Nick Nguyen noticed that, for once, the traffic didn’t seem so bad in Southern California. Then he got closer to the entrance of his local Costco store in San Diego.
“It was over a mile long,” said Nguyen, 25, who shared a video of the grocery line on Reddit. “It was insane.”
Though it was Friday and the weekend was approaching, not many other cars were on the road.
“It’s a ghost town everywhere except grocery stores right now,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like Friday at all.”
Californians, uncertain but generally calm, were hurrying to prepare for a month-long period of near-isolation after Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide stay-at-home order was needed to slow the spread of the coronavirus and save lives.
Under the order, people are generally required to stay home and not leave unless they need to go out for an essential reason, such as getting food, caring for a relative or friend or working a job deemed essential.
The nation’s largest state, with 40 million people, is serving as a laboratory for how Americans may be asked to live in the months ahead. Illinois quickly followed with its own stay-at-home order, while New York has steadily tightened restrictions on businesses and other activity.
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