Despite reassurances that most toilet paper is made right here in the United States and there’s no shortage of supply, Clark County shoppers still frequently find store shelves bare of this essential household item during the COVID-19 crisis.
“It’s just like a classic bank run,” said Philip Bond, a professor in the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.
“In a bank run, people try to get their money out before other people do,” Bond said. “People are trying to get toilet paper before other people do.”
Thanks to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., “government has convinced people there will always be money in the bank, so we rarely see bank runs today,” Bond said. “The government hasn’t even tried, but even if it wanted to, it’s not as easy to promise there will always be toilet paper in the shop.”
The panic becomes self-reinforcing, said Thomas Gilbert, a Foster business school associate professor.
“Once the run starts, there is no stopping it,” Gilbert said. “There is no supply problem but once the run has started, because everyone fears someone else will run ahead of them to the store, then they run even more ahead, and then there is no toilet paper.”
This isn’t the first TP panic in the United States.
In December 1973, a congressman from Wisconsin, Harold Froehlich, released a statement warning of a potential pulp shortage that could affect toilet paper production. It ended up in a news brief that might have escaped much notice. But a writer for Johnny Carson incorporated it into the late-night talk show host’s monologue.
“There is an acute shortage of toilet paper in the good old United States,” Carson said on Dec. 19, 1973. “We gotta quit writing on it!”
Carson’s quip set off panic buying of toilet paper that stripped store shelves around the country.
Carson later went on his show to calm the country. “I don’t want to be remembered as the man who created a false toilet paper scare. I just picked up the item from the paper and enlarged it somewhat … there is no shortage,” he said.
As much as President Donald Trump and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee urge people to stop stockpiling and leave goods on store shelves for their neighbors, the loop of panic buying is likely to continue.
“I don’t see how this ends,” Bond said, “until everyone has three months’ stockpile or a producer can credibly say the toilet paper is going to be there.”
