I tried to go shopping today just as part of a routine shopping trip for food and such. I was expecting it to be a mad house in there. It wasn't quite as bad as I thought it might be or it could have been, but also it could have been better. It was the first time in my life I was totally unable to buy hand soap. I had to settle for some of the dish soap among the stuff that was left and have to use that instead when I run out of the normal stuff. A few weeks ago I stocked up on some toilet paper and paper towels that I do every so often, and it was a good thing I did. If you were the type of person to only buy a small package of toilet paper every so often and right now just happened to be the time you needed some more you would be totally screwed right now. No place that I know about anywhere close by has it right now. I don't know what you would do.
To be fair to most people around here while they might have wanted to get a little extra for themselves probably on the whole weren't totally stupid, but a smaller amount of people decided to be idiots and go way overboard before the stores were sensible enough to limit the quantities people could buy to reasonable numbers. So if you are where I'm at and just need a little bit of it to wipe your ass... The thing is, there might be some stuff that just can't keep up with demand in the world, but at least in developed nations supplying toilet paper isn't one of them. Baring things getting so bad that factory workers aren't allowed to make the stuff for a very long time, or a quarantine gets so bad people aren't allowed to leave their houses to shop for any reason it's not going to be a bad enough problem for some people to have to buy literally hundreds of rolls of the stuff. There is a difference between being reasonably cautious about a real and legitimately worrisome situation and thinking you need to prepare like a zombie apocalypse is coming. So congratulations to the idiots out there who ruined some guy or kids day where all they wanted to do was take a dumb after work or school when they got home and have a problem now.
Everything else was pretty reasonably available. There was no shortage of things like rice, bread, oatmeal, beans, water, or canned fruits and vegetables. Ehh, lets be honest. Where I live that might be more because peoples ideas of proper emergency food to get you through a potential weeks long emergency is a bunch of chips, pretzels, and Mountain Dew instead of stuff an actual reasonable person would pick up.
I didn't get more than what I normally get going shopping. For one I didn't want to add to the problem of dumb panicky people. For two, I already have a supply of emergency food on hand to last a few months if I need it. I didn't get it because of some worldwide pandemic. I've already had it and have keep enough of things like that on hand all my adult life, just like my dad did when I was a kid even before then, just for situations like this where you don't have to get scatterbrained if some unexpected situation goes down.
