Science of the Spirit
Now, novel coronavirus panic buyers are snatching up ... toilet paper?
Retailers in the US and Canada have started limiting the number of toilet paper packs customers can buy in one trip. Some supermarkets in the UK are sold out. Grocery stores in Australia have hired security guards to patrol customers.
An Australian newspaper went so far as printing eight extra pages in a recent edition -- emergency toilet paper, the newspaper said, should Aussies run out.
Why? Toilet paper does not offer special protection against the virus. It's not considered a staple of impending emergencies, like milk and bread are.
So why are people buying up rolls more quickly than they can be restocked?
Reason 1
People resort to extremes when they hear conflicting messages
Steven Taylor is a clinical psychologist and author of The Psychology of Pandemics, which takes a historic look at how people behave and respond to pandemics. And compared to past pandemics, the global response to the novel coronavirus has been one of widespread panic.
"On the one hand, [the response is] understandable, but on the other hand it's excessive," Taylor, a professor and clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia, told CNN. "We can prepare without panicking."
The novel coronavirus scares people because it's new, and there's a lot about it that's still unknown. When people hear conflicting messages about the risk it poses and how seriously they should prepare for it, they tend to resort to the extreme, Taylor said.
"When people are told something dangerous is coming, but all you need to do is wash your hands, the action doesn't seem proportionate to the threat," he said. "Special danger needs special precautions."
Reason 2
Some are reacting to the lack of a clear direction from officials
Several countries have already imposed mass quarantines. People buying up toilet paper and other household supplies may be preparing for the same thing in their city, said Baruch Fischhoff, a psychologist and professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy and the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University.
"Unless people have seen ... official promises that everyone will be taken care of, they are left to guess at the probability of needing the extra toilet paper, sooner rather than later," he told CNN. "The fact that there are no official promises might increase those probabilities."
Reason 3
Panic buying begets panic buying
Images of empty shelves and shopping carts piled high with supplies have inundated news reports and social feeds. People see images of panic buyers, assume there's a reason to panic and buy up supplies, too, Taylor said.
"People, being social creatures, we look to each other for cues for what is safe and what is dangerous," he said. "And when you see someone in the store, panic buying, that can cause a fear contagion effect."
All those photos of empty shelves may lead people to believe that they must rush out and grab toilet paper while they still can. And what started as perceived scarcity becomes actual scarcity, Taylor said.
Social media is a huge player in novel coronavirus fear-mongering, Taylor said. Misinformation spreads with ease, and open platforms amplify voices of panic.
Reason 4
It's natural to want to overprepare
There may be some practicality in stocking up, says Frank Farley, a professor at Temple University and former president of the American Psychological Association.
With the CDC and other international health agencies now advising that certain populations should stay home and avoid contact with other people or crowds, it's natural to want to prepare, he said.
"[The novel coronavirus] is engendering a sort of survivalist psychology, where we must live as much as possible at home and thus must 'stock up' on essentials, and that certainly includes toilet paper," he told CNN. "After all, if we run out of [toilet paper], what do we replace it with?"
Supermarkets in Australia are largely selling out of toilet paper due to novel coronavirus fears. An Australian newspaper even printed out eight extra pages in a recent edition to serve as emergency toilet paper.
You'll be spending money on toilet paper at one point or another -- the only extra costs are the hassle of doing it sooner rather than later, contending with long lines and having difficulty finding it, Fischhoff said.
Since they'll eventually use the toilet paper, the analysis is different than if they'd bought something they likely wouldn't use, like a perishable item, he said.
The US Department of Homeland Security advises Americans to keep at least two weeks' worth of food, toiletries and medical supplies on hand anyway, but Taylor said most people don't. So when health officials publicly advise to stock up, they may take it to the extreme.
Reason 5
It allows some to feel a sense of control
The people who are stocking up on supplies are thinking about themselves and their family and what they need to do to prepare, Taylor said -- not healthcare workers, sick people or even regular folks who might run out of toilet paper sometime soon.
"It's all due to this wave of anticipatory anxiety," Taylor said. "People become anxious ahead of the actual infection. They haven't thought about the bigger picture, like what are the consequences of stockpiling toilet paper."
But people only act that way out of fear. Fischhoff said that preparing, even by purchasing toilet paper, returns a sense of control to what seems like a helpless situation.
"Depending on how people estimate the chances of needing the toilet paper, the hassle might be worth it," he said. "If it gave them the feeling that they had done everything that they could, it might free them to think about other things than coronavirus."
