of this. I don't think the pampered classes (I include myself in that category) realizes just how lucky we are to have hard working employees like this to basically keep the food network from collapsing.