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> The panic buying of items like toilet roll + pasta in places the virus hasn't even taken hold yet is a stark reminder of how utterly selfish some people can be.

I disagree… "before the virus has even taken hold" is the perfect time to do long-term shopping. Avoiding crowded areas (read: THE MALL and the public transports to get to the mall) is key to reducing infection.

Yes, hand sanitizer/face mask markets are ridiculous right now, but that's to be expected. It's not people being selfish, there's clearly genuine needs for it. When there's a fuckton of needs and not enough being produced… how is it people being selfish that you can't find hand sanitizer at a decent price? All those have been bought.

If everyone buys only what they need (e.g., if it’s a small personal sanitizer bottle, keep 1 in use and 1 in inventory), demand could be spread out and crowds avoided.

The problem appears to combine habitual shopping for long term (not many have a 24/7 convenience store within 3 minutes of walking), panicked distrust in infrastructure reliability, and good old tragedy of the commons.

Some countries fare better on first two, but still have the last one (e.g., Hong Kong).

The thing is, normally most people done have ANY hand sanitizer, let alone two, as you describe.... so when suddenly everyone wants to buy them, there isn't enough for everyone to have even two. That doesn't make the people buying them selfish.

But that’s not what they do, try to buy two or whatever reasonable number. A few people literally fill a shopping cart with toilet paper, water bottles, and hand sanitizer, and it’s gone. The problem is one of capacity to match demand within such short time frames.

I went to Costco and saw people buying up to the limit on random stuff, and they end up with 6 months of toilet paper, 1 year worth of pasta, etc. I wanted one box of diapers (one lasts over a month), and there were only 4-5 boxes left when there's normally 20+, even when there's a good sale. I have never seen them be out of baby wipes, but they were out when I went (which is a shame because we just ran out). In fact, they had to shut down a local Costco because people are fighting over toilet paper.

COVID-19 isn't going to be some world ending thing, it's just going to put some supply pressure in the short term until production and distribution can ramp back up, but people are treating it like it will be. It's really frustrating.

The base problem is that it's Prisoner's Dilemma.

If nobody hoards, everyone is fine.

If a small number of people hoard, there are stock-outs, and everyone else has no access to the thing.

Ergo, the strictly dominant individual move is to hoard ASAP. As it provides coverage against all scenarios.

Limiting quantities is the obvious equitable response to this, so it's been good seeing retailers step up and do so.

I believe the implicit assumption here is distrust in reliability of supply, other people’s behavior and infrastructure in general. Some cultures are more resistant to this kind of stuff.

>> I disagree… "before the virus has even taken hold" is the perfect time to do long-term shopping. Avoiding crowded areas (read: THE MALL and the public transports to get to the mall) is key to reducing infection.

While I agree that being prepared is important people are stocking up for much longer than necessary + not considering other people. This all depends on your ethical/world view I suppose but we don't have enough of certain items yet. The options are to think of only yourself and buy as much as you can as quickly as you can (while leaving other people with no options at all) or buy what you need now so that everyone has what they need and hopefully production can increase of the in demand items so we can all stock up before (worst case scenario) production has to cease entirely for a period of time. It's interesting to see how quickly our progressive societies can become every person for their self (to an extent).

To my recollection (corrections welcome), the covid19 virus has been reported to live on hard surfaces for 8 weeks, have an incubation period of up to 4 weeks, and live 5 weeks in vitro after confirmed infection ... if you're sanitising several times a day then that's a need for quite a long stretch of sanitiser.

Do you have sources for those figures? The ones I find are suggesting up to 2 weeks incubation (but more typically about 5 days) and surviving on some surfaces for 3 days (less for others).

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/sars-cov-2-study-c...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/14/8116090...

I'll have a look at the sources I've been watching and post back.

You might read up on the Bullwhip Effect. these demand fluctuations can have very disruptive effects on supply chains and availability of things, even if nothing else happens.

Doig the kind of shopping right now is extremely disruptive if happening at scale. Which it does. Long-term availability of all kind necessities will suffer from it, for you, for everyone. It is the opposite of reasonable right now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect

So... what exactly are we all supposed to do? Taking reasonable precautions is extremely disruptive. Not taking reasonable precautions is extremely disruptive (when everyone gets sick and overwhelms the medical system). It seems like pretty much any reaction is going to result in extreme disruption. Which really isn't even that surprising given the extremely disruptive nature of a global pandemic.

