Public culture today is replete with excuses for why lockdowns had to happen. Seems like more are being generated by the day and hour.
Fauci last year started claiming that it had to happen because freezer trucks were filling up with bodies. But that doesn’t fit the timeline, as I’ve shown. The freezer trucks appeared after lockdowns because coroners stopped working, funeral homes were closed, cemeteries reduced their hours and hospital staff were afraid to touch dead bodies.
Bodies were stuffed in trucks because there was nowhere else for them to go. This was a result, not a cause of, lockdowns.
Lately I’ve been hearing that we had to lock down because the nation was in a panic as evidenced by the famous toilet paper shortage of the Spring of 2020. It’s not clear how this is supposed to work. How does a toilet paper shortage indicate the presence of a killer disease that can be mitigated by shutting everything down?
The story of the toilet paper shortage is slightly more complicated and cannot be fully debunked by a timing mismatch. We started seeing reports of toilet paper shortages in the first week of March 2020, mostly in Australia where panic was high despite reporting zero cases or deaths. But the news stories also emanate from California, where talk of lockdown was already in the air.
The searches for toilet paper on Google peaked following lockdowns (which were codified in the U.S. on March 16th 2020). It was during this time that people started fleeing their offices in the cities for home-bound safety. For a time in late March and continuing for another month or longer, there was a real shortage of household toilet paper. People ran out and started having to improvise. This certainly increased the level of panic and drove home a sense that something terrible was happening, even though medically significant effects of the virus itself had not yet swept the country in a meaningful way.
Oddly, the supposed shortage overall was entirely an illusion. What actually happened is that the professional class of workers skipped going to the office and instead stayed home. Manufacturers had plenty of paper. The trouble was that it was the wrong kind. It was the rolls available for offices, which are of a different shape and type, rather than rolls for domestic use. The stores faced a sudden increase in demand for one type over another. It took a while for the manufacturers to retool and match supply and demand.
“Because the paper products we use at work and home differ, and because people suddenly began working at home en masse, retail stocks of toilet paper for at-home use quickly vanished,” reported Phys.org. “Companies couldn’t quickly flood stores with more toilet paper because their processes were never designed to respond to surges in demand. Rather, they were designed to be steady, cheap and efficient to make the most of a product with a low profit margin.”
The rather quick alleviation of the seeming shortage is a tribute to the ability of markets to respond to suddenly changed conditions. On March 13th 2020, the New York Times reported that “Walmart said it was adjusting its supply routes to keep up. The company is picking up many high-demand products at factories and shipping them in trucks directly to stores, bypassing regional distribution centres.”
In other words, while it is true that the lack of availability of domestic paper created an atmosphere of brokenness, this was entirely due to the way people were consuming it, which, in turn, was a reflection of new work-at-home habits. It in no way signalled much less triggered a need to lock down. It only suggested that markets need some time to adjust to new habits.
This speaks to a social phenomenon that has been heretofore underappreciated. Did people fear the virus or fear the lockdowns? This is an interesting question. It is usually assumed that people were panicked over getting the virus. Surely there is truth in that. But my personal experience in New York City March 11-12th 2020 – a critical turning point – shows otherwise. I was on the train, in restaurants and bars, and in studios. The primary fear I saw was not of the virus – there were no masks in sight – but of some extreme response by Government. The people on my train were genuinely concerned that the train would be forcibly stopped and we would all be taken to quarantine camps.
The same goes for Google geographic tracking software, which shows dramatic changes in how people were managing their commutes, restaurant reservations and travel plans. They all show people going home to hide. From what were they hiding? The virus? Maybe in part. But they were also fearing the Government’s response. Better to be home and behind locked doors than risk something crazy.
The toilet paper problem did resolve itself as manufactures and retail outlets added dramatically to the production of paper for household use. Meanwhile, many people ended up with huge stashes of toilet paper in their houses that they will be using for years to come.
