Coronavirus and toilet paper madness

This is getting ridiculous.  People have completely lost their collective minds in Hong Kong.

After some rumours came out that there were manufacturing issues in China that could impact the production of toilet paper, people in Hong Kong decided to go completely CRAZY.  People descended on the supermarkets and vacuumed up all of the toilet paper they could get their hands on.  Stores were left completely barren of toilet paper....

The rumours are that either the factories making the toilet paper have all been shut down because of China's precautions with regards to the coronavirus, or that these factories have had all their raw materials stripped from them to go to the manufacture of surgical masks.  Whatever the "reason", I don't buy into it.  This seems far more like a fake rumour that has spiralled out of control and led to another case of panic in Hong Kong.  Even if there "was" a shortage, I don't see the need to go and buy several hundred rolls of toilet paper at once.  Some may say that there are people who are taking advantage of the situation and hoarding for the purpose of resale (which is entirely possible), but it's also clear that a significant number of people are just panicking and losing their grip on their good sense.  Why else would you need to buy several hundred rolls of toilet paper in one go?  Looking at some of the volumes purchased, I could only think that such an amount would probably last me more than two years.

A few days before, the shelves had been stripped bare of rice.  That seems to be a slightly more reasonable thing to be worried about... until you consider that most of the rice in Hong Kong seems to come from Thailand these days.

On top of that, it seems like people are all a little bit picky in their desperation.  Even with all the white rice completely gone, it seems as though people would still prefer to starve over eating brown rice....

I've never experienced anything like this before.  This collective hysteria cannot be healthy and I can understand why experts warn that this type of panic can often be more damaging to a society than the actual diseases themselves.