Fights, Thefts, Arguments as Toilet Paper Mania Wipes Across Globe

People leave a Costco warehouse with rolls of toilet paper amongst their groceries in Melb
WILLIAM WEST/AFP via Getty Images

Society is seemingly melting down all around us, and there’s a run on toilet paper. Seriously.

Why? Has toilet paper production been cut? No. Are we running out of trees? Nope.

Coronavirus is largely a respiratory ailment. But that hasn’t stopped a collective freakout over the bare necessity of having clean bottoms.

This morning, a man confronted an ABC 13 news crew outside an H-E-B store in Texas. Reporter Miya Shay was in the midst of a report when the man approached and shouted, “It’s your fault that people are freaking out here.”

“You all are the ones that are at fault,” he said.

“Uh, you’re the one here at 6 o’clock in the morning,” a member of the news crew responded.

After dropping several F-bombs, the man called the media crew “the scum of the earth.”

“I don’t even blame the Chinese. I don’t blame them at all. They did everything right. It’s you all that are hyping things up,” he said.

The man’s critique comes as store shelves all over the world are without toilet paper.

The sight is similar to many across America:

In Denmark, the pandemonium had the appearance of a Black Friday sale:

In Canada, a shopper told CTV he was grateful to get his hands on toilet paper and will potentially use it to barter for booze:

“I don’t know that we’re going to make it through this,” he said. “But now that I’ve got my stock of toilet paper, my family will be safe.

“When we go to the barter system, which will be very shortly, in my opinion, I think that my toilet paper is going to be able to be traded for alcohol, which I think is more important,” he added. He didn’t appear to be joking.

In Britain, women came to blows in a grocery store aisle:

“Get off me!” one shrieked. “I just want one package!”

Elsewhere in the U.K., shoppers stripped a pallet bare in just seconds, like piranhas on a cow’s carcass:

Two women argued over a package of toilet paper. Video shows an elderly woman attempted to slap the other:

In Australia, News.com.au posted a time-lapse video of a horde of shoppers descending on the toilet paper aisle:

In Hong Kong, “Knife-wielding thieves” stole 600 rolls from outside a supermarket:

7News reported the thievery came “amid shortages of basic necessities caused by the coronavirus outbreak.”

Perhaps this could all be avoided if we were to just take the advice of singer Sheryl Crow. The Guardian reported in 2007:

The singer made her declaration in an article for the Huffington Post to help promote her Stop Global Warming College Tour, an 11-date tour explaining the perils of global warming to Americans. Accompanied by Laurie David, activist and wife of comedian Larry David, the pair have been criss-crossing the country in a biodiesel-powered bus spreading the word on the bathroom hygiene of the future.

According to Crow’s new strictures, the average person should use “only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required.” Further details were not offered as to the precise nature of these “pesky occasions,” though “we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work,” she insists.

Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @KyleOlson4.

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