Anxiety in the Time of COVID-19: Toilet Paper Edition
A few days ago, I noticed the back-up stack of toilet paper was low. I paused, thinking about the urgency to go buy more toilet paper. I have never been one to let anything run out, and I tend to buy double of things I use often anyway.
But these are not ordinary times, and in one of the oddest twists of irrational panicking, many people across the U.S. have begun hoarding toilet paper in response to the possible COVID-19 pandemic.
A toilet paper panic seems to have happened first in Japan, also fearing COVID-19, but in that case, the toilet paper mania was spurred by fake news that Japan depended on toilet paper from China.
As a life-long resident of the Upstate of South Carolina, I am well-versed in irrational grocery store panicking; if the weather forecast even hints at cold rain, much less snow, ice, and sleet, the bread and milk shelves are almost instantly barren. I am still not certain why the Southern brain is wired to hoard bread and milk in case we have frozen precipitation (which almost never disrupts travel for more than a day or two any way).
No one seems to understand the toilet paper panic over COVID-19 in the U.S. either, but this is quite a real thing.
So I have been more than once lately temporarily paralyzed over taking normal and even rational measures that balance my normal life with preparing for CONTINUE READING: Anxiety in the Time of COVID-19: Toilet Paper Edition – radical eyes for equity