In early 2020, the global economy screeched to a halt not seen since the Great Depression. With shutdowns and social distancing and spiraling infection rates, it’s no wonder that there was talk of a possible recession or even a depression.
However, over the past 14 quarters, the U.S. gross domestic product has increased by 40%. This is not a typo, and it’s unprecedented in modern times.
Did you try to purchase a car or major appliance in 2020 or 2021?
As a consequence of the pandemic and, later, the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine that commenced in 2022, global supply chains – which are the complex logistics systems that consist of facilities that convert raw materials into finished goods and distribute them to their final consumers or customers – slowed to a crawl. This caused worldwide shortages and affected consumer buying habits (observant readers will recall my use of the German term “Hamsterkauf” or “hamster buying,” as it is akin to the manner in which the rodents stuff their cheeks with food – generally precedes blizzards and hurricanes but it typically has a finite end point.
In one extreme, there’s the Tennessee man who amassed a collection of over 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer and other personal hygiene supplies.
Indeed, it didn’t take much to start a round of hoarding. In June 2022, amidst rumors of plans to test approximately half of Shanghai’s population for Covid, unleashed a new wave of panic buying.
Toilet paper became such a prominent symbol of the pandemic that, when Austria created a special stamp to commemorate the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, stamp designers brought together two key symbols of the pandemic in the Alpine republic. To commemorate the panic buying the stamp itself is printed on toilet paper.
The stamp also features a baby elephant, the country’s symbol of the social distancing campaign to remind people to keep 1 m (3.3’) apart. One meter is the estimated size of the baby elephant Kibali (who is now closer to 2 m in length,) who resides at Vienna’s Schönbrunn Zoo. In order to help Austrians visualize the recommended one-meter distance, health authorities used the example that it was the length of a baby elephant.
To further help visualize the distance, the stamp also displays an ant, a fly, and mouse, 1 mm, 1 cm, and 1 dm in size respectively, explaining that 1000 mm = 100 cm, 100 cm = 10 dm, and 10 dm = 1 m.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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