NSTworld: 'So we go buy something that is cheap to buy, that we can store, and we know at the back of our minds that we are going to use anyway.' covid19 panicbuying ToiletPaperPanic toiletpapercrisis Coronavirus
What exactly is it about the rolls of tissue that has caused mayhem across cultures, including at times violent clashes that have reverberated on social media?
"I think it probably stuck out in the dramatic images in social media because it was quite clear, the packets are quite distinctive and it's become associated in the minds of people as a symbol of safety," Steven Taylor, author of"The Psychology of Pandemics" told AFP. "And so I think this is one reason they latched on to the toilet paper, because it's a means of avoiding disgust."Economists have also suggested people may be trying to eliminate one risk that is relatively easy and superficial, rather than doing something more costly that may reduce their risk a greater amount."My guess is we want to feel in control and have limited budgets," said Farasat Bokhari, a health economist at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain.
According to Taylor, many of the behaviors we see now also occurred in previous pandemics, including the Spanish flu in 1918, which killed almost 700,000 Americans and sent panicked citizens to stores and pharmacies to hoard goods. "That's enabled the reverberations of dramatic images and videos throughout the world, inflating people's sense of threat and urgency," said Taylor.
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