This isn’t about toilet paper.

In February, based on advice I was seeing from early alarm raisers, I bought a bunch of canned food and ramen, and other foods with a long shelf life. People were saying that the novel coronavirus would wreak havoc with food distribution and cause shortages. Now I’m starting to hear people saying that all preparation stocking up omg February and March was overreacting, and things didn’t wind up being that bad.

But like when people point at analysis from 2016 and say “polls aren’t trustworthy,” I feel like this isn’t accurate. The issue seems to be that people saying to stock up had too much faith in governors and the president, and didn’t anticipate them forcing meat-packing plants and other supply chains to stay open, to keep bringing people in to get sick, in order to not inconvenience the rest of the country.

We weren’t wrong about the food crisis coming, just about those in power redirecting the harm to vulnerable workers.