Ask HN: Have you observed any Covid-19 related panic buying yet?

My wife and I run an electronics boutique.

Our entire stock of industrial non-contact IR thermometers was purchased by a single guy who said he wanted to send them back to China.

My wife explained that they were for industrial use (out about half a degree), and not accurate enough for medical use. He purchased them anyway. :-\

They're often off by more than that. I briefly thought I had a 100.5 fever from one of those laser pointer + IR sensors when it was 98.6 by a proper thermometer.

Sorry, I should have noted that these were "non-stone-cutter-degrees"[1] (i.e. ºC).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoSLiHKrzRU

I saw that episode when it originally ran. Hehe. Also, where I worked had Simpsons' character names as hostnames. Can you guess the industry?

PS: I'm not Homer.

Paris, France

People are definitely stocking up on supplies - I wouldn't say panic, just prevention.

Went to local big hypermarket and several non-perishable food (pasta, rice, canned corn) were out of stock (which for made a pretty impressive picture - here is one I found on the net from this shop: https://twitter.com/jeanmgodard/status/1234044230034763776 ). From what I hear, it was definitely not like this everywhere, but still - it's one of the bigger ones in this part of Paris suburbs.

Mid-sized Edeka (mid-range grocery store) that serves a near-in suburban Nuremberg neighborhood, Saturday (shops are usually closed Sundays in Germany):

Water supply: did not note that or beer/other shelf-stable non-alcoholic bottle drinks, as it’s in a different part of the store, and we had enough already and are confident in our ability to purify tap on the off-chance that becomes necessary. Wine/booze stocks in the main part of the store looked plentiful :)

Food supply: the cheaper varieties of rice, pasta, flour, tomato products (canned and paste) and cooking oil were cleared out, but the pricier stuff was still at normal Saturday stock levels. Normal levels of fresh produce, with somewhat fewer potatoes, bananas and apples. Cheaper dairy was ransacked, but like dry goods, premium options remained.

Sanitary supply: all the cheap toilet paper and paper towels were gone, but more expensive varieties were generally available.

Note: this was the day after the first public reports of COVID-19 cases in Nuremberg and Erlangen. I’m delighted to have been doing my bulk shopping in smaller amounts throughout the past two weeks, aside from a final top-up on Friday, when my rather full shopping cart at the Rewe (other mid-sized, mid-market grocery store) got some stares.

What a difference a day makes!

Location: Algiers

Area type: Urban. Protests gathering million people, packed together, every friday and coming up with funny songs about Corona virus. The people here laugh about practically everything, especially themselves which they love to do.

I couldn't understand the rest of the questions. Life is just normal. Corona for people here is just like Ebola, Zika, or other "diseases": they just heard about it and the Italian guy who's got it here. Of course, people started talking in Italian to signify they have the virus. Also ordering Corona in coffee shops, trolling people pretending they have Corona, and any funny or not funny joke you can imagine. I'll spare you the obvious bar jokes.

However, I regularly have to go to Paris for work, a two hour flight, and I'm probably going this week. I usually try to keep it as short as possible (get-in-get-out-life-is-too-short-for-intercontinental-meetings-even-though-in-person-meeings-are-highly-valuable style not to disturb "Real Engineering Work (TM)") and I'm thinking of making this trip as short as a no-trip.

Then again, I'm going to present a project named ПRAVDA so who am I to judge.

Vienna, Austria - Friday around noon, multiple supermarkets, urban

Water: didn't notice (tap water is perfectly fine here), but pallets of canned beer, soft drinks or energy drinks (???) in nearly every shopping cart.

Food: no "panic", but (nearly) empty shelfs for the cheaper varieties of dried pasta, rice, flour, sugar, canned chili con carne / goulash and so on. Shopping carts fuller than normal. But no shortage for almost all other products.

Sanitary: low stock on toilet paper, almost no stock on soap and sanitizer.

Supermarkets more crowded than normally at this time, shopping carts fuller than normal. People even joked when queuing at the cashier that this is just their normal weekend shopping (piling 60 rolls of toilet paper on top of the cart).

