Empty Shelves Update

Following up from yesterday, I was at Kroger last night in Fort Wayne and was checking out the situation. The cough and flu medicine was in decent condition, although it seemed to me like the prices were higher than usual but that might just be because I was at Kroger and their prices always suck. Then I stopped by the section where they keep the Lysol....

Some stuff still in stock but a lot of shelves completely sold out. You can see the little white sign with the blue border that explains their restrictions on how much disinfectant you are allowed to buy at a time.

On the other hand, while Lysol is still sold out at Sam's, the Members Mark acetaminophen was back in stock so I ordered some. Just in case. You never know when you might need 1200 acetaminophen pills (and for $10.88, while half of the number of pills under the Tylenol label at Kroger was almost $17).

Keep in mind that while the number of cases and deaths keeps creeping up and the areas impacted spreads slowly, the panic run on supplies is still pretty minimal. If we see a sudden spike in cases, and I think that is quite possible, and it hits the news, the shelves are all going to look like this and not just in cold meds and Lysol. Remus at the latest Woodpile Report links to some stories about panic buying from what he calls "insta-preppers" already impacting availability. One of the links is to Mountain House, one of the big distributors of freeze-dried food, and they are apparently swamped...

My screenshot, around 9 AM 3/5/2020

Freeze-dried food is not really what you need at this point but it speaks to the ramping up of panic buying. Others report that the Mountain House site has been crashing intermittently, as well as reports that Costco is out of stuff like Sam's Club.

Patterns.

This is a good time to evaluate where you are on critical stock. This will likely blow over soon but it is a good practice run for when it happens for real. Don't neglect to look at your ammo. I am not saying I got a box delivered yesterday and another is coming today but I am also not not saying that.