The toilet paper "shortage" was real, too. It wasn't a psy-op even though it wasn't really a shortage at all.
What happened with toilet paper is that supply chains got completely disrupted when people and businesses changed their behavior under COVID-19 restrictions. According to the last report I heard, before the COVID-19 fiasco, 38% of the toilet paper used by the typical American was used outside the home -- i.e., at work, at school, at restaurants, etc.
Once those other places outside the home were shut down, that 62% of the toilet paper supply that had previously been sold at grocery stores and convenience stores suddenly became almost 100%. To this day there are probably wholesale distributors of paper products with mountains of inventory of toilet paper, napkins, etc. -- but they couldn't sell them because the office buildings and retail stores who were their major customers were shut down.
You don't fix supply-chain disruptions like this overnight.
Also a great post. What I can’t figure out is what exactly happened to all the lysol.
I work with people that were hoarding TP. They were buying pallet sized loads for home use. He either had the worst case of diarrhea in recorded history or he lost touch with reality. I would suspect that behavior was not uncommon. Maybe not pallet loads but I did see people at Walmart buying multiple packs of the largest bundle of TP. Once the normal product flow was disrupted, it was difficult to get back to normal.
I can’t imagine what would happen in a real emergency.
AT Costco, they had on sale 5 pound plastic bags of pasta, which presumably had previously gone to restaurants.
I see no obvious reason why commercial-sized rolls of toilet paper could not also be put on sale to consumers. If that was the only size available, people would buy it and cope.
Same with dairy and meat.