Over the last couple or so days our company has seen a "pop" in business for making various types of clear acrylic sneeze guards. Lawton has increased restrictions on businesses and the movement of citizens. One of the new restrictions is that all essential businesses still in operation that have cashier/service counters must have sneeze guards between employees and customers. No two businesses are alike, so many of the solutions we're creating are custom.
I worry about our materials supply chain getting disrupted. If sign suppliers get shut down or too many of their drivers get sick we won't be able to get things we've ordered. Outside of the sign business I worry about other industries, like the food industry, getting supply chains disrupted. I read about a dairy farm having to dump thousands of gallons of fresh milk right into the manure pile because there was no way to deliver it.
We have a curfew going into effect Monday in Lawton. We haven't had very many confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections locally (yet), so the hope is the increased restrictions will do more to flatten the curve before the spread can get out of hand here. I'm not sure if that's going to work because there has already been a lot of contrarian displays of people refusing to follow rules. 1400 Americans died of COVID-19 on Friday, yet there's still a bunch of people who insist this is no worse than the flu. So they're not going follow any big government rules.
The city mandated that people can no longer shop in groups. Which is long overdue. No more taking the whole friggin' family to the grocery store. Shoppers must shop alone. No more huggy social pow-wow sessions with friends in the aisles. Just go in, get the $#1+ you need, and go the f### home. And wash your hands and other high touch surfaces when you get there. Socialize on FaceTime, Zoom or whatever.
I don't know how this is going to work, but stores that can still allow customers inside have strict number limits depending on square footage. Big stores like Walmart can have no more than 100 inside at a time. I bought some beer at a liquor store yesterday afternoon; it's customer limit was 10. Apparently our local Sam's Club had a long line of customers wrapping around the building prior to it opening this morning. Standing outside in line with a bunch of strangers sounds a little risky to me.