In no sense was the misalignment between supply and demand for household toilet paper an indication of the need to lock down. It was a response to the fear and reality of lockdown itself, which every pronouncement from media and Government at the time stoked for purposes of getting clicks. The New York Times started this racket on February 27th with its daily podcast, which irresponsibly promoted disease fear, driving hoards of the professional managerial class into fits of frenzy, none of which did a thing to mitigate disease.
This problem affected both parties. The Trump administration itself flipped from downplaying the bug on March 9th to promising a full government response on March 11th.
Whatever the reason – and there are many theories – it had no justification in freezer trucks and toilet paper shortages. Nor does the Trump administration deserve credit for its response, contrary to what National Review just wrote yesterday.
“The President’s actions were often commendable,” wrote Andrew McCarthy. “The ramp-up in protective gear, ventilators and testing capacity was impressive, and done with deference to state sovereignty. The push to develop vaccines in less than a year is nothing short of astonishing. He’ll never get the credit he deserves for it.”
No need to march through every point. You can find a plenitude of articles on Brownstone about each subject. The protective gear came almost entirely from China, restarting the very trade that Trump had tried to inhibit. Ventilators were a killer technology whereas what the sick really needed was genuine care with repurposed and known antivirals. Most of the ventilators ended up being sold off at a steep discount on the free market. The testing capacity was deployed mostly to further panic and certainly did not make anyone well.
As for the vaccine and how “astonishing” it is, it was the Trump administration that granted the makers immunity from damages of which there have been many. In any case, anyone with the most passing understanding of vaccines knows that you cannot use them to end a fast-moving and fast-mutating respiratory infection with an animal reservoir. The Trump administration’s efforts in this regard were an industrial subsidy made possible by the unwarranted panic generated by the response itself.
And what a mess the whole response made, far too much to be cleaned up by all the toilet paper in the world, household or commercial.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, where this article first appeared.
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I think a fair few people were worried personally about the “virus”, others were worried about the impact it might have on the vulnerable and/or health services, and either way were “happy” to have a “lockdown” for a short period, hoping that would as it were “flatten the curve” and enable things to return to normal. My gut feel is that after the first month or so, many fewer people were worried about either of the things I have mentioned but were stuck in some kind of rut where they couldn’t bring themselves to rebel or speak against “lockdowns” for fear of being fined, thought of as granny killers etc. This was helped by the weather and furlough payments.
It is definitely the case that people thought it would be a couple of weeks at home, and many welcomed it as two weeks off work. Few anticipated what lockdowns would become.
The fear itself was amplified from nervousness to panic by the lockdowns themselves.
It was the extreme response of governments that led people to think: my god, if governments around the world are doing this, this disease must be incredibly dangerous.
Also, being locked up and glued to the TV and Internet, people became obsessed and were terrorised by the news and the government that had to justify locking everyone up.
The day before lockdowns, some people were frightened, some people were nervous, most people were just getting on with life. Once lockdown started, that’s when the real fear kicked in.
I never really picked up much of a sense of fear, neither from people out and about nor from colleagues, friends, family and acquaintances. Mainly resignation or a sense that it was all necessary to protect granny. But it’s not a representative sample.
I think a powerful element was the ‘daily body count’ which, as we learned later could have been a number produced by a squirrel running across a calculator pad, but when the MSM was so doom focussed, it set the tone in which the politicians could have a free run without interference from scrutiny. Everything from the opposition benches was all about further, faster, with no actual reference to anything that would improve anything, like Hancocks 100,000 tests per day, and the Turkish PPE Saga. Everything was couched in jeopardy, uncertainty and doubt. A lot of people can see this was all ‘nudged’, but the majority still think it was for real.
Maybe I am projecting my own indifference onto everyone I was in contact with, but I never got the impression that people were that worried.
