Back in February 2020, shopping habits radically shifted from clothes and furnishings to toilet paper, paper towels, disinfectants, baby wipes, hand sanitizers and canned goods. A month later, the pandemic would be official.

Hoarding became rampant. Shelves of canned goods in supermarkets laid bare, shortage of disinfectants, evident. Hand sanitizers became a premium. Nowhere was alcohol to be found. Personal protective equipment (PPE) was scarce, notably masks. Pricing of items goes up and down like a yoyo, to which others sometimes think amount to price gouging, but with supply and demand, one would understand it.

In the supermarkets, signs were put limiting the number of disinfectants you can get. As well, the same for canned goods. Cash registers in high-end supermarkets suddenly carried signs like debit or credit only, providing at least one register to service cash payments. The first hour of the supermarket opening was assigned to seniors. A daughter accompanying her mother inside was told to do the mother’s shopping next time. She could not argue that the mother did the cooking and knew what to buy as a substitute ‘when the ingredients were not available. So, the succeeding grocery shopping was done inside alone by the senior mother while the daughter waited outside to push the cart home.

Freezers got filled up with meat, pizzas, dinner platters, frozen vegetables. Pantries were lined with canned goods, peanut butter, mac and cheese, lots of pasta and sauces. In other words, there was more than enough food in most households that when the buying subsided, they ended up being out in the common room of highrises for any resident who wanted them or put on tables outside residences for anyone to pick up and bring home. Talk about sharing in time of the pandemic.

Middle of last year, there were reports that London England’s sewers were starting to clog up from all the wipes that were being flushed. Medical masks discarded became a problem too for the environment and wildlife. Just like straws being lodged into the throats of birds, strings of these masks were found around the beaks and throats of birds. While mankind is dealing with this lethal virus, it is doing more harm to nature which is the last stronghold for our survival on this planet.