The Great Toilet Paper Rush of 2020

[fragger]

There's a bizarre phenomenon taking place in Australia at the moment - "toilet paper hoarding".

It appears that people who have been spooked by the COVID-19 coronavirus have decide to stock up on toilet paper, of all things, and so there have been "panic rushes" of people snapping up as much of it as they can get. As part of my regular grocery shopping (which this week just happened to include toilet paper) I visited two supermarkets today, one in my own little hamlet and a larger one in the main town, and there was not a single roll of TP to be had in either one of them - they had all been cleaned out by these herd-mentality idiots.

They're not snapping up food, or bottled water, or petrol, or clothing, or tools - they're going for toilet paper. Bloody toilet paper! Wtf is wrong with these people?

Fortunately I still have enough TP to tide me over for a few more days at least, but the supermarkets have had to impose limits on the amount of TP sold per customer in a vain attempt to keep enough of it on the shelves for everyone else.

I've never seen or heard of such a thing before. I think these clowns get all this panicky nonsense from social media. COVID-19 may indeed spread, but at present in Oz there have been just 55 cases in a nation of 25 million people, with the number of fatalities countable of the fingers of either hand. Yet it hasn't stopped people from stampeding to the supermarket and trampling each other to snap up as much TP as possible. You'd think there was an imminent apocalypse of toilet paper-eating zombies.

Now in the city, maybe I could understand that kind of thinking (well, actually, no, I still couldn't). But out here? In this little community of about 7,000 people with barely a soul who isn't at least a third-generation Australian among the lot? Who do these fools think they're going to get infected by? Tourists from Asia or the Middle East or from any other part of the world are spectacularly conspicuous by their complete absence around these parts.

And here's the truly sublime part. Toilet paper is one of the things that is still manufactured in a big way in Australia. There are 12 giant warehouses in Sydney alone containing hundreds of thousands of rolls of it, which is the norm. The shelves will be fully stocked again come the morning. If these damn fools would just buy what they need as per normal, there would be more than enough to go around for everybody. But I won't be surprised if the new stock is cleaned out again by lunchtime tomorrow.

It astounds me how the same people who can pull together during natural disasters like bushfires and floods can suddenly go all "everyone for themselves" when faced with a virus which they have an exceedingly small chance of contracting (for now, at least - touch wood). Geez, we were in very real danger of being invaded by the Japanese during the war and nobody carried on like this. The internet and social media have turned people into quivering, terror-prone panic merchants. There was even one guy in Sydney who the police had to taze for trying to wrestle a cop's gun off him, I guess in order to make everybody back off so he could bag the entire stock of TP for himself.

Sometimes I despair for the human race.

[Art Blade]

what's going on in your part, that's such a nonsense! Sounds like comedy, and "clowns" is fitting right in

One of your newspapers, NT News, with some sense of humour, printed an edition which included eight empty pages so readers could cut them for use as toilet paper

    YES, WE ACTUALLY DID PRINT IT #toiletpapercrisis https://t.co/jusP50ojYu
    — The NT News on Twitter (@thentnews) https://twitter.com/TheNTNews/status/1235320458733588482

..and one comment there was, "It didn't w0#k quite as well with the digital version."

Over here people are hoarding disinfectants which leads to medical practices closing up because they, medical personnel and doctors who actually need it, have run out. One of my own docs told me that his supplier ran out because a city (!) had ordered them to deliver everything they had in stock. He wondered what they wanted to do with them, equip every kindergarten and school? However, that "city order" led to my doc being forced to go online to find supplies but the problem then is how long it takes them to deliver that stuff.

Same with those masks you see in news reports particularly from Asia where everybody is wearing paper masks. The only use for paper masks is not to infect others if you've caught a cold or some such, but it doesn't prevent you from contracting a virus which is obviously what those people think it does.

And there's the more expensive type (some of which, that's also interesting, are said to w0#k while others don't) that people can hardly breathe through and as my doc put it, they cut holes in them for their cig break (lol) but seriously, those that w0#k only w0#k for like 20 minutes until the moisture from your breath makes the filters stop working and they need replacement.. complete nonsense for everyone but actual medical staff like those working in a quarantine zone or virus research departments. In the end, again, those complete idiot clowns do more harm to people who need them but can't get them than helping themselves which, in fact, they don't.

It is really, really crazy how that unnecessary and stupid panic is spreading faster than the virus ever could on its own.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Haven't heard of a TP shortage here or a run on the stores for it, but maybe just in case, i should buy a package next time I go out shopping lol.

[PZ]

That's a pathetic story fragger 

When I was younger I wondered why in movies the government would try to cover up discovering aliens rather than informing the public. I came to realize that you can't let the public know these things or exactly what you just described is the result.

[Dweller_Benthos]

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

[Art Blade]

 

[mandru]

We just tried to hit Costco (big box bulk purchase membership store) here in SLC Utah and every unit of every TP brand was sold out.

[fragger]

So it's not just us, then We have Costco in Australia too (though there are none anywhere near where I live) and the same thing is happening there.

Some people are nuts.

What annoys me is that because of these hoarders, everyone else has to hoard a bit too in case they miss out altogether I don't want to join them, but necessity dictates. I was down to my last two rolls, but fortunately I managed to find some at an independent grocer in town. But even as I was approaching the store, people were coming out with armfuls of them. They only had eight 4-packs and two 6-packs left when I went in, so I grabbed one of the 6-packs. I resisted the temptation to grab the other 6-pack and two of the 4-packs (four packs being the store-imposed limit per customer). I may be forced to fall in with the hoarders to some extent, but I'll be damned if I'll be completely selfish about it. I have to look to my own needs, but I still want to leave some for other people.

[nex]

We saw this on our news fragger

https://mothership.sg/2020/03/aus-family-toilet-paper/

[fragger]

I forgot to comment on the clip D_B posted above. When Tommy Lee said "500 years ago, everybody knew the world was flat", he forgot to add that there are still people who believe that

@nex, that's a funny story with that Aussie family They seem like decent people though, saying that they will sell on most of what they accidentally ordered to others. It was nice too that the company they ordered the TP from came to the party by refunding the $400 postage. There are some good people around.

Then I happened to catch a bit of the morning news on TV and saw where two women got into trouble for fighting over TP in some store, and the story about the good people got cancelled out

[nex]

Just watched the clip fragger, scary when people start panicking, and instead of
helping, the media is chucking fuel on the fire 
I see reports there's shortages of hand sanitiser and warnings that batteries and
other electronic items could be next.

[mandru]

Randomly browsing online I saw a picture that was titled "Now in Australia".

It was a photo of an arcade claw machines loaded with rolls of TP. 

[Art Blade]

 

[fragger]

The claw machine was done for a lark but I wish there were more of them - I might actually stand a chance of getting hold of some TP then

[PZ]

Just goes to show how ignorant people panic buying only make things worse.I went to the store yesterday, and although toilet paper was not a problem, all santizers and isoporpyl alcohol shelves were bare.