The answer is both curious and hilarious. I just got in from my local grocery where I noticed the toilet paper shelves were empty. Seeing a store employee, I asked him why people were buying so much. He shrugged and said he didn’t know. "Probably plenty in the warehouse." Because of my consulting business, I happened to know that there was at least one Kimberly Clarke plant in the next state over—Wisconsin. They make Scott and Cottonelle toilet paper as well as Kleenex. I’m pretty certain we don’t import any from China. I suspect, instead, that a lot of the Chinese forests have been felled long since, much like the Brits. But with all those nearby Wisconsin forests, I’m sure there’s no shortage for making paper of all sorts.
So why are people hoarding toilet paper? Lo and behold, several were curious about my question and did even more homework.
All kinds of journalists and specialists weighed in on the “problem.”
Australia has also suffered from panic buying of toilet paper despite plentiful domestic supply. A risk expert in the country explained it this way: “Stocking up on toilet paper is … a relatively cheap action, and people like to think that they are ‘doing something’ when they feel at risk.” I didn’t know that, but I’d need a lot of research to believe it.
Brian Cook, University of Melbourne, said that his suspicion is that it is how people react to stress: they want an element of comfort and security. This is an example of “zero risk bias,” in which people prefer to try to eliminate one type of possibly superficial risk entirely rather than do something that would reduce their total risk by a greater amount. Ummm, maybe.
“Fear is contagious,” says Steven Taylor, a professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia and author of the Psychology of Pandemics. “We pick up cues by looking to other people—it’s how stampedes happen in stadiums—so if you’re in a shopping centre and you see some people around you acting in a frightened way and stocking up, that’s going to have a fear contagion effect that causes other people to start over-purchasing.” Really?
Hoarding also makes people feel secure, especially when the world is faced with a novel disease over which all of us have little or no control. However, we can control things like having enough toilet paper in case we are quarantined. Don’t know about that.
One of the longest articles on the subject is, of course, in the New York Times. Among the many paragraphs was this “astute” conclusion: “Unlike some other products, toilet paper is not likely to be used more by Americans who are stricken with respiratory symptoms, even as the coronavirus spreads.” That makes sense.
There are dozens of Google pages with links to the question of why people are hoarding toilet paper. If you want to waste some time, just put in the question: “why are people hoarding toilet paper?”
Beans, beans
I finally succumbed to the disease, but not in the form of toilet paper. It crossed my mind that If at my age (85 years), I decided not to visit my favorite restaurants, I could add plenty calories by cooking up dried beans. So, I picked up three pounds of dried beans—black, white and garbanzo. To cook, I put a half pound wild rice, or beans (again, black, lentil, white, garbanzo, etc.) in my slow cooker, add a bit of oil, onion, maybe carrots (usually plenty in my fridge), even a bit of Italian sausage which I keep in my freezer, and a few spices. When it’s all done cooking and cooled, I put three or four tablespoonfuls in quart refrigerator bags for freezing. Then when I’m hungry, it’s just three minutes in the microwave. A full pound of dried beans fixed as above, will make at least 20 meals.
This will really date me, but do you remember “beans, beans. The more you eat, the more you toot, so eat beans?” Beans, of course, will make toilet paper necessary. Or as my best friend, a very astute psychologist, commented in wry fashion, “Well, with those grocery carts stacked high with toilet paper, you know “who’s full of it!”
I'm giving some thought to a bidet!