First thing would be to mentally disconnect the supply of people in quarantine from the spread of the virus. Even under lockdown, quarantined people will be supplied and grocery stores open and supplied.

Then, follow the guidelines (washing hands, ....). Avoid big groups, keep a certain distance. Regarding shopping, buy normal volumes of stuff. That always works, the system is used to this. If there are things missing, buy small volumes. Spread shopping over multiple shops of multiple chains. Ideally over multiple days. This keeps peak small, reducing the risk of supply disruption.

And keep away from things medical professionals would need as well.

If push comes to shove, accept shortages of luxury stuff and certain products. But we are very far from that.

All that is a European perspective, so.

>Even under lockdown, quarantined people will be supplied and grocery stores open and supplied.

From an American perspective, that is not immediately clear to me.

>Avoid big groups, keep a certain distance.

...

> buy normal volumes of stuff ... Spread shopping over multiple shops of multiple chains

These two things are not compatible in my view.

>If push comes to shove, accept shortages of luxury stuff and certain products. But we are very far from that.

Maybe where you are. My grocery shopping trip this morning ended with me re-planning meals for the week in the supermarket based on what was available. A wide range of staple ingredients were completely out of stock.

As I said, no such problems over here so far.

We might see shortages for stuff coming from China, inventoires will slowely be depleted and the replenishment from China severly hampered by the situation in Europe and the US. Stuff sourced / produced on the same continent won't hit nearly as hard. As long the production doesn't break down there shouldn't be to hard impacts. And since quarantine measures only started a couple of days ago, we can rule out those impacts as causes for the shortages you saw. Leaves short term and mid term disruptions caused by, what I might call, panic shopping, which outpaced replenishment.

The downvotes is for calling panic buying selfish. You can't simultaneously tell people to stay at home for long periods of time and tell them to not stock up for that.

Google the "Bullwhip Effect" to get an idea of how disruptive this bahiour can be, for everyone. And if individual behaviour has negative impacts on others, yes it's selfish.

Supply will be kept open, quarantine or not. Italy and China are the best examples, groccery stoes and pharmacies remained open. It is much harder to do that, so, if everybody goes panic shopping before. So please, don't do that.

>> You can't simultaneously tell people to stay at home for long periods of time and tell them to not stock up for that.

Nobody is telling people to stay at home for long periods of time. If you think you have the disease you need to quarantine for a couple of weeks. That doesn't require a lot of stocking up. In Italy, where they are in 'lockdown', grocery stores remain open along with other essential services. So panic buying is unnecessary, causing shortages that are unnecessary and causing problems for people who aren't panic buying.

Companies are _requiring_ people to work from home, childcare options are closing, schools are closing, businesses are cutting staff and hours, and there are public bans on large gatherings and urgings to stay home so that even if you are asymptomatic or healthy, you don’t risk accidentally contributing the spread to immunocompromised or elderly people.

If you think you only need to budget supplies for two weeks, you’re just wrong. You need to budget for _months_, and likely need to budget many supplies you otherwise wouldn’t have needed, like increased food for daily breakfasts and lunches for a whole family who otherwise would have been at school / work drawing those supplies from elsewhere.

While I agree the panic buying is harmful & we could ration and space it out with less shock to supply chains, I also think the behavior of everyday people facing the sudden prospect of a large family consuming toilet paper, 3 full meals, soap, medicine, etc., for an indefinite number of weeks ahead, it’s totally understandable and not even remotely “selfish.”

>> If you think you only need to budget supplies for two weeks, you’re just wrong. You need to budget for _months_

Can you back this up at all? As I explained in my comment, Italy, one of the worst hit countries globally (and on 'lockdown') has grocery stores still functioning. The idea that people will be required to not leave their homes for months is fear mongering , impossible to enforce, and even in the worst case scenario people simply won't do it - they'll go stir crazy and give up a lot quicker than they think.

Saying “can you back this up at all” in response to this is just glib rhetoric. There’s no published standard of evidence for this, by very definition of the type of event (panic).

When you buy a stockpile of supplies, it is for contingency, not immediate threat. You are not accounting for this.

If the probability of being home quarantined is, say, 1%-5%, that’s huge and requires stockpiling at least some supplies. The grocery stores functioning today has literally nothing to do with it. That’s not fear mongering.

