Why Are People Going Nuts?

When I started my last post on putting together an emergency kit the COVID 19 virus was just a bit of bad news from China and had nothing whatever to do with my decision to get my household organised in the case of an emergency. As I said in that post I was concerned about bushfires and storms. Now everything has changed and the simple steps I intended to work through as far as making us somewhat more self-sufficient have become much more difficult in a matter of days. This is not because of the virus itself I should add but because of how people are panicking as it makes its way across the planet.

I feel as if the world has pretty much gone crazy in some ways since China locked down the whole of Wuhan. As the magnitude of the effects of the virus became clear we could see that this wasn't going to be something limited to just there. At some point it was going to break out of the quarantined area and spread world wide. The only question was when this would happen. Wisely governments everywhere started to put their pandemic plans into effect. The experts spoke up telling us to take sensible precautions - like preparing a small stockpile of food and household essentials in case you end up being quarantined for several weeks or you fall ill and can't get to the shops. Don't panic, they said, just add a few extras to your shopping every time you go, items like canned or dried food that you'd use normally. Add in tissues and paracetamol in case you do come down with the virus, oh, and don't forget things like toilet paper, they said.

And that's when much of Australia went nuts. Did they do as the experts suggested and not panic buy? Of course not. You can see why to some degree. If like many on low incomes you haven't extra food and other things stockpiled you might well feel a little vulnerable but really it's turned to the bizarre. Within a very short time some items started disappearing from the shop shelves and you'll probably be as puzzled I am as to what one item is causing stand up fights in some shops with one case of someone drawing a knife to defend their trolley full of treasure.

It's toilet paper. That's right. People are so worried about not having enough toilet paper that they have been literally forming crowds at shop entrances before opening time and crawling under the doors as they lift so they can snaffle packs of it. It's been so bad that shops have had to impose limits on how much toilet paper you can buy at one time and some customers are not happy. Scuffles have broken out in several places as shoppers battle for some of the precious stuff and some of those who got in early and bulk bought are now making a killing by selling it at inflated prices.

It leaves me completely bemused. A few other things disappeared from the shelves pretty quickly - hand sanitiser for one which actually makes some sense. Five kilogram bags of rice and pasta along with baked beans were in short supply for a day or so and apparently canned tomatoes were recently on the list of must haves with shelves of them being stripped. The panic choices in many ways seemed quite random. For instance, beside the empty baked bean area you'd find shelves stocked with a large and apparently untouched assortment of other vegetables and meals like chunky soups and stews in cans which would seem to be an equally good choice if you think you're going to need survival supplies.

Despite all this for the most part the shops were restocked very quickly and when we did our weekly shopping yesterday there were no bare shelves anywhere except in the toilet paper and paper towel aisles. Even the baked beans had been restocked.

The whole debacle has been ridiculous and I hate to think how long it's going to take everyone to use this totally unnecessary stockpile of toilet paper - oh, and baked beans.