View from the North 40: Some things quell panic better than others

If you want to know who to blame about this toilet paper hoarding craze in the midst of a pandemic that does not affect your gastrointestinal tract, blame a gang of knife-wielding men in Hong Kong.

The Agence France-Presse reported the theft Feb. 17. Hong Kong, at the time, was experiencing shortages of many household staples, including hand sanitizers and some foods, due to panic-buying in Hong Kong early in February.

I don’t know what fueled the theft of 600 rolls of toilet paper — maybe desperation or maybe entrepreneurial spirit or maybe it was just a crime of opportunity — I like to think, though, that it was planned larceny, but only because I like the image of a group of hardened and desperate criminals sitting around a seedy back room in a sketchy neighborhood of the city orchestrating their toilet paper heist like they were planning a hit on a diamond shipment.

Maybe they called themselves Larry, Moe, Curly, Shemp and Joe to avoid using their real names. That’s my favorite part about the TP heist, even though I made it up myself.

As coronavirus 19 has spread, so has the great toilet paper panic of 2020, prompting NT News of Australia, a newspaper for the Northern Territories to include an entire eight-page section of blank pages in one issue of the paper. Well, not entirely blank. They included lines so people could cut the paper into TP-sized squares.

“Run out of loo paper? The NT News cares,” the front page of the March 5 edition reads. “That’s why we’ve printed an eight-page special liftout inside, complete with handy cut lines, for you to use in an emergency. Get your limited edition one-ply toilet newspaper sheets.”

I think by now we’ve all seen images of shelf after shelf in store after store completely devoid of toilet paper. Maybe you’ve seen the videos of people actually fighting in stores over pack of TP. Maybe you’ve seen these things in person.

It’s mind-boggling, but Apparently there’s a logical explanation for the toilet paper fixation in the face of a crisis.

Economist Jay L. Zagorsky of The Conversation wrote fin a BusinessInsider.com artilcle Thursday that in times of crisis people like to feel like they are doing something to prepare, and buying toilet is a pretty cheap and easy thing to do. It also takes care of a basic biological necessity. Then things snowball. The first panickers buy up the TP, then the next shoppers panic when we don’t see these supplies readily available. It’s all a stampede after that.

I get it. Some primal urge in my brain, triggered by an entire row of empty store shelves, caused me to snatch up the last roll of TP available in the store last week. It was a sort of gut-level panic that I would like to say I got over later, but no. No I did not. Not entirely anyway. Not until I started researching for this column.

It wasn’t any of the news comments from psychologists trying to sooth our fears. It wasn’t the shame of seeing my fellow humans buying heaped carts of TP in blind panic or watching fights break out over the TP. It was the facts — the facts changed my attitude.

Zagorsky reported that the U.S. has TP resources.

Unlike so many other industries that have been outsourced to other countries, the toilet paper industry has stayed in-house.

About 90 percent of U.S.-sold toilet paper is produced in the U.S., he said, and the other 10 percent comes almost entirely from our neighbors Canada and Mexico.

You’re welcome for that good news. Rest easy. No need to have $3,200 worth of TP shipped in like one Australian woman did.

I also have another home-grown, targeted-retail-therapy method to calm my TP-related anxiety.

You might recognize the Hong Kong TP heist story from my column two weeks ago about Japanese bidets, which are toilets that use built in water jets and a blowdryer instead of toilet paper.

I looked bidets up on the internet, and if this TP craze goes on too long I’m just going to hit the “Order Now” button and get a bidet shipped right to me. I’ll be fine. I will be the proud user of the brushless bay car wash for your back side. No toilet paper needed.

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I’ve got this logic thing covered at [email protected] .