For me the moment it triggered my concern was the footage of army lorries trundling into Lombardy full of coffins. Deep in my psyche, are the memories of watching Terry Nation’s TV series ‘Survivors’ in 1975, when a (guess what) virus accidentally released by a Chinese Scientist goes on to kill 99.98% of the global population, and the Survivors struggle to survive. I was at an impressionable age, and Lucy Fleming was very pretty.
There was footage of China building gigantic hospitals in two weeks, and like I say the whole message was far from the typical Britishness of ‘Keep calm and carry on’. Covid very quickly lost that initial ‘wtf is this?’, but I do find that many sceptics rewrite their initial reactions and play it all down, as if they never got fooled by any of it, when I suspect many were for a time.
I was getting multiple complaints on a forum I was subscribed to for saying it was all overblown doom mongering when China locked down Wuhan. It was not a popular opinion.
I enjoyed the first two series of Survivors when they were broadcast but missed the third series due to being otherwise occupied in getting to know the future Mrs SoR. Somehow when they released the series on DVD I only bought the first two series which then languished on my shelves until just recently when my daughter bought me a second-hand set of the third series.
I’ve now re-watched the first two series at one episode a week and am just about to start on the third series – so no spoilers please!
It was concerning for a very short time for me, until I did some research. But yes I think there is some truth in what you are saying.
Lucy Fleming, yes.
My initial reaction was that I was immensely glad that the broken tooth which had been giving me hell since February courtesy due to NHS procedures involved when getting an appointment with a private dentist¹ was finally pulled on the very day before government Covimania broke out. By that time, the MSM were already running in full CoviPanic® mode. A final delay for the procedure occurred because the dentist had just come back from a holiday in Italy and took a few days off because he felt unwell. The significance of this should be obvious to anyone who lived through the Horrible Events In Italy™ reporting. Needless to say, I absolutely didn’t care if only to f***ing tooth got pulled.
I admit that I was scared of the virus due to all I had read about it after Covimania had broken out. OTOH, I was aware that Horrible Events In Italy™ was a headline phenomenon with no significance in the real world as this was plainy obvious from the published statistics about COVID. I was scared nevertheless because humans aren’t really rational beings. OTOH, the idea that I could hide in my cupboard from an airborne virus which was likely everywhere around me was obviously ridiculous. Hence, I pulled myself together and decided on “Carry on and chance it” as only realistic option. COVID fear then quickly faded.
¹ I was insisting on oral sedation. This meant I had to get one of those ultra-prohibited benzodiazepin pills. A very special NHS form was needed for private doctors to prescribe these. And the only very special guy authorized to hand out this very special special form had just gone on holiday for a fortnight when I initially contacted a dentist.
Securing a black market supply of pretty much any prohibited common recreational drug had certainly been a lot easier.
You know you’re probably right.
Proof of it that every measure thereafter: confinements, masks, jabs, spacing etc.. had to be forced and coerced.
Without it being forced they would have fallen by the wayside almost immediately.
Perhaps the main fear all along was of the state and its enforcers (and the inner Gestapo officers of many a private citizen who were only to happy to act as unofficial police).
I think so. Look at how most people as soon as they were “allowed” went back to doing things that had been deemed dangerous the week before. I know people are often dim, but if you were really scared you wouldn’t believe the government when they told you it was safe all of a sudden.
Of course many were scared, and some still are.
The threat of a £10,000 fine does focus the mind.
Yeah OK. £10,000 would have been the fine for organising a large event.
I am on first name terms with our chemist (pharmacist as they have poshly been retitled) and as this crime of the century was putting it’s boots on I remember chatting with him in the shop. He had been called to attend some talks about the coming Apocalypse and clearly nothing had got in the way of the doom mongers giving said talks. The chemist had been told that thousands were going to get sick and thousands would end up in hospital and as no treatments were available those becoming too sick “would be sent home to die” – his exact words.
