Yeah, all of my favorite art haunts are pretty much closed for a while. But it’s understandable, because everyone needs to be careful. Now, if the country can come together, follow the experts’ advice, and not go off the rails, we will be safer.
First there was the hysteria about buying toilet paper – I saw it in action earlier this week when purchasing my week’s groceries. I understand having certain kinds of home-related consumables around the house, but not going overboard. There was a flash-back to the film in the 1970s when the last American plane left Saigon, because at times it seemed like that.
Even better, though, is the price-gouging on hand sanitizers. I’ll use my soap and hot water, thank you very much. At a dentist’s appointment a few days ago, some staff members at the front desk were talking about the sky-rocketing cost of a bottle of this stuff on Amazon. Like $9 a bottle for the purse-sized hand sanitizer. Shameless. But, Amazon noticed.
An a story in today’s New York Times, a true price-gouger was booted off Amazon because he was selling this stuff in a range from $8 to $70 per bottle.
The story begins about two brothers in Tennessee who drove around the state going into rural areas and cleaning off the shelves in various stores.
My favorite paragraph is this: “Matt Colvin stayed home near Chattanooga, preparing for pallets of even more wipes and sanitizer he had ordered, and starting to list them on Amazon. Mr. Colvin said he had posted 300 bottles of hand sanitizer and immediately sold them all for between $8 and $70 each, multiples higher than what he had bought them for. To him, ‘it was crazy money.’ To many others, it was profiteering from a pandemic.”
And, of course, that is what it is. Amazon bounced them off the site, along with several others who had cleared off nearby shelves early and often. But Matt Colvin now has 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizers, and has nowhere to sell them.
Profiteering from a pandemic, indeed, and it is reprehensible. C’mon, people. Share the wealth and the sanity.
Below is a link to The New York Times story on price-gouging, and a link to a clip from The Daily Show With Trevor Noah with clips about our leaders are totally ignoring the instructions. I am not on Instagram, but a friend forwarded it to me. Funny, but not funny?
Chandler in Denver 