I had a flood at home (water heater) that ruined my TP and paper towel stash. Sigh. I am hearing repeatedly that I need to restock NOW, because there will be major shortages again this fall. And hearing that meat and cleaning products will be in short supply as well. Anyone else hearing this?? Any basis for this??
Where are you hearing these repeated warnings?
I work in the grocery business and I’m not hearing about anticipated shortages in any of that.
Admittedly, we didn’t foresee the first round, either, largely because we’re not psychic and have no special insight into future black swan events..
It’s probably not a bad idea to have a modest supply stock on hand in case of supply line interruptions, but don’t go too crazy about it.
If you are doing this, you’re on TwitFace. People are telling each other they need to horde. And once people start hording there will be a shortage. Not from lack of supply, but from large numbers of people buying, e.g. 6 month’s supply in the space of e.g. 2 weeks. Don’t do that shit.
When you see a press release from a paper company believe it. When you “hear it” on social media, the opposite is far more likely to be the truth.
It should be utter nonsense but, ironically, if enough people believe it, they themselves will make it a reality.
No, I’m not seeing anything like that or have heard anything like that. Why would there be shortages at this point? Think about it. There were reasons why there were shortages before, but those factors are no longer the case.
Only place I’ve heard of that has real potential for shortages this year is China (I assume you don’t live there), and that is mainly due to the massive flooding they have had (along with the CCPs stupid political games with countries like Canada and Australia). Assuming you don’t live there I don’t see any paper shortages in the US this fall, though I’m hearing some disturbing things about how nasty this fall could be from a health perspective. In a briefing we got from the health department as well as first responders EMS folks they are saying it could be very bad indeed in the fall between the ongoing Covid outbreak and the anticipated flu season.
Just yesterday I was in Meijer and the tp aisle was down to bare shelves again. Oh they had some 6-9 packs but no mega packs and they were busy putting Kleenex boxes (facial tissue) in the empty tp shelves. So a shortage was looking imminent to me.
There are very good reasons there could be shortages: first, like LSLGuy says, if people think there will be shortages, then there likely will be shortages. You can take the altruistic approach and refuse to participate in any stocking up, but unless you convince everyone else to do the same, the result is that you will be out of TP (or whatever the hoarding item of choice is this time around).
Second, if more factories are hit with workplace outbreaks, which is very likely as temperatures drop and people spend more time indoors, then there could be disruptions to the supply chain. This was a major reason for the rising price of beef this spring. This problem has not been solved.
Finally, if the U.S. continues to be a hot spot, this could cut down on imports if port traffic is disrupted.
Certainly. Hell, it’s what actually happened not to long ago…it was mainly a shortage due to hording behavior and the way our national logistics was set up prior to the initial lockdown and panic. And it could happen again, I suppose, though I’m not seeing anything indicating people are going back to this panic buying mindset, at least not anywhere I’ve been or read about.
I think that, unlike beef production which seems a very vulnerable industry wrt a potential virus outbreak, that a lot of the manufacturing of things like TP are well automated. Again, sure, you could have an issue with this, or, more critically with the logistic system that distributes this stuff, but I haven’t seen any indication that this is happening.
As to the final point, I don’t think we import most of this sort of thing right now, but even if we did I wouldn’t think it would be a major bar. It would be our exports that would be affected (and are being affected) by countries nervous to trade with us while we continue to have this level of outbreak.
That’s been an on-going problem for months, and a lot of it has to do with people listening too hard to “social media”, convincing them there WILL be a shortage and thus prompting hoarding.
Every time we stock the shelves we get a couple of clowns coming in and trying to buy up three or four carts of JUST toilet paper (or paper towels or whatever). Tell them there is a limit on packages and cue howling.
Also, some of those clowns re-sell that stuff on eBay and the like for an insane markup. Again, prompting/responding to false information.
Thank you for spelling that right. Unlike me! :smack:
I was staring and staring at my post trying to figure out what was wrong.
The problem with Chrome’s / Google’s crowd-sourced spell check is that it doesn’t spell any better than the crowd. It’s irritating that you can add your own custom acceptable words to your local dictionary but AFAIK there’s no way to customize it to NOT accept a particular word it already thinks it knows is correct.
The problem is that it’s a real word. “Hording” is to travel in a large group, i.e. a horde.
In the time of COVID, hoarding is a valid approach (albeit selfish). Hording would be a very bad choice.
People stocking up with their final fed subsidized unemployment check?
As we found out all too well!
I don’t especially expect this to be a problem with toilet paper, but I do expect shortages to pop up, especially for meat, and likely for other things. I am afraid things will get bad after all the kids are sent off to school – which I predict will lead to a large “second wave” of infection.
I also don’t think it’s immoral to lay in supplies. Especially if you do it over time, when commerce is flowing. Hoarding means collecting a bunch of stuff you don’t need and won’t use, preventing others from using it. Keeping your supplies up (of things you WILL use) seems sensible. But of course, if you let your toilet paper supply get flooded, then it went to waste.
(I looked at my stash of paper products and lifted it off the ground, atop waterproof stuff, because it occurred to me that I could have lost it all if the washer flooded. Now it would take 2 feet of water in the basement. I live on a hill. That won’t happen.0
This is America, there wont be any shortages in any necessities . Food, TP, etc.
There is a small shortage of diet soda, due to the fact that most of the artificial sweetener is imported from China.
I’m not worried about shortages of wheat or potatoes – one farmer and his combine can produce vast quantities of those, and do so. I am more worried about meat (meat packing plants are great places for infectious diseases to spread) and to some extent fruit (sanitation for fruit pickers can be horrible, and they often ride to a job site packed together.)
We might need to worry about some shortages.
Our OP with her flooded-out TP stash, ain’t seen nothing.
The recent derecho in Iowa destroyed 10 million acres (43%) of Iowa’s corn and soybean crop.
If we end up with a March like wildfire spread in Oct/Nov, then yes shortages probably will happen.
Honestly, I don’t understand how anyone could think this wasn’t a real possibility.