Comment: See also:
- Sad: Coronavirus outbreak may have unleashed panic buying of Hostess Twinkies and Ding Dongs
- Media Whipping Covid19 Panic to Unprecedented Heights
- Panic mode on: Dow plunges 1000+ points on mounting fears over coronavirus spreading
- Italy to shutter ALL businesses besides pharmacies & grocery stores as coronavirus outbreak continues to spread
- Trump suspends ALL travel from Europe for 30 days starting Friday as he addresses nation on coronavirus
- The unlikely businesses winning big from the coronavirus chaos
Reader Comments
When they realize that they wont have anything to eat for a week, they may also start wondering why they bought so much loo roll
Another related aspect I've not heard yet is that toilet paper, of all our fundamental personal necessities, most marks us out as civilised and well-ordered.
If we can't take care of our basest, most vulnerable bodily functions in a sanitary way then we are no more than animals. Animals aren't civilised, well-ordered, clean and sanitary, they're chaotic, they inhabit dangerous jungles, scary forests and remote deserts, so the instinctive psyche has it. TP is the icon that marks us out as belonging to an altogether safer terrain and a vastly more predictable environment.
It seems to me that toilet paper is the one fundamental personal sine qua non. (No one really takes the collected works of Shakespeare and Dostoevskii to a deserted island with them - in reality, their #1 choice is toilet paper!) Whilst our environment and our lives are apparently under existential threat all around me, I must get me as much TP as I can to maintain my sense of safety, manageable order and humanity...the more I have, the safer and more human I'll be!
(Of course, in the scrabble to get me enough of this modern day essential I reveal just how close I am to the very bestial and dangerous nature I am desperately seeking to hold at bay.)
THAT IS SURFING!!!!
What a treat, like JACKPOT FOR THE DUDES!! n dudettes of course. Crazy NICE RC!
p.s. where is that avalanche story you commented today... too lazy too go looking.
3/14/20 Sat @9.18.13p
Go to main page, control F(find), type in ‘aval’ and here it is
done 3/14/20 Sat @9.19.12p
Huge avalanche caught on camera in Himachal Pradesh, India
An avalanche was reported in Morang village in tribal district Kinnaur, HimachalPradesh, India, on March 12, 2020. It made a thunderous sound, hearing which locals came out and some of them...They wipe their ass on blades of grass
And care not how it itches!
In days of old,Sorry, but I just can't stand it when someone misquotes Shakespeare.*
when knights were bold,
and toilets weren't invented,
He laid his load
By the side of the road...
And walked away contented.
The psychology behind why toilet paper, of all things, is the latest coronavirus panic buyIts like this, if you are panicking worse than any normal flu season you are an asshole.
The more you panic, the bigger the asshole you are.
Assholes need toilet paper.
Bigger assholes need more.
Nuff said.
"it's the flu, hence your chest cold is viral pneumonia. if you aren't better in ten days come back, if you get worse go to the emergency room." Even if it is something bacterial. They do this to not prescribe too many antibiotics.
Thus the instances of flu are DRASTICALLY over reported. When you consider this while figuring a mortality rate, this makes the normal flu look less serious.
Cases of COVID-19 are being over reported one the one hand based on symptoms presented alone. While on the other hand many people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 barely have any symptoms. People could have it and really not even know it. This has been stated in multiple articles, that many people are having very mild symptom. (Not in the MSM fearmonger reports though).
If cases are being under reported except the HORRIBLE cases where people need or almost need hospitalization or medical intervention this would make COVID-19 look more serious than it is.
Combine these two ideas and you get a GIANT nothing burger people are worrying about. Just my dullard opinion.
People are just mental these days. I dread going to the store in a day or so for our NORMAL supplies for a week or 2.
Friends that work at a Walmart near us showed me pics of empty shelves. Just wtf.... I don;t want to human anymore.
I'm big on isopropyl, vinegar, bleach, cheap basic soap, dish detergent ammonia*, et al.
*Never mix with bleach.
Far from insisting on reasonable purchasing, it was actually bundling 2x 24packs together and flogging this abundance of loo rolls to first-comers at only £15 a bundle. The normal price of a 24pk is £7.50 but no doubt customers, blinded by desperation, saw the bundle as a bargain.
Other supermarkets somehow had plenty of expensive packs of TP and their normally ubiquitous and cheaper own brands were completely absent.
Meanwhile, ASDA and other supermarkets were also busy telling the MSM how responsible they are being in 'rationing' TP and other sanitary products.
*I have the screenshot to prove it.
[Link]
THAT IS SURFING!!!! By the best there ever has been.*
*ELEVEN World Titles; Youngest and Oldest world title winner, etc. etc. (#2 is Mark Richards with FIVE.) Nuff sed.
These women have nothing but shit for brains going by the amount of TP they believe they need, like NOW.
See the sheer idiotic irony in all this...they're prepping for social distancing but would rather get all up close and personal with strangers over a bunch of bog rolls.
This, to me, indicates just how personally threatened people feel. What is the most personal, private thing a person does in the most vulnerable condition? Take a dump and wipe himself. So when people feel vulnerable and want reassurance, so they choose to buy the product that helps them manage a personal and private vulnerability.
Ain't human psychology fun? We're going to get to observe a lot of it!