Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do?

Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by _bxg1 on Saturday March 14, 2020 @11:04AM (#22575778)

There are different degrees. Some people are buying months and months' worth of things. Some people are buying an entire store's supply of toilet paper and the like in hopes of profiteering. It's insane and selfish. It prevents reasonable people from getting their 2 weeks' worth of stuff.

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Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by happytoexplain on Saturday March 14, 2020 @11:10AM (#22575829)

While it's true the over-preppers hurt everybody, I think you're overestimating how many of them there are and how directly they caused the dearth. Grocery stores simply aren't prepared for everybody buying even just two weeks of food at once.

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Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by _bxg1 on Saturday March 14, 2020 @12:38PM (#22576569)

I don't think I'm overestimating. It's all anecdotal, but I'm hearing things from friends, seeing lots of instances on social media. The NYT just covered one of them: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-pu...

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Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by true_religion on Saturday March 14, 2020 @01:00PM (#22576736)

That guy isn’t an overprepper. He tried to buy a monopoly on the product so he could price gouge.

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Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by _bxg1 on Saturday March 14, 2020 @02:00PM (#22577194)

The distinction isn't relevant to the discussion at hand

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Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by true_religion on Saturday March 14, 2020 @05:00PM (#22578648)

Well it works of is, as people like him are committing illegal acts so it’s already heavily discouraged and supplies may be seized.

Over prepping though isn’t illegal, so many more people could do it.

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Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by ryandrake on Saturday March 14, 2020 @11:56AM (#22576202)

I must be out of the loop, but why exactly are people so focused on toilet paper? The virus doesn’t cause you to go to the bathroom any more than you’d normally do in a three week time period. It seems odd to focus on this one thing.

Last trip to the grocery store I saw people carrying out 3 year supplies of TP but the stock of fever reducing medication was all untouched.

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Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by derekp7 on Saturday March 14, 2020 @01:01PM (#22576744)

Facebook rumor that TP comes from China, and that the shipments were being blocked. In reality, the stuff come from Wisconsin and we have plenty of pulp.

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Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by distances on Saturday March 14, 2020 @05:41PM (#22578938)

Are you serious about this? Surely nobody assumes all toilet paper is imported from China?

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Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by emsign on Saturday March 14, 2020 @04:51PM (#22578568)

I thought the same thing and it must be that when you have a family, you can go through tp pretty quickly. Roughly four times as fast for two adults and two kids, and twice as fast if you live with your partner, compared to just living alone.

All the stuff people buy, most of it isn't for them alone.

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Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by emsign on Saturday March 14, 2020 @11:08AM (#22575804)

I think in those cases the store owners should be responsible to not let that happen. They are basically doing 99% of their customers a disservice.

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Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by _bxg1 on Saturday March 14, 2020 @11:33AM (#22575985)

They should, but they have no real incentive to beyond civic duty.

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Re:Ask HN: People are panic buying. What to do? by foogazi on Saturday March 14, 2020 @12:05PM (#22576288)

They have the incentive of keeping customers happy

If 1 customer is allowed to buy all the TP then that means the rest of the customers will not be happy

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