Comment by usrusr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by usrusr | Hacker News Reader

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The toilet roll thing seems to be everywhere (Germany is full of "why toilet paper!" outrage as well), but do people really panic buy so much? Toilet paper is an item you buy once every few weeks or months, depending on household size, it's very high volume per unit of money so shops stock just enough to satisfy an even random distribution of individual buying times. Now if all of a sudden, triggered by news, a considerable number of the people who would otherwise be in the market for a fresh pack sometime in the next few weeks decide to stock up a bit earlier there will inevitably be a brief but highly visible local shortage everywhere. Stocking up a bit earlier is far from panic buying, but due to the low price per volume of this specific product the result (empty shelves) will easily give that impression. This might admittedly trigger some second order panic buying effects, but that's not the effect of a coming virus, is the effect of people setting empty shelves.

I believe that the world is mocking a phantom.

This reminds me of the phenomenon where a slowdown in traffic on a road causes all of the cars to bunch up. And then after the blockage is gone, the bunch up continues to cause more cars to bunch up and the slowdown exists long after the issue is gone. It seems like the fact that toilet paper is gone causes people to buy it whenever its available which causes it to be gone.

I see this on I88 outside of Chicago all the goddamn time. Takes a little bit of aggressive driving to get past it, but eventuallually you'll find a point where there is a mile gap in the left lane, becausr people dont accelerate after a slowdown. Its fruatrating and caises me easily 10 minutes per day. I'm fine if you want to drive below the speed limit, but move put of the way (I'm talking people driving 45 in a 60 zone, when prevailing traffic wants to run 85). Holding up traffic is technically illegal, even if you're exceeding the speed limit, but in practice, its seldom enforced.

Its not entirely peoples fault. There is a delay between when you see space ahead of you and when your car accelerates. You also have to wait for the car in front to move far enough away for you to have a safety gap. To avoid this issue, everyone has to accelerate at the same time, but since you can't know if/when/how fast the person in front will accelerate, you can't possibly plan this without putting yourself at a huge risk of crashing in to the back of them. There are plenty of traffic simulations that show this same effect happening even with simulated, non distracted, rule following drivers.

You might find this interesting:

https://math.mit.edu/projects/traffic

It’s basically a normal occurrence in dense traffic.

The only way to solve this problem is as you reach the slow zone add a bigger gap in front of you, and leave that gap there until the zone is over.

A reason to buy a little extra would be simply to avoid going into populated areas (i.e. shopping). I think shopping is a very likely place to contract a virus given the number of times people handle the same items without washing them (think trollies, baskets, food on shelves, checkout machines, etc).

That said, toilet paper in general has been driven by media hype 100%. I think I remember some early stories where idiots purchased tonnes of it and emptied the shelves. I think the reason for toilet paper being purchased so much is because of it being randomly reported on in the beginning and that it's so cheap. A person on a modest income could easily purchase an entire shelf of toilet roll, whereas you're unlikely to see such things with higher cost items that have to be consumed within a certain time.

The truth is that they don't have the bidet.

> I believe that the world is mocking a phantom.

I think you're right for the most part, but in Australia there have been videos/pictures of people overloading shopping carts with enough toilet paper to last a family for years. These people are out there but it's hard to tell if they're in significant numbers or just a few idiots. I think we needed a little bit of panic a lot sooner to smooth over these bumps, but most people did not heed the advanced warning that China gave us.

Seeing the same thing happen across different cultures over very different kinds of crises I came to the conclusion that this has to be a Freudian slip of the fact that people subconsciously care more about being able to keep their rear end tidy than eating.

It has been explained a few times that its more related to the fact that stores stock only just enough toilet paper to keep up with demand which is usually almost perfectly regular. Even if everyone just grabs one more bag than they normally do, its enough to totally wipe out the stores.

Where as with other things, you could grab a months supply of cans and pasta and there will still be so much left, as well as the fact that not everyone is grabbing the same kinds of foods so the hit is spread over pasta, rice, flour and a huge range of canned food.

well the other reason is that if you bulk buy things like milk and bread it will be gone off within a week

The box milk you buy in Europe can keep about a year when unopened. That stems from a combination of aseptic packaging and UHT pasteurization. I just peeked at a few containers in my house and they have expiration dates around early July.

It seems irrational, but it allows people to feel like they are doing something in the face of a threat that they cannot control.

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