After that fateful March lockdown I became ever vigilant and on daily lookout for the expected funeral motorcades. For some reason they just did not appear. By about the second week I knew something wasn’t right and my hours and hours of Sceptic research began. I was certainly not feared of any “virus” and ignored lockdown, largely carrying on as before where possible.
Those who realised we were being lied to either through instinct or research or both as in my case were never feared of any of the shit show that was unfolding. Fear was the lot of those who couldn’t keep their faces away from the telebox or the crummy newspapers. I well remember the toilet paper fuss but I genuinely couldn’t get my head round it.
The empty streets and town centres were slightly frightening but in a sort of John Wyndham Day of the Triffids’ way. Yes, there was very much a science fiction feel to those early days but fear?
Absolutely NO.
The toilet paper shortage was created by the media.
Early March 2020 there were endless photos of empty shelves in the media, but whenever I went to supermarkets the shelves were filled with toilet paper as normal.
Eventually, of course, the photos of empty shelves induced panic buying.
I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger coming out of our local Aldi carrying an enormous pack of toilet rolls on his shoulder. ‘Hey Arnie! Where did you find those?’, I asked.
‘Aisle B, back’.
I gave you the -1: what an awful joke! But thanks for the laugh!
At this point would it be appropriate to refer me to the DS article about plagiarism?
I saw this one as an edited photograph of The Terminator with the caption added – but I can’t remember where.
Aisle B, back. Groan. I am still laughing!
The toilet paper shortage was created by the media.
Early March 2020 there were endless photos of empty shelves in the media, but whenever I went to supermarkets the shelves were filled with toilet paper as normal.
By that time, they even admitted that they were doing a copycat of a well-known hoax on US 1970s TV where some popular guy had announced an imminent toilet paper shortage for piss taking. People then duly rushed into supermarkets and emptied the shelves and it took over a month for things to get back to normal.
OTOH, it wasn’t solely panic buying. During this period, toilet paper could be sold on E-Bay for much more than its supermarket prices and this caused gangs of gypsies to go to supermarkets to buy everything they could carry for later resale (per-person limits for # of toilet paper packs one may buy are completely useless when a large ‘extended family’ goes shopping as inidividuals). I know this because I’ve observed them in operation a few times.
I won’t be able to survive much past the zombie apocalypse once the tinned and packaged food runs out, due to non-existent hunting skills ( too emotionally attached to kill small furries too, though I could perhaps clobber a fish if my life depended on it ), but mostly I don’t think I’d survive long once the loo roll all runs out. There is no way I’m going full-on primal ( or even medieval, tbh ) with my toilet hygiene.
Just putting that out there.. But when you stop and think about it, people must’ve really stank for most of human history. There’s a lot to be grateful for nowadays and I for one am extremely grateful for the personal hygiene revolution.
But how did our ancestors live in a world without these basic products…? I mean, women didn’t even have tampons but nor did they have Vanish!!
More to the point, could you clobber a zombie? This is important as we wouldn’t want them to be well-fed. I imagine there’s a distinct lack of nutritional value in most other people’s brains.
All-purpose cloth and running water will do, although that’s somewhat uncomfortable. And many people do still really stink nowadays. We’re all just routinely drilled into ignoring our sense of smell. For some reason, this has stopped working for me about twenty years ago.
It was the accusations of selfish food hoarding that got my goat. You could be quarantined for a fortnight with zero notice or planning, and they tried to say it was wrong to keep a stock of food in the house? Were parents supposed to starve their children for a fortnight?
A distant relative couple (actually, in-laws of a cousin) really went to town over the lockdown. They’re considerably older than me and, I guess, frail. He had a boiler suit which he would wear to go to the supermarket for shopping; he would take it off and keep it hanging in the garage. He would wash the products he bought with a disinfectant solution and keep most of it in a fridge in the garage. This went on for months until they could get supermarket home deliveries – and the washing of products and storing in the garage went on for a year or more.
Some people were definitely scared of the bug.