This was shortly after the Austrian government presented rules for handling COVID-19 and told people there is no reason to panic, while journalists reported on the first "Hamsterkäufe", low stock and rising prices. Half a week before Austria had no confirmed cases, now its 8 in Vienna and 14 in whole Austria, but likely to rise with new announcements on Monday.

I'm a Bay Area resident. I went to Costco today at 9:00 AM and it was an absolute shitshow.

Isn't that a normal Sunday at most Costcos? ;@) (That's why I go on a weekday.)

Hint: Costco (COST), Clorox (CLX) and Pfizer (PFE; makes Purell) stocks seem like very short-term value-investing strategies (unless they're losing money elsewhere) because of both the market dip and they're having crazy sales numbers. It's probably a good idea to buy some stocks in general during this temporary downturn, because the odds that it will turn into a recession are very low and it will most likely bounce back.

Let's just speak of "increased levels" of buying, please.

Depending on where you live - it is not objectively reflective of "panic" to start stocking up on some of these supplies.

* Romania, Northwestern part * Urban * Megastore * Water supply - high * Food supply - high * Sanitary supply - high

I went to Auchan yesterday and they had a sign at the entrance saying that people shouldn't buy more than they need.

However, news reporting from Bucharest said that several big shops had the food supply running low. But then there were other pictures on Facebook showing how one TV channel emptied an aisle just for the pictures, so I take news reports with a big grain of salt.

* Location: Ireland, Dublin

* Area type (urban, suburban, countryside, very rural) -- Urban

* Shop type (bulk, megastore, supermarket, retail park, medium / small) -- Any

* Water supply - high

* Food supply - high

* Sanitary supply - low

In Dublin the only thing missing is hand sanitizer. I had to navigate 5-6 pharmacies until I found one offering "hospital grade" hand sanitizer, sold at 16 EUR per 500ml (expensive AF).

LIDL, Tesco, Aldi are all well stocked with no problems finding anything.

Spanish doctor caught trying to steal 300 masks from hospital [1] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11056572/spanish-doctor-caught...

There were only one and a half sixpack of Corona left in the local supermarket.

When the first cases were reported in China, there was panic-buying of face masks predominantly by Asian and Caucasians Americans at a Walgreens pharmacy/hypermart in Palo Alto, California.

California, Urban supermarket. Food, water, and sanitary supply high.

One of my buddies reads InfoWars daily and said he’s been preparing, but if I didn’t watch the news/read social media, I don’t even think I would know about the virus

Conspiracy level: Tin Foil Hat

Pseudo-science level: Strong

Overall, InfoWars/Alex Jones is a crackpot, tin foil hat level conspiracy website that also strongly promotes pseudoscience. The amount of fake news and debunked conspiracy claims, as well as extreme right wing bias, renders InfoWars a non-credible source on any level.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/infowars-alex-jones

My Local Cosco was packed this weekend (US-midwest). I've been there on other weekends and it's not that bad. Many disinfectant-related products were sold out.

From speaking to people working in retail 4 weeks ago; a large portion of items that have "been cleared out" locally were being sent overseas to China.

Dettol and other hand sanitizers sold out completely here in large (chain) supermarkets, checked 3 of them. That's just one small town though.

The local Costco has significantly less bottled water than a few weeks ago, however I really need more data points to call it a negative trendline.

Thanks, can you try and edit in the format I suggested.

Then use Amazon workers ;)

* Munich, Germany

* Urban

* Megastore

* Water supply: high

* Food supply: high

* Sanitary supply: low

In Munich Pasta, Tomato sauce, toilet paper and sanitizer are sold out or pretty hard to get. People are prepping and buying larger units than usual.

No panic buying at all :) ( Belgium)

2 female collegues are worried ( one from Canada and 1 planned to cancel her trip to Romania), 25 employees in total.

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Suburban

Megastore

Water: larger quantities starting to sell out

Food: increased purchasing but most SKUs still have stock

Sanitary: weirdly low but not sold out

Brooklyn, NY

Urban

Bulk

The Costco here had an hour wait to get into the store yesterday.