What toilet paper panic-buying suggests about personal value change during pandemics.
While it isn't necessarily the greatest puzzle of 2020, one of the strangest must be the global panic buying of toilet paper during the coronavirus pandemic. While the mass purchase of toilet paper, rehydration sachets and bottled water would make sense during a cholera pandemic; it flew in the face of reason for something largely understood as a respiratory infection. I remember grimacing at the peculiarity of offering someone a couple of rolls as a thank you for some second hand toys donated to my three and four year old children during the early days of lockdown. It was walking through the empty aisles of our local Sainsburys, in a slightly vain attempt to get supplies, that I realised a connection that made psychological sense. When people are faced with threatening or uncertain life-events, it can often lead to changes in their personal values. You may now sensibly find yourself wondering what on earth personal values have to do with toilet paper... Well, values a...