How I became a pandemic hoarder

I bought toilet paper today. I don’t need toilet paper, but when I saw that palette piled high with
toilet paper, without thinking, I grabbed two packages and tossed them into my cart.

Why two?

Because the sign said ‘limit two’. If it said ‘limit six’, I would have grabbed six packages of toilet
paper.

There has been no toilet paper in stores for weeks, so the sight of that palette triggered my lizard
brain.

It didn’t matter that I have enough toilet paper at home.

I had a primal need to grab it before someone else did. It might be weeks or months before there’s
toilet paper available for purchase again.

Other items that have ceased to exist thanks to hoarding: hand sanitiser, disinfectant wipes, paper
towels, facial tissues, napkins, packaged salads, canned anything, spaghetti sauce, pasta, oatmeal,
the list goes on and on.

I don’t understand why people in New Jersey are hoarding.

In March, when the hoarding started, the experts assured us that the supply chains were fine.

There was enough for everyone, if everyone would only buy what they needed.

Instead, shoppers descended on the stores like locusts, and cleaned out the shelves.

New Jersey is a bedroom community for Philadelphia and Manhattan – the titans of Wall street live
there – they are very smart, well educated people. They know all about supply chains. They base
their decisions on how to invest hundreds of millions of dollars on things like supply chains.

Additionally, the community I live in along the route 1 corridor is halfway between the cities of New
Brunswick and Princeton. Home of Rutgers University and Princeton University respectively. Again, a
large population of very smart, well-educated people. The ivory tower cohort teaches economics.
Which includes supply chains.

And yet, the titans of Wall Street and the Ivory Tower cohorts seem to have developed a disconnect
between how the concepts that they use in their work lives translate into their personal lives.
Their knowledge of supply chains has become subsumed into a mass hysteria about shortages that
didn’t exist.

Thanks to that hysteria, grocery shopping has become similar to shopping in Soviet Russia.

Long lines of shoppers outside the stores, while inside the stores, there’s nothing to buy.

The shelves are empty.

And it will only get worse.

The coronavirus is now infecting workers at meat packing plants. After struggling for weeks with sick
workers being carted out of factories and into ambulances headed for the emergency room, the
plants are closing down one by one.

The experts are now predicting meat shortages.

Even though we are all supposed to be eating less meat and more plants, I’m predicting a run on
meat very soon.

So I quietly picked up some extra meat today. A few packages of ground beef for meatloaf and
meatballs. Chicken breasts for entrees. My favourite bratwurst. And don’t forget the Italian sausage,
are all now sitting in my freezer in anticipation of the coming weeks of empty meat cases.

I have become the problem.