Posted on 03/13/2020 11:49:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
People are beginning to hoard toilet paper. I went on a normal shopping trip to buy toilet paper last week and could not find any because of all the panic-buying. Social media is full of people storming grocery stores and fighting over two-ply. Hand sanitizer is extremely difficult to find. The Clorox plant up the road from me is running 24 hours to keep up with demands.
But the toilet paper?
The run on toilet paper should be the biggest signal that an economic stimulus plan is not going to work right now. People are being driven by fear, and they are being told to stay out of crowds. People are stocking up on toilet paper because they are convinced they are going to get quarantined or otherwise stuck in their homes.
Giving businesses money, making loans cheap and encouraging people to get out and shop is not going to help. What might actually help is giving people exactly what they expect -- ordering everyone to stay home.
But this presents a way more complicated solution than some want to acknowledge. Shut down schools? And what about the nurses and doctors who have small children. What do we do with those kids?
What about the workers in the restaurant industry who work hourly and won't get paid if there are no customers? If the restaurant can't get revenue, it can't meet payroll. Should the restaurant apply for a loan from the government to pay the workers and possibly risk the financial future of the restaurant? Perhaps. If the restaurant is going to go out of business otherwise, why not try to keep it afloat for some time? But for how long?
Do we make people apply for unemployment in person when we want them not to congregate? Do we start paying people, and, if so, what do we do about the debt and inflation and the value of the currency?
If the government isn't ordering people to essentially shelter in place nationwide, how is this going to contain the virus? If the government does order people to shelter in place, what about the workers who cannot get paid? What about vacation deposits?
These are not easy answers. But they are demanding answers at this point.
What we know about the coronavirus is that it is orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu and highly contagious. What we know is that people are already convinced they are going to be quarantined in their houses and are stockpiling. What we know is that restricting travel will restrict the spread of the virus.
The public is panicked and needs to see serious, grown-up leadership in Washington right now, as well as some bipartisan unity. The public is expecting Draconian efforts and has already baked their expectations into their toilet paper buying habits. The Washington solution seems to be that both sides of the aisle have different, competing economic stimulus plans. They will undoubtedly do both, further driving up spending, the deficit and the debt. I just do not think it will matter right now.
The president can fly Air Force One over major cities and dump freshly printed hundred dollar bills out of the belly of the plane, but if people think they're going to get the coronavirus, they still are not going to take that cash and go shop, eat out or mingle in large crowds. They won't even go to the bank to deposit it. They will, like with the toilet paper, simply stockpile it till the crisis is over.
Before any stimulus can work, the public must trust the health care response. To trust the health care response, President Donald Trump cannot be competing with his own administration's message. The economic fallout is going to grow far worse than the virus unless the Trump administration gets publicly aggressive and gets buy-in from Congress.
Unfortunately for all of us, there is a bipartisan problem in Washington. Both sides have "electionitis," and the only cure is denying the other side any sort of public successes in order to beat them in November. It is not yet known how many Americans will die in the process.
People are acting like morons.
One day people will look back on this, go into their closet, see 10 tons of TP and say “What the hell was I thinking”
AND we bad out some nations that have a low IQ.
I remember Y2K. Thank goodness we followed the experts advise to panic over that one.
yep
“What we know about the coronavirus is that it is orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu...”
OK, Doomer.
Take a quick shower.
Hard to believe that FR has two threads on Toilet paper!!!!!!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3824273/posts
If you put this in perspective, it shows exactly why I’m so down on my fellow Americans.
It’s a pandemic. Diarrhea is not one of the common symptoms. Before stores run out of food, (milk, bread, eggs}, before stores run out of cleaning supplies, before stores run out of hand sanitizer, they run out of toilet paper.
In a crisis, the first thing that many Americans think of is wiping their butt!!!
I really dislike people.
How is this different than normal?
It’s like mothers who only care that their child had on clean underwear if they got into an accident.
It’s INSANE! I went to my local Stop & Shop supermarket and the toilet paper shelves were totally EMPTY.
I went back this morning, and they were still empty. So I spoke to customer service who told me that they get toilet paper deliveries EVERY DAY and they sell out immediately.
So tomorrow I will be there at 7am (opening time) to get some. Hope there will be eome available by that time. I have enough to get me through the next few weeks, but the panic buying now has ME panic buying.
Acting? It is way past that my Friend.
There was a black grandma with her grandson at Walmart. I walked up to her and said, “You know the scariest part of this? Everyone is buying all of the toilet paper, but nobody’s buying any toothpaste.”
She laughed.
I ended up with about six weeks’ worth of toilet paper after last weekend. Not because I was stocking up due to COVID-19, but because one of the supermarket chains had a 50% off sale on the larger bulk packs of a brand I like. This stuff rarely goes on sale, so I grabbed a bunch. -shrug-
No TP or hand sanitizer in the tricounty area (central Ohio). Started yesterday. A friend saw a woman buy $200 Toilet Paper at Home Depot. Cra-cra
Hard to believe that FR has ONLY two threads on Toilet paper!!!!!!
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