Nowadays everything is researched from 13 billion year-old-stars to toilet paper shortages.
The Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020 may have begun in Seattle, where the first U.S. case of Covid-19 was reported, and shoppers here promptly emptied shelves. But this rocket reached its apogee in Phoenix, researchers found. (Read story here.)
Nationally, “There was a 11,115 percent increase in online searches for toilet paper during the pandemic,” they report.
But Phoenix quickly became the epicenter of buttwipe panic buying. The story goes into the psychology behind it, which I won’t repeat here.
If our ancient ancestors saw this, they would bemusedly say, “Get a rock.” Which answers the question, “What did people do before toilet paper?”