Trends and general panic

Italians suddenly want to stock up on Amuchina brand hand sanitizer gel and face masks. These immediately became scarce and profiteers were selling the items on Amazon for the cost of gold: little bottles of Amuchina or a single face mask were listed for multiple hundreds of euros. Pure madness. Thank God people are now posting DIY recipes for hand sanitizer so no one has to go without.

Since the day Milan first splashed in the news for Coronavirus cases, every article had a picture of someone wearing a mask while standing around recognizable parts of the city. I personally went into the city multiple times for work, errands, and to donate blood (don't forget to donate!). I used public transportation exclusively. I only saw maybe one in twenty people had a mask. Wondering why so many had them in the photos, I realized, of course: photos of people in the coronavirus hot spot are not as interesting as photos of people with face masks in the coronavirus hot spot. When you only see pictures of people wearing face masks, you end up feeling left out if you don't have one, like how you feel showing up to a Halloween party without a costume. The grab to buy face masks makes me the more angry than other panic buying phenomena because many vulnerable people (immune-depressed, cancer patients, elderly) weren’t able to, and still aren’t able to, get their hands on one because others bought them before they even asked themselves if they really needed one.

Some countries are suddenly dealing with a shortage of toilet paper, not because production stopped, and not because the need increased, only because everyone went out to stock up more than they normally would have, and no one wants to be left out, so everyone tries to stock up all at once. Some people didn't get to buy any at all. Do you feel good about that now, hoarders? You know who you are. We've seen some strange phenomena about the panic reaction. Panic triggers set off irrational trends. Moral of the story: responsible unselfish citizens just buy what they need for now. You are going to be able to buy it again tomorrow and again next week, and again next month, for goodness sake.


Photo credit: https://offertedalweb.io/offerta/amuchina/ , https://notizie.tiscali.it/cronaca/articoli/cornavirus-contagi-salgono/ , sent to us by a friend