My wife and I usually do a relatively large grocery store trip at the beginning of the month and then a handful of ones for ‘here and there’ stuff throughout the month. The past month has changed a lot of that.
In the month since everything really started getting serious, I have probably been outside of my home less than a dozen times. Trips to grocery stores have been taken with the most care possible.
Any grocery shopping for non-frozen food type stuff has been through online retailers and any frozen food has been done in off-hours when the least people are there. We’ve all got to do everything that we can to stop the spread of all of this.
For weeks, Americans have been urged to stay at home and abide by increasingly stringent social distancing guidelines in order to keep their families safe. Schools have been closed, businesses have shuttered, and only essential stores remain open to the public.
But during a White House press briefing over the weekend, White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx said Americans would be wise to go one step further, and avoid grocery stores and pharmacies altogether as the apex of the virus nears.
During the briefing, President Trump warned that the worst is yet to come
“This will probably be the toughest week — between this week and next week,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “There will be a lot of death, unfortunately … there will be death.”
Those words are sobering — chilling, even. But according to Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, they are not an exaggeration.
Our behavior in the next two weeks could make all the difference
“The next two weeks are extraordinarily important,” Dr. Birx reiterated. “This is the moment to not be going to the grocery store, not going to the pharmacy, but doing everything you can to keep your family and your friends safe.”
For millions of Americans, who may be running low on their food supply right now or be in need of a prescription refill, that recommendation certainly isn’t easy to hear. While online grocery delivery is always an option, the influx of orders has left companies like Amazon, Walmart, and others slammed, and delivery time slots scarce.