Lockdown Scamble

 Last Saturday, 7th August, State Government announced that Armidale would be entered into lockdown as two people had been identified as having the deadly Delta virus. They had been in Newcastle where the Delta version was already going strongly and was in lockdown. Illegally, they escaped Newcastle and delivered the virus to our area. Worse still, another relative of theirs, who goes to the Armidale Secondary College, has now been tested positive and we fear that kids there may catch the virus en masse.

Given this situation we must now stay at home for a week, with several legal opportunities to escape. For example, we can shop for food and other necessities like pharmaceuticals or hardware. We can also exercise and, in the last two days, I have done 28,000 steps according my Fitbit with my weekly target being 70,000. I guess I'll easily meet that target! However, if we escape legally from home we still have to wear masks and social distance. Still, I approve this lockdown as Delta is much more infectious than the first strain of COVID-19.

The lockdown was announced via various media early on Saturday morning with the start-up time being 5 pm. And we, like seemingly half of Armidale's residents, headed straight to one of the local supermarkets (Woolworths) to top up our food shelves. Mind you, I also had to quickly cancel the afternoon's bridge tournament I was due to direct. Players were both scared of the virus, many being elderly, and there was fear that the game might extend beyond 5 pm. Having reached the relevant shopping mall we were stunned by (a) the shortage of parking space and (b) the swarm of customers heading to the entrance. Our worst fears soon emerged as there was a queue to enter the supermarket and a shortage of trollies. However, the queue dramatically lengthened shortly after we arrived there as the first picture below shows. The queue might have been 50 m of more long - the length of the shopping centre's public area. Anyway, after a short wait we were allowed to enter and i managed to seize a trolley.

The remainder of the pictures show the congested aisles with many almost wholly occupied by queues of trollies awaiting check-out. After we'd filled ours with what we needed it took maybe 20 or 25 minutes to go through the checkouts. 

As with the first round of the virus in 2020, we were stunned by the shelves stripped of toilet paper! But it was also noticeable that those arriving early had stripped most of the shelves faster than the staff could fill them with existing reserve stocks. I imagine that by the end of the day many shelves would have been empty. I suppose our two other supermarkets, Coles and Aldi, were similarly looted!

Hopefully our stock will last the week, but I wonder what will happen if lockdown is extended!

AS