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Comment by FPGAhacker | Hacker News Reader

This does seem like a contributing factor, but the TP run started before the mass shift to work from home / self quarantine.

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I read back in mid-late February that Hawaii had shelves empty of toilet paper. It was only a matter of time for that to spread to the mainland. Did no one pay attention to what was happening?

Well, those of us trying to warn people as early as January were met with not only disbelief, but generally ridicule.

This pandemic is a cultural failure. Humans in developed nations have gotten too comfortable and too dependent on their government. No general anticipation of severe disaster. We need to move the pendulum a couple notches back toward individualism, and I think that's going to happen naturally if we're about to experience Great Depression 2.0.

I was buying non-perishable food easily (it all looked fully stocked) for weeks while TP was sold out.

Right, I think the article glances on that the trigger was a panic, but that it’s continued might not be.

However the article mentions bananas as a similar thing that the commercial versions aren’t what people want at stores... it doesn’t explain why toilet paper is one of the only major non-virus related items.

Isopropyl and peroxide are unavailable, but those are obviously virus related.

So if the author is right, why aren’t we seeing of items face the toilet paper shortage, unless the answer is at least partially hording?

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