Toilet Paper People

NYC went on fire on March 15th, 2020. The Ides of March. It was a Sunday, the day the Board of Education declared they would take the mayor to the Supreme Court. Enough was enough. School personnel were sitting in a coronavirus incubator and as educators dropped one by one from the virus, including a pregnant teacher, the announcement of closing the biggest school system in the entire country was finally made. March 15th, the Ides of March. Almost 400 people had been infected and deaths accumulated everyday. We knew about the carnage of the virus in China, shocked by the hundreds of daily deaths in Italy and we heard that we, the residents of New York City, were in the running to be the next epicenter. I suppose as in all things New York, we should have predicted we would take the crown as the winner in this pandemic. But since this isn't a political blog, I must not digress...

I hid my children in their rooms.

People began isolating.

And in the midst of panic, chaos, and visceral fear as New Yorkers began dying, people started hoarding toilet paper.

Coming from the Philippines where I grew up not needing toilet paper to stay sanitized, I was utterly confused. Hoard meats, hoard bread, hoard cleaning supplies, hoard dollar bills and hoard coins, but toilet paper? I thought perhaps my husband and I were in deep, deep denial, as much in denial as those who claimed the virus was the product of the 5G towers. Because in our house, we only had one pack of toilet paper for the month---the same amount we always had before the apocalypse came. Perhaps, something was "off" with us?

At first, I scoffed up this absurd behavior to sheer stupidity. Then, I saw that this toilet paper hoarding was a global pandemic itself. I read articles of people fighting in other countries over, yes, toilet paper. And then I started to wonder about this phenomenon. This unexpected behavioral response to a virus that was closing down schools, crushing the economy and shutting down our airways. To prepare for the armageddon, people clobbered each other for packs and packs of extra toilet paper.

I've been a behavior analyst for a very long time and so, I stepped back for a second and analyzed this strange response. We are creatures of behavior, there's no way around that. And why we behave the way we do follows the same equation: An antecedent is the catalyst for our behavior and what happens right after that behavior will determine if we'll do the same thing again in the future. If the experience right after our response is positive, then we'll repeat that same response the next time we're confronted with the same situation.

But...almost none of us have ever lived through a pandemic like this before so there's technically no data to support that if we engage in toilet paper hoarding, the end of the world won't be so bad. So what in the world has conditioned this response in what I call the "toilet paper people?"

"Crisis," I said to my husband one morning when we were, once again, discussing this phenomenon. "We've never had this pandemic before but we all have been in crisis. And in the past, whatever we engaged in, has conditioned our response to a crisis situation."

I quarantined my children the day covid-19 was declared a pandemic. I was infuriated by people who did not isolate and would not consider the vulnerable who can die from this infection. I was filled with righteous indignation with those who claimed this was a conspiracy theory, a farce, a political stunt. My husband continued to work but I demanded that he jump in the shower, throw his clothes in the laundry and stay away from our children. But...there's a reason why my response was and is so hyper-vigilant. The last time a pandemic took place was a decade ago, with H1N1. And at that time, my daughter was 2. She got sick with the flu. Although I took her to the doctor 3 times in one week, I didn't think her high fevers were such a big deal. At the end of the week, we were in ICU. Five days later she was intubated. Her lungs blew while she was on life support, and then she was transferred to Columbia Presbyterian in the city and placed in a more sophisticated ventilator.

My family lived through a crisis and that crisis taught me that in the future, my response to a potential deathly virus cannot be calm and collective. One careless exposure and my family can end up on a ventilator.

So what about the toilet paper people? Well, the only thing I can think of is in their time of crisis, once upon a time, some tangible item they perhaps never thought were of that much importance, turned out to be a necessity in getting them through that traumatic time. CDC said we needed to clean, so we gathered disinfectants and cleaning supplies. That's to be expected. But the toilet paper people were in search for something more, something no one thought to be that important but may actually be "crucial" for pandemic survival. And I think someone, somewhere, at some point, packed toilet paper in their cart with no other thought than, "My 5 teenage boys are going to go through 10 rolls in 2 days now that they're not wasting school toilet paper. I better go grab 2 packs of these." And the tangible crisis person who has been conditioned to stock up on items in the past, saw that. The need to collect an "unrelated" item to get through a crisis was triggered and they packed their carts as well for reasons outside that unassuming leader with 5 teenage boys. And the hoarding began...and all the other people in the world conditioned to gather things to feel safe in a crisis followed suit. Scared, powerless, repeating a conditioned response to a crisis from the past.

So, you see? They hoarded toilet paper for a reason.

Let's hope that they also wash their hands, sanitize well, and wear masks outside. And, of course, now that shelves are filled with toilet paper again, let's hope they realize that all that hoarding brought nothing but silly memes, hoard-shaming on FB, and vicious glares from the rest of the world. And should a pandemic happen again, the last thing they'll do is go for toilet paper.

Now, those who flocked the liquor store and hoarded over there, however...I'm afraid their response has been reinforced, and they'll probably meet with the toilet paper people there in the future, should we be cursed again with a second pandemic.