Panic Buying!

[MillauFr]

A tornado or flood or earthquake or something can take out facilities while you're quarantined. And then you're going to need some water. And it is getting into flood and tornado season.

Nonsense. People I trust say the virus will go away as soon as the weather warms up. Fake News is making a mountain out of a molehill

 

[cats mom]

I naively thought people weren't clearing shelves near me, that stuff was happening elsewhere.
Then I stopped by my local Costco.
They were completely out of TP and paper towels, the gal in front of me at the register was buying diapers 2 sizes up (guess she's planning on this going on a looong time), and I swear I was the only one in the place not buying water. Well, I did grab a .25¢ bottle on the way out... because I always do. Almost everyone else had their limit of water though. Not sure about cleaners and hand sanitizers and whatever else people are stocking up on because I didn't check. They had my cashews and the gift cards I wanted, that's all I cared about.
It was kinda crazy though!

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

Nonsense. People I trust say the virus will go away as soon as the weather warms up. Fake News is making a mountain out of a molehill

Being prepared isn't nonsense. It is not being prepared that is nonsense.
I trust health professionals. And they say they are hopeful a warm up will slow the spread of the virus like some other viral outbreaks but caution that there is no actual evidence to that effect yet. And they remind us that though the number of cases of several viruses do drop during the summer, it is not impossible to catch them during those summer months. And in the mean time, you should have in stock 2-3 weeks worth of water and canned and dry goods anyway. Water plants do go out. Electricity does in fact go off whether the Corona virus is around or not. I didn't stock that stuff for the 17 out of the last 20 years I didn't need them. I stock them for the 3 I did.

 

[DisneyJamieCA]

Nonsense. People I trust say the virus will go away as soon as the weather warms up. Fake News is making a mountain out of a molehill

For starters, it’s been said it will slow down, not go away, when the weather warms up. I’ve also seen reports that there is belief we’ll see it again next winter and continually until a vaccine is readily available. The truth is though, nobody knows how this virus will react to warm weather. I think we’re all hoping it will react like other coronaviruses, but there isn’t enough information to know anything yet! Which is why people are so freaked out over it.

Being prepared is appropriate. It is not the same as panicking. And who knows, the way things are looking here, we’ll go straight from this into fire season, where we’ll be stuck inside due to poor air quality anyway. At least here in CA, we can always count this preparedness as the earthquake kits we’re all supposed to have anyway and most of us don’t.

 

[Allison]

the toilet paper situation was explained to me the other day. the people that are panicking are stocking up because one of the effects of the illness is diarrhea and possible transmission can be from inadequate cleaning of the aftermath.

wondering if flushable wipes were also in short supply?

The people that are panicking and buying toilet paper don't even know why they are doing it. They are just following the crowd.

 

[anniemae]

I have been trying to buy some disinfecting wipes and lysol, not due to corona panic, just because I am running low after a bout with some sicknesses in our house. Can't find them anywhere.

 

[Julie's Haircut]

It appears panic buying has hit my area. This past Wednesday my supermarket was fairly well stocked with everything. Early last evening there was a sign in the vestibule apologizing for shortages and out-of-stocks for rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer, bleach, toilet paper, OTC medications, and a few other things. The sign also said there is a limit of two if the items are in stock.

There were the first confirmed cases of a few people having the virus in the next county on Friday. Maybe that's what led to the panic.

We already had plenty of food and adequate other supplies, but DW is now worried about, of all thing, pet food. She wants to stock up in case stores close or we get quarantined.

 

[Brett Wyman]

It appears panic buying has hit my area. This past Wednesday my supermarket was fairly well stocked with everything. Early last evening there was a sign in the vestibule apologizing for shortages and out-of-stocks for rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer, bleach, toilet paper, OTC medications, and a few other things. The sign also said there is a limit of two if the items are in stock.

There were the first confirmed cases of a few people having the virus in the next county on Friday. Maybe that's what led to the panic.

We already had plenty of food and adequate other supplies, but DW is now worried about, of all thing, pet food. She wants to stock up in case stores close or we get quarantined.

I'm not sure exactly which news story did it but a switch was definitely flipped in the America public in the last 3 days or so.

 

[soniam]

Being prepared isn't nonsense. It is not being prepared that is nonsense.
I trust health professionals. And they say they are hopeful a warm up will slow the spread of the virus like some other viral outbreaks but caution that there is no actual evidence to that effect yet. And they remind us that though the number of cases of several viruses do drop during the summer, it is not impossible to catch them during those summer months. And in the mean time, you should have in stock 2-3 weeks worth of water and canned and dry goods anyway. Water plants do go out. Electricity does in fact go off whether the Corona virus is around or not. I didn't stock that stuff for the 17 out of the last 20 years I didn't need them. I stock them for the 3 I did.

