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Comment by _bxg1 | Hacker News Reader

Please don't fear-monger. There is nothing wrong with the supply chains. The shelves you've seen empty in pictures are generally full again the next day.

The problem of people not having money to buy said products is less far-fetched, but still:

- As other here have pointed out, we've seen worse in our history, and nothing like what you describe played out

- We have so much wealth as a country and it's just a problem of figuring out how to get it to the right people. Yes, there are bumbling idiots making decisions and there are selfish bad-actors still trying to pad their pockets every chance they get. But when the rubber meets the road, this is too big for anyone to simply isolate themselves financially. The 1% are having their assets tank too. Our fates are bound. And when our country somehow manages to get everyone on the same side - even for the wrong reasons - we're really good at doing whatever needs to be done to solve the problem.

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Don't over generalize and accuse them of fear mongering when you don't know the situation for the entire country. The grocery store by me has been consistently bare for the past two weeks, low quality pre-packaged food is pretty much all that's been available, and I've had to start making trips to multiple stores to get enough ingredients if I want to eat anything besides canned soup and deli meat. And I don't live in some podunk town, I'm right outside a major city. My wife's family in NC has said that their grocery stores have stayed mostly empty for a few weeks as well.

I generally think the same but locally, our grocery store can't keep items in stock either. Its only gotten worse over the last two weeks. Bread, milk, eggs, meat, paper products, trash bags, cleaning supplies all are either very low or just gone early morning or well into the evening.

Last night I even asked if there was a good time to come and the cashier just said, "there is no good time, the shelves will still be empty".

I wish you were right. I really do, but I'm seeing the supply chains breakdown where I live.

Meat, Eggs, bottled water are disappearing, its hard not to feel a bit panic.

Bottled water running out is especially silly and indicative of the prepper/hoarding mentality going on. Even if food supplies started having problems, society would have to truly, completely collapse before water/electricity started having problems. It's irrational to clear the shelves of water.

Even in your case and the other anecdotes people are mentioning here, I'm not convinced it's a supply-side issue. I would guess that in some areas the supply simply isn't bountiful enough to bear the full weight of the extreme preppers. That's a real problem, to be sure, but it's an artificial one and hopefully once it becomes clear that a true famine isn't on the way those people will calm down and stop putting others in needless danger.

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