You need toilet rolls: lots of them
POSTED: March 13, 2020
Yesterday the global toilet roll panic reached Helsinki.
Last night’s Finnish newspapers showed supermarkets with completely empty shelves where they used to display toilet paper. Prisma in Itis has none left.
Apparently it all started in Hong Kong, where (among other things) an armed robbery took place to remove all the toilet rolls from a shop. It spread to Australia where two women got arrested for trying to stop other shoppers from taking toilet rolls in a way that turned into a physical fight.
The picture below, from the BBC’s website, shows a supermarket in Australia where the impulse buy industrial amounts of toilet paper of any sort has completely eclipsed the desire to eat and drink.
This allegedly counts as a response to the coronavirus pandemic, but what a response!
No doubt students of network theory have already begun the process of changing their thesis topic since the spread of a senseless and counter-productive meme has started happening all around them.
Why counter-productive? Because if enough people panic buy toilet paper because they fear a shortage then they will themselves cause the shortage they feared.
I love a good panic, me.