Hoarding necessities isn't being prepared; it's being selfish. Buy a reasonable amount and let others buy their reasonable amounts. All people think of is themselves and no one else anymore

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

Hoarding necessities isn't being prepared; it's being selfish. Buy a reasonable amount and let others buy their reasonable amounts. All people think of is themselves and no one else anymore

Being prepared with 2-3 weeks on hand isn't hoarding, nor selfish. It's failing to prepare and then needing to rush out and buy it last minute that is selfish.

 

[Farro]

We must be lazy here in Chicago. Our Target and grocery stores aren't having any shortages other than the hand sanitizer.

 

[soniam]

Being prepared with 2-3 weeks on hand isn't hoarding, nor selfish. It's failing to prepare and then needing to rush out and buy it last minute that is selfish.

Buying in the quantities that people are buying is hoarding. It's way more than most people need for 2-3 weeks. Buying several of the giant, largest multi-roll packs is hoarding. Buying 10 gallons of milk, unless you run an orphanage, is hoarding. It's despicable! Plus, if these people were restocking their 2-3 week reserves, they wouldn't need to be buying so much.

 

[firefly_ris]

Unrelated to this coronavirus scare specifically, but I've in the past researched water filtration/purification systems for gathering from natural sources. We have a large creek running through our property that we have riparian rights to, and have previously thought I should acquire a mini filtration system should our public water supply ever go down for one reason or another, since we have free flowing water running right there.

We do still have a well on the property as well but who knows what it would take to get that back in working order again. I've thought it could possibly be worth it just for our outdoor hoses at least.

 

[SaintsManiac]

We must be lazy here in Chicago. Our Target and grocery stores aren't having any shortages other than the hand sanitizer.

Same. We were at Lowe's selling Girl Scout cookies yesterday and they were fully stocked on all cleaning supplies. I saw people walking out with big containers of Lysol wipes. No one buying insane amounts of them, though.

 

[Searc]

It amazes me that up to this point, people have only had a weeks worth of cleaning supplies, TP, hand soap (?!), etc and other essentials that they suddenly feel the need to hoard something they never had before.

 

[KayaWildfire]

Buying in the quantities that people are buying is hoarding. It's way more than most people need for 2-3 weeks. Buying several of the giant, largest multi-roll packs is hoarding. Buying 10 gallons of milk, unless you run an orphanage, is hoarding. It's despicable! Plus, if these people were restocking their 2-3 week reserves, they wouldn't need to be buying so much.

While I agree with the toilet paper comment, the milk one I do not. You have no idea of people's situations. We buy 10 gallons of milk doing our weekly grocery shopping every single week because we have six kids and they all drink milk. While our milk consumption has somewhat dipped with three in away at school, they are all coming home in the next couple of weeks for spring break.

 

[wgeo]

Same. We were at Lowe's selling Girl Scout cookies yesterday and they were fully stocked on all cleaning supplies. I saw people walking out with big containers of Lysol wipes. No one buying insane amounts of them, though.

I have decided it is time for me to hoard. And I would like to start with Thin Mints -what you can you do for me?

 

[barkley]

We were at Lowe's selling Girl Scout cookies yesterday

this is something i've noticed an absence of in the last couple of weeks-girl scouts with the tables selling cookies. usually there's a table at every store we go to (3 different cities) but i've not seen a single one.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

Buying in the quantities that people are buying is hoarding. It's way more than most people need for 2-3 weeks. Buying several of the giant, largest multi-roll packs is hoarding. Buying 10 gallons of milk, unless you run an orphanage, is hoarding. It's despicable! Plus, if these people were restocking their 2-3 week reserves, they wouldn't need to be buying so much.

My post you quoted was talking about having 2-3 weeks on hand at all times, not running out and buying 10 gallons of milk which isn't happening here because milk is well stocked. Even the TP aisle, which is low on stock, wasn't completely empty in any store that I went to. Nor have I needed to buy any when the run on it hit. It isn't those of us that prepared that are buying TP like it's going out of style. It's those that didn't. And it is others that didn't prepare that are running out. What I am suggesting is not hoarding, nor despicable.

 

[Christine]

I was out shopping today. Grocery, Costco. My grocery store is not only out of the usual suspects (wipes, hand sanitizer, alcohol), but they were out of all liquid hand soap. All of it. Grocery store had no family packs of pork tenderloin (in the 10 years shopping there I've never seen them out of it) and none of the family size of the fresh salmon. I then hit up Costco so I could cash out my rebate check. There was a Limit 2 on water, toilet paper, paper towels. Everyone was loading up and I saw people with 3 or 4 waters in the cart so maybe it was two per adult? Their salmon was $3 more per pound than last week which I found odd. Everything just seems odd. There were no disinfecting wipes at all but when I entered Costco, the card checkers had several containers of wipes and they were handing sheets out to people to wipe their carts.