The Scarce

Limits on groceries put in place due to pandemic

El Paso resident Jerrell Cox heard his city will go into a quarantine for the COVID-19 outbreak around the world. As soon as he gets out of work he heads for the nearest supermarket to buy the essentials of survival. All he could get was a bunch of noodles, a pack of water and some Cheez-its.

Jerrell didn’t stop at just one, he tried going to at least five more other stores till he finally called it a day. He was happy that he had at least got one big package of toilet paper and some ground beef. Jerrell is a nurse at a small hospital with a baby, and it had just hit him how busy he would be at work.

“I saw a lot of people all gathering at one spot at the SAM’s club and that’s when I noticed that they were taking all the toilet paper,” Cox said. “ I thought, damn, I gotta get something for the house or what the heck am I gonna use to wipe, I tried to look for at least some paper towels but those where sold out too.”

Toilet paper and baby wipes was the first to go at all the stores. The second thing to go scarce was bottled water, the basics to survival. Some people would either go really early to get these things or go really late as to avoid other people.

“Staying up till at least 1:00 A.M. to go get supplies at the Walmart and then I having to go to work at five is hard,” El Paso resident Adrian Garcia said. “I’m always on the hunt for some baby wipes wherever I can find them because I got a 1-year-old daughter to take care of and its hard cause there’s almost none in the stores I go to.”

Risking getting the virus is one of the hardest parts of getting supplies today. People bunch up together and start coughing and sneezing. The infection rate is at least twice more than the common flu. This means that everyone that gets COVID – 19 will get at least 3.8 more people sick. These causes tensions to rise in people.

“My dad got a gun pulled out on him at Walmart the other day,” El Paso Resident Alexia Thomas said. “He got a gun pulled out on him because someone claimed that he grabbed some toilet paper from them, my dad pulled out his gun because he has a open carry license and told him ‘Are you sure you want to do this” and the guy just put his gun and walked away’.”