Be warned.
Panic buying, alternatively called fear-based hoarding, has shifted to high gear in Metro Manila, where nearly 12,900,000 people live, with tweets and videos on social media not helping ease the already stretched situation following the spread of Coronavirus Disease (COVID)-19.
Before the weekend, scenes of thick people's lines in front of drugstore chains as well as grocery stores and malls have contributed to the strained scenario in the metropolis, where a community-wide lockdown was announced by President Rodrigo Duterte Thursday night.
Details of the quarantine are frenziedly worked out by the President's tasked men and members of his Cabinet, to protect people against COVID-19.
But even before the President went on nationwide television and radio to announce the lockdown and before he himself underwent the test as a pre-emptive step since he regularly meets up with his Cabinet, the well-heeled and the ordinary people have shifted gear and sprinted to drugstore chains and malls to buy items ranging from toilet paper to sanitizing wipes, disinfectants, canned goods and whatever else which could be good enough to last a family for the quarantine period of two weeks.
The trouble with panic buying is that panic buying begets panic buying.
And there are suggestions, which we find valid, that some are buying much more than what's needed for a fortnight emergency supply, prompting some notoriously undesirable units of society to increase prices of prime commodities and hoard a lot more to hike as well the demand.
But the Presidential prescription Thursday night should provide clear direction to officials tasked to implement the law, which punishes government officials and employees, foreigners and others in hoarding supplies.
Going into buying more supplies excites a feeling of sense of control and thus releases them to think of other things than coronavirus.
There is a law that punishes hoarders. Republic Act 7581 provides protection to consumers by stabilizing the prices of basic necessities and prime commodities, and prescribes measures against undue price increases during emergency situations and like occasions.
The coronavirus situation has exacted, by latest count, at least 52 infections, five patients of whom have since died. And panic buying, turned loose in such emergencies, can lead to genuine shortages regardless of whether the risk of a shortage is real or perceived as a form of what some call self-fulfilling prophecy.
Let's take heed.