Just a normal errand trip into town

For context, I live in a small town outside of San Diego, California called Ramona, with around 20,000 people, but when it comes to the services in town, plenty of people in outlying areas use our schools, stores, and services. Pictured above is the county library. I went to drop off and pick up some books my grandma has been extremely excited about. While I know some of you are probably scolding me for going to a handful of public places, problem is I have to. I live with my parents and elderly grandparents, so it falls on me to run my grandfather's errands from time to time, and such as when his insurance provided caretaker can't make it up. As such my grandparents caretaking service has been intentionally put on hold and my mom has taken up the burden of caretaking.

Now this does have benefits, my grandpa has been well stocked on sanitary and medical items for years now due to my grandma's in home healthcare needs, as she is paraplegic. As such we have had no need or desire to rush out for supplies, I treated my trip almost as normal but more cautious than usual.

Now I am sure there are plenty of other pictures floating around on the same thing. But I had some interesting thoughts on it all.

I work for an after school program, and since the local schools are shut down, I now have no part time job for the rest of the month. And such have some free time on my hands. Such as take pictures of an already oversaturated story.

The CVS, came here just to pick up meds for my grandma. Wasn't too busy, didn't take any pictures inside as the only out of stock items where the ones you'd expect.

Stater Bros, vastly more popular than the Albertsons in town. The parking lot was packed as usual for a Saturday. But the inside was slightly more busy than an average superbowl sunday. This right now is the place to be apparently. I didn't want to make the trip, my mother made it out to be far worse than it was really.

All of the check out lines are open and had at least two people in line, almost each isle had someone restocking something. Following pictures are what I found to be most shocking, surprising or funny.

Tragic, the brown sugar is gone :(

Side note this was on the cereal isle, lot of cereal taken, but when it came to milk, lactose free and the store brand 2% and whole milk where fully in stock.

Almost all beers and liquor were in stock, save for the local brews, could be because people like it or resupply has stopped as they are local.

Surprised how much people need ketchup, I guess when the world ends the food of choice is hotdogs.

Not so surprising on the frozen veggies. But I needed to get spinach! I got the last two bags.

Was surprised how desired sugar and flour are, didn't think people knew how to make their own bread anymore. Funny enough a man there to pick up sugar spoke to me as I took the picture, saying he was a avid birdfeeder. Which isn't surprising as San Diego County has the most diverse bird population in North America. But he joked on how this was normal for him to buy copious ammounts of sugar.

And as you can see people need bread for those hotdogs.

And salad.

Here laid soap and hand sanitizer.
No shock but had to see for myself.

This was all toliet paper. That entire shelf is cleared. Which I can't fully understand why the heck people needs copious ammounts of poop paper.

Lastly the Bleach.

By the end of the trip into town, all I can say is this is slightly worrying but not that bad. I mostly took pictures of empty shelves, plenty of stuff still lay on the shelves, and while no doubt everyone their may had varying reasons or motives, I didn't witness any of the serial hoarders, saw plenty of masks and gloves on workers and customers alike. I almost expected to enter and find your classic black friday scene or doomsday movie hoarding, but thankfully some humanity is being shown, everyone is still pleasant to each other but you can sense the overarching sense of worry. School is cancelled and a lot of parents are in worry mode, they didn't think this could happen and are only now feeling the need to prepare.

Some milk, vegan patties for my mom, a jar of salsa, some fruit, and the aforementioned spinach.

For my final thoughts I will say I saw too many elderly folk out and about, please if you know any elderly people, you should offer your help if you are young and know what you are doing, anything you pick up can be decontaminated and could save a life.

Even though we should all be inside and not interacting with the masses, still too many people out and about. This isn't going away in a day or two, likely will last months. In a perfect world we would all be following proper social distance and only going out to buy what we need. If you start to panic, others will too. We all need to keep calm and carry on with washed hands. Also the stores are open at night!