Well, panic has hit smalltown, USA.
I was at the hardware store this morning and decided to go next door to the grocery store for a virus apocalypse donut. I did a quick walkthrough, and not only was the hand sanitizer still sold out, but now the bleach was too! Half the toilet paper was gone! The beer section was fully stocked, yet there was a beer delivery going on with pallets and pallets of beer. What does this mean?
Of the three other people in the store, two housewife looking ladies were buying panic supplies. One just had the hand basket of various canned goods. The other one had a shopping cart full of canned soup*, beans, and some pasta among other things. Both just had food items as far as I could tell. The third person was a guy loading up on lottery tickets.
*While I have made positive mention of buying canned soup before, it was related to the Hurricane Katrina example, where I was making a point about the demographics who had satellite TV and cell phones, but zero food and water in the house, with the idea that a case of water and a case of soup might set them back $10 out of their $300 cable and phone bills, and get them by for 72 hours. Nothing wrong with soup per se, other than it's pretty low calorie as a meal. I would have been mixing in higher calorie canned goods if I were that lady. In a real SHTF situation, I'd hate to have to function on 300 calories a day.