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Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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