Shortages?

By John Wiley

We needed Kleenex so Tuesday 4:30pm at Costco I headed for that section, only to find it empty of products as this cart was leaving without any. 

Instead it was full of kids perhaps having a good time in the open area, or maybe having been sent to fill it with virus supplies. There was no Kleenex or toilet paper of any kind, two dwindling flats of paper towels, half a flat of bottled water, and a little over one flat of the more expensive sparkling water. What have you seen at other stores.

John Wiley

Written by John Wiley

John Wiley is a local pilot and longtime contributor to edhat.

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19 Comments

  1. No, it is selfish to stockpile when others need supplies too. Even if you run out of TP you’ll have water, use a sock if you need to – your washer will work. Hoarding this stuff is completely 100% selfish – to take all for yourself and leave nothing for others who are in the same situation.

  2. @961 wow so you’re going to berate someone simply for thinking a head and taking care of theirselves and their loved ones? that’s hoarding? i call it being prepared. Maybe if you stopped whining about stuff on the computer, turned it off, went outside and drove to a supply store, you too could be prepared. but no. you would rather get online and make others feel bad for being prepared. awesome

  3. @CATWRANGLER – 10+ years ago during one of the other outbreaks (swine? avian? H1N1… cant remember) you could not buy N95 masks anywhere, in person or online. After the panic settled down I decided to get some to have on hand should the need for them ever arise. 10+ years later I still have them!

  4. Prepared for what? Running out of TP b/c you’re sick? Who needs to hoard TP for this, do you do the same during flu season? Maybe if YOU went outside and got off the computer/internet you’d realize you’ll be fine and no need to stockpile and cause others to not be able to get necessary supplies b/c you’ve taken them all for yourself.

  5. CATWRANGLER dont’ feel guilty. We aren’t addressing ppl who bought stuff years ago for fires. But if you did wipe out a whole shelf of masks during the fires so that others had none, then that is something to ponder within yourself.

  6. You can make your own hand sanitizer. Aloe and alcohol. Lots of recipes online. Wash hands too. I was at itty bitty target on upper state and they had tp, etc. Part of shortage is shipments of supplies. It will get better.

  7. It’s definitely a media imposed panic, with an actual health threat to a certain part of our population.
    The shortage of goods is due to the media, including this site, inciting a panic. If I were elderly and in poor health, I would definitely just stay home and have things I needed delivered by friends, family or pay for it to be delivered.

  8. An epidemic panic is definitely not caused by the “media” or anyone else. Panic is caused because people really they and their loved ones are at risk, not only from infection but from the adjacent societal and institutional impacts. A virus is a communicable disease which can be managed well or not. If folks aren’t tested, quarantined and protected, the virus will catch hold in the population and spread. Which it is doing right now all over the world and in the U.S. People that are worried about their health and getting ready for possible quarantines, school closings, layoffs from work, stuffed hospitals, etc. are recognizing what is going on right now in China, South Korea, Italy, and Iran. Folks that think it is only a problem for the elderly can see from these countries that the effect is universal if infection rates skyrocket and societal impacts listed above come down on everyone.

  9. It’s hard to tell the difference between a panic caused by a real health threat or a panic caused by people worry about a health threat. Either way there is a shortage of goods. It seems as though it is really rare for a younger healthy person to have serious problems with this virus. But what is the best way to protect the less healthy or older people among us? I think this thing is going to be really hard to stop.

  10. There is not a “media-induced” panic anywhere in the English-speaking world. Any panic, if there is one, is not due to mainstream media. Maybe a random stray wacko youtuber is out there somewhere, but that is not “media”. Even Fox…well, I won’t go there.

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