In the absence of hard data on the probability of home quarantine, then what do you recommend people do? Prepare for a worst case scenario? Act like nothing will happen? Somewhere in between (but where exactly, and why?)

I’ll reiterate, your responses so far are just glib rhetoric. Unless you can provide a reason why people shouldn’t prepare for a worst case scenario (knowing it’s unlikely to get that bad, but better to have the supplies if it does), it’s extremely disingenuous of you to brandish such moralistic grandstanding judgment towards people trying to prepare for an emergency.

Ideally we would all have our own stocks of essentials that we build up gradually over time during normal circumstances. Unfortunately this is both difficult for some people, and antithetical to the modern trend of urban minimalism.

I believe that the panic buying is primarily a leadership problem. Especially in Europe, the governments have, for the past decades but even more so in the past 5 years, retreated and said "we can't do anything anyhow, so you'll just have to deal with it". People have learned and do whatever they have to to protect themselves, because the society at large is falling apart and losing cohesion. If you have no leadership, you can't expect people to behave orderly.

The US population is historically suspicious of the government and it's ability to get things done, so individuality is much more pronounced there.

Secondly, I think the government, media and experts just haven't thought their communication strategy through. They've told people "you might need to get isolated in your home for a few weeks, and remember to wash your hands a lot". What, besides stocking up on food, soap/sanitizer and toilet paper, would you expect them to do in response?

>> What, besides stocking up on food, soap/sanitizer and toilet paper, would you expect them to do in response?

I would have hoped people would keep in mind that staying home for a few weeks doesn't necessitate buying all that much more than a lot of families do in a "big shop". Take toilet paper as an example. The amount of it that's being bought by most people will last them 6-12 months. I know there's a lot of factors pushing people to make these decisions but it's certainly altered my generally optimistic/positive view of people as a whole.

I've seen some pictures of people walking out with mountains of toilet paper as well, but I don't think that was the norm. It's not three guys making off with a truckload, it's a lot of people buying and extra package or two, enough for the next six weeks which will quickly deplete the aisles, since stores are operating without storage space (because storage is expensive, and stored goods are dead capital), so they have no reserves.

Also, from my personal experience, it's a distribution problem. There is enough toilet paper, but it's sold out at some stores while others have more than enough. Can't level that out though, because margins are thin and the companies would lose money.

It necessitates that all of those families buy twice as much this month so that they're prepared to spend a few weeks staying home starting the day before they would have gone shopping again. It also necessitates that I (a single person living alone who normally goes grocery shopping every other day or so) buy way more than I ordinarily would. Most people are not out there buying truckloads of TP. Everyone buying twice as much TP (and everything else) as usual is more than enough to create shortages.

Some places have introduced rationing to control this behaviour: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51790375 , https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3047493/china-v...

And from earlier times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdo...

I agree. These people are not just selfish, they're idiots - I've seen purchases of years worth of toilet paper. My local shop had empty shelves for about a week but now has stacks on the floor as well as full shelves. The sanitiser stocks will soon arrive too - cash in on the nutters.

Free markets do not promote ideal behavior. Morals do!

Just soap and water far more effective due to fatty structure of viruses. Not an expert I'm sure someone else can provide more detail.

Agreed, the only reason I was after the hand sanitiser was that it would be useful the use when I get off public transport + am not going somewhere I can easily wash my hands with soap and water.

Re: down votes. HN isn't a forum for people to disagree and discuss.

It's a hive mind where dissenters are punished via down votes for hurt feelings.

Regarding people being selfish... There is nothing selfish about self preservation. The problem is we have a negative view on "price gouging" which is just economic triage.

There wouldn't be a run on toilet paper if it cost 10x the normal price. It costs you nothing to stock up, so people do.

>> Regarding people being selfish... There is nothing selfish about self preservation.

No, but purchasing much more of an item that you are ever likely going to need (at the cost of everyone who isn't doing that) is selfish. Stock up on enough essentials to get you through a self-quarantine period (2-3 weeks). Don't buy enough to last the next 12 months because a) it's completely unnecessary and b) you're preventing other people stocking up enough to cover a self-quarantine period.

And you are the arbitor of how much of something a person needs?

Two people at a grocery store, both with an entire shopping cart full of dried pasta. One has twelve mouths to feed at home, the other lives alone.

How do you police that or distinguish who is selfish?