Your Coronavirus Hysteria Is Unwarranted
Al-Jazeera
In the midst of what has become a global pandemic, panic and fear mongering have presented themselves in the form of binge buying. Consumers across the United States are swarming supermarket giants like Costco and Target for whatever they can find, one of the outliers being toilet paper; but through the haze of empty grocery store shelves, the question of how and why this panic buying is necessary must be raised.
Some cite the sudden urge to splurge on hand sanitizer and hygienic masks to an attempt at maintaining control at a time marked by a lack of control. While this may be the case, it doesn’t serve as validation.
Take Matt Colvin, a self proclaimed “Amazon Merchant” who bought over 17,000 bottles of various hand sanitizers with the intent of price gouging and reselling them online. Though Colvin has come out in recent days after public outcry and has decided to donate all the bottles, his original intentions have not been lost on sharp eyes.
How do some see the words “global crisis” and immediately interpret the event to be worth commodification? This time is not meant to be lucrative in any fashion, but it seems that many individuals are seeing it that way.
While people like Colvin continue to exploit the sudden craving amongst the public for all things hygiene, there are millions of people left in the dark as to how they are to eat, pay bills, and stay healthy for the next few weeks. The sudden lack of necessities at every major supply store is not helping. As those with the means to do so are lugging out packages and packages of toilet paper to their car trunks, the less fortunate must watch from the sidelines and are forced to walk down aisles of empty shelves.
Staying healthy and safe during such a volatile time should be the primary focus right now, and filling up a shopping cart with twenty of the same item is not a requirement. Rather than attempting to capitalize off of the needy by reselling grossly overpriced goods on Amazon, perhaps it’s time to realize that there’s a difference between stocking up and stirring a pot of fear in aisle 9.