Westerners criticise the Chinese wet markets, but they remind me of one of my dad's wildest USA stories. He was travelling through several states on a track geometry car with Norfolk & Western Railway in 1980 to see how they work over there. On the first day he was already deep in bumfuck nowhere
Deliverance style, stopping for lunch in Davy, West Virginia for what were touted as the best cheeseburgers in the state if not the whole country. Inside the burger place he could see through to the kitchen, and at the same countertop where the burgers were made the guy was skinning squirrels. I'm sure when he first told the story he said he opted not to have a burger, but now he thinks maybe he did.
My parents are still doing their best to isolate from me (ie. separate dinners) as they've only been back from overseas for 8 days. I'm temporarily living here an 8 hour drive away from my girlfriend, which sucks but we already needed the time to deal with shit before the pandemic turned up. I wasn't planning to see her again until mid-late April, either when she has a space for me in a tiny house or for a concert on the 27th. Now both of those are probably delayed, the tiny house depending on when it can get trucked in and plumbers will do non-essential work etc. Also, there are some significant age gaps.
Her dad is freakin' 95 so I wouldn't want to add any unnecessary risk to her family circle.
There was finally a notable amount of panic buying at supermarkets here yesterday when it was announced everything non-essential is shutting down, as people are morons. I guess they know that supermarkets are essential, but they think they're avoiding a major outbreak down the track when they're actually potentially the ones who'll cause it by all turning up at once like that. Next time I go to the supermarket I expect it to be business as usual, though they'll probably limit the number of customers in the shop at one time. The panic buying at liquor stores was more justified as so far they haven't been classed as essential.
