Greetings from my corner of our national COVID-19 quarantine. As someone who is not unaccustomed to a certain amount of social isolation, I can say with confidence that this new normal has even me a bit more than creeped out. When I was in my teens and twenties, I wasn’t a big believer in psychology, but perhaps the only real advantage of advancing age is that it gives you an opportunity to discover the things you were wrong about earlier on – for me, one of those items was the fact that psychology is a thing that affects me. So, while my life is not all that different from the way it was before this crisis, I feel a lot different … and not in a good way.

Part of what I find disturbing about this pandemic scare is the degree to which so many people in my community are acting out of fear. I don’t mean to single central New York out in any way – similar effects are being seen all over the country. But when I go to grocery stores now, in particular, the evidence of panic buying is all around. I went to the supermarket at 7:30 a.m. last Saturday – half an hour into their business day – and there were gaping holes throughout the inventory. Because it’s kind of a white-dominant bedroom community, the missing items read like Ozzy and Harriet’s shopping list: iceberg lettuce, white bread, cans of tuna fish, jars of tomato sauce, canned soup, frozen vegetables, etc. Of course, paper products were cleared out entirely … 30 minutes into the business day!

Weirdly, it didn’t seem like there were all that many people in the supermarket. And people didn’t seem frenzied, and they didn’t appear to be buying any more than I would have expected to see in their carts on an ordinary shopping day. Strangers were even interacting with me, in a friendly way, which was encouraging. And yet … the shelves were bare, as if Visigoths had marauded through the place a half hour earlier. Like the Coronavirus itself, panicked citizens seem like an invisible menace; you seldom actually see it, but you can see its effects. Then, of course, there are the follow-on effects: when people know their neighbors are buying everything in sight, they then go to the store and stock up before the goods are all gone. Selfishness starts to rule the day as people compete for consumer items suddenly in short supply. This is what late-stage capitalism looks like: very similar to the capitalists’ own distorted stereotype of socialist privation – empty shelves, desperate consumers, valueless scrip.

Of course, now that capitalism is in crisis (businesses shutting down, the stock market crashing), it’s time again for socialism! Trump and the Republicans, along with corporate Democrats, are reaching for massive state intervention in the economy, cutting billions of dollars in checks to individuals, back-stopping banks with enormous credit guarantees, dumping public cash into enormous, well-connected private corporations. All of the television austerians have come to their collectivist Jesus, much like they did in 2008-09. (Elect a Democrat, and trust me, they will be deficit hawks once more.)

So, no, you’re not hallucinating. This is all actually happening. Please stay safe, wash your hands, etc., and don’t freak out. We rely on each other to keep our heads – that may be the most effective thing we can do right now.

luv u,

jp