People aren't pooping more than usual and toilet paper production is not lower than usual. There is just an irrational run on toilet paper. There is no crisis.

There may be enough toilet paper somewhere but it's not where people want it: on the shelves.

People aren't rational actors, and by saying "they don't really need toilet paper", you're not solving the issue that is people seeing empty shelves for toilet paper, bread and soap and thinking that the system is failing.

You don't want the public to become nervous, ever. Nervous people make terrible decisions. And for a government to look uncaring/impotent is the way to make the population nervous.

It doesn't really make sense to increase toilet paper production though. There's no long-term increased demand, so the problem will probably sort itself out in a couple of weeks once everybody who has been panic buying already has a stockpile.

The trust damage will be done by then. It's like a stock market crash because of some irrational behavior. Sure, "it'll sort itself out in a few months", but you'll have companies going under, mass layoffs etc by then.

Also, I don't know whether they'd actually need to increase production. According to super market chains, they have more than enough but it's in their storage centers and they have issues/aren't prioritizing getting it into the stores.

Exactly, it's akin to a run on a bank - if all account holders of any bank withdraw all their money at once - NO bank would cope with that. Though a run on toilet paper just hit the supply chain, so you get these bumps. Come mid to end of summer, there will be a surplus of toilet paper due to the run of panic buyers fueling panic buyers all over-stocked.

My personal theory is, that the German entity tasked with procurement has no idea how international commerce works.

I saw a intriguing change in conversations I had over the last couple of days. First it was, like, no need, we got this. Just yesterday I found a call for an offer from the Armed Forces procurement department in my Inbox, while you now find direct contact details for these kind of things online. Not sure what happened, but there sure is a change in how authorities are approaching this.

Where do you have a toilet paper crisis? In north Germany at least shelves are refilled all the time. I’m back from groceries, Edeka, Lidl, and Rewe had all their shelves full.

Friends from Berlin tell me they still have empty shelves, so do the super markets in (western) Hamburg. They get refilled every few days early in the morning and are empty an hour or two later, only to sit empty for another day or two.

It's gotten so bad where I live that Aldi has apparently decided to just give up and use the space for potting soil.

The pasta shelves are re-stocked though, as is bread. Berlin isn't quite there yet.

Cause and effect, it will settle down in week or two and those who overstocked won't be buying more and those who are responsible and now short due to the hoarders of panic are slowly getting back to normal.

But certainly an insight into the culture and humanity of some people. Alas we have a society that seems to always see good responsible people suffer at the hands of the irresponsible.

I believe that the important lesson is that when government steps back, people will resort to ingrained behaviors, and "stock up when a crisis begins" is one of those. The wrong answer to that is to limit the amount anyone can buy, because you're just increasing the crisis-feel. The right answer is to make sure that people calm down, and the easiest way to do that is to demonstrate that the supply of goods is not affected. You do that by adding a fleet of trucks to transport goods to super markets and add a temporary night shift to re-stock shelves. If people see that there is no shortage, they will calm down.

The opposite is happening, you have (local, temporary) shortages and some politician who hasn't bought their own groceries in the last decade says "I assure you, there are no shortages", while everybody sees the empty shelves on a daily basis.

Bit like the ban effect, like many a record seen sales increase down to the aspect that some radio or other avenue deemed to ban the record.

Equally, once many heard news of something was being brought up, the net effect was to drive others into panic and drive them to do the same.

Panic begats panic. So you start to enter into the aspect of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_psychology

I'm in Hamburg, only spaghetti and hand sanitizer are still sometime missing in my neighborhood. During the past 2 weeks you could see some empty shelves depending on the time of the day, but it seemed to be temporary, due to the rapid increase in demand.

But now that people filled their shelves, I guess that store supplies are back to normal.

In America,I’m in Silicon Valley so people have money and space in their relatively large houses to store lots of stuff. Stores did not limit purchases early so there was panic buying early even here. Popular stores like Trader Joe’s and Costco have lines out the door for several hundred feet (they limit the number of people inside and everyone outside is six feet apart) but less popular grocery stores/green grocers do not based on my limited excursions on bike. Now purchases are limited but still some items run out because it takes more time for someone to stock items on shelves versus people just pulling it off.

Makes sense. I didn't consider that people in the US have way more place at home to store food. And I understand that people don't have grocery stores that close to their house/apartment, so they fill the car as much as they can.

Same in UK, least form my experience - was a blip and all those who overstocked now saturated and with that, not an issue - just the run hit supply chain demand and gave the impression of a shortage when it was only a short-term shortage due to panic buyers over-stocking.

But people worried about non-fire safe cladding seemed equally happy to fill their homes with flammable paper - the hypocrisy of madness plays out in many ways.