Paper Chase

Michigan has only been in total lockdown, except for "essential" businesses, for two weeks now, but the schools, bars, and restaurants were closed about a week before that.  The total lockdown was supposed to last three weeks, but our governor has already asked the state legislature to extend it for another seven weeks.  They have offered her three weeks and, last I heard, they were negotiating.  The closing of schools has already been extended till summer vacation, but it has not yet been decided if the kids are going to have to make up the lost time, in which case there may not even be a summer vacation.

I seem to remember that the panic buying of toilet paper and other consumer products was already in progress before any of the emergency actions were taken, but I thought it was only on television until I saw it with my own eyes about three weeks ago.  The first I heard of it was when Amazon announced they were out of the stuff, and I hadn't even known they sold toilet paper until then.  I figured things would settle down once everybody thought they had enough of everything, and it has except for toilet paper.  At first there was plenty of it in the pipeline, people were just buying it as fast as it arrived in the stores, but the store clerk I talked to about a week ago said that their last shipment contained only one case or TP.  This sounds like the wholesalers are rationing the stuff, but its only anecdotal evidence.  I haven't really scoured the town for it, but I'm going to have to pretty soon.

If the institutional market has (ahem) dried up, I'm sure the manufacturers would have no trouble selling their surplus inventory to the public right off their loading docks.  Our local paper mill did just that a few days before the lockdown was imposed, and they sold out in a matter of hours.  They were supposed to have another public sale a week later but, if they did, our local newspaper didn't report it.  I find it hard to believe that out governor wouldn't consider that an essential business, but then again, she is a Democrat after all.  I heard that the NRA has sued the governor of New York because he refused to put gun shops on the "essentials" list.  They claim that people need their guns more than ever in times like these, so somebody must have a big stockpile of TP they need to guard.