Last day in the countdown to an end to the COVID-19 panic.

[Darren]

The article below is based on sales at Walmart. The sales peak for items has changed from disinfectants & cleaning supplies on to toilet paper and has now moved on to hair dye.

Hair dye?

That tells me the panic has greatly diminished since people are now concerned about how they look even though going out and about is still restricted. I've yet to see an apocalyptic movie with groomed people.

People no longer think they'll end as a corpse dumped out front for pickup.

Do you think the panic has receded?

"In recent weeks, Americans' shopping patterns are serving as a reflection of how the coronavirus pandemic continues to evolve and affect daily lives.

"You can definitely see that as people have stayed home, their focus shifted," Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said on the Today Show, Friday.

After stocking up on food and consumable products, shoppers turned to puzzles, games and other timeless forms of entertainment as well as education, he said.

Now, sales are showing that — without the ability to venture to a hair salon — folks are getting shaggy.

"People are starting to need a haircut," McMillon said. "You see more beard trimmers and hair color and things like that. It's interesting to watch the dynamic play out."

Here's a look at how buying patterns have shifted in the last few weeks:

Week 1: Hand sanitizers, soaps and disinfectants

The first wave of heightened shopping showed consumers were buying up various means to protect themselves as the virus spread in the United States — masks, cleaning products and hand sanitizers.

During the week ending March 7, hand sanitizer sales skyrocketed 470% from the year before, according to Nielsen data. Aerosol disinfectant product sales shot up 385%.

Consumers nationwide were behaving as if they were preparing for a major storm.

"We are working to keep our shelves packed with products similar to when a blizzard is being called for and folks know they might be stuck at home," Andrea Karns, vice president of sales and marketing at Karns Foods, a family-owned chain of nine stores in Pennsylvania, told CNN Business in early March.

Week 2: Toilet paper

Then, in a buying binge that flummoxed many and served as an inspiration for Covid-19 memes and calculators, shoppers stockpiled toilet paper.

Panic buying begat even more panic buying, and the run on bathroom tissue sent ripple effects through the supply chain.

"Most mills are 24 hours, 7 days a week operations already. They are running on fixed capacity," Tom Sellars, CEO of Sellars Absorbent Materials in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, told CNN Business last month. "It's not like there's an idle machine that can be cranked up to increase production."

Nielsen reported that bath tissue, facial tissue and paper towel products all saw triple-digit sales increases during the week that ended March 14. That same week, aerosol disinfectant sales spiked 519%, according to Nielsen.

Weeks 3 and 4: Spiral hams and baking yeast

As hunkering down at home transitioned to settling in, Americans turned to baking.

In the weeks ending March 21 and March 28, baking yeast sales grew more than any other consumer packaged goods product, up 647% and 457%, respectively, over the same weeks in 2019. Spiral hams were also popular, with sales spiking 622% and 413%, in that same time period, according to Nielsen.

Flour and yeast makers say there are no supply shortages of their products (plus, there's never really a shortage of yeast). They're just trying to play catch-up much like other manufacturers whose products are suddenly in demand.

"It's going to be a minute for the supply chain to react to so much more demand in such a short amount of time," Sherri Merrill, procurement manager for Bob's Red Mill, told Quartz.

Week 5: Hair clippers and hair dye on the rise

Spiral ham was still king during the week ending April 4, but Nielsen's data also showed that consumers were starting to gravitate toward other products to maintain their manes.

Sales of hair clippers increased 166% and hair coloring products rose 23%, from the same period a year earlier, according to Nielsen.

Americans have become do-it-yourself barbers and stylists as hair salons across the nation have temporarily shuttered to maintain social distancing measures."

https://www.fox5vegas.com/news/us_world ... Pzcu2uoPfc

[Scooter]

The spike in sales of hair clippers and hair dye is clearly a sign of panic. People have no idea how long they will have to wait before they can get to a salon again, and so have resorted to self-help. It's just a different version of toilet paper hoarding.

Ditto sales of yeast. People are worried that they will not be able buy bread to feed their families. How is that not a sign of panic?

[Darren]

It was either the hydroxychloroquine or God that saved this man. Your choice. Say hallelujah?

"Campbell came home on April 1 — four days after he tested positive for the COVID-19 virus."

https://www.register-herald.com/health/ ... f7695.html

[Scooter]

Or, oxygen and other supportive therapy helped his body to heal itself.

False dilemmas are just so much fun to the simpleminded, aren't they?

[Darren]

Epidemiologist: Coronavirus could be ‘exterminated’ if lockdowns were lifted

"Knut Wittkowski, previously the longtime head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University in New York City, said in an interview with the Press and the Public Project that the coronavirus could be “exterminated” if we permitted most people to lead normal lives and sheltered the most vulnerable parts of society until the danger had passed."

https://www.thecollegefix.com/epidemiol ... re-lifted/

[Bicycle Bill]

Epidemiologist: Coronavirus could be ‘exterminated’ if lockdowns were lifted

"Knut Wittkowski, previously the longtime head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University in New York City, said in an interview with the Press and the Public Project that the coronavirus could be “exterminated” if we permitted most people to lead normal lives and sheltered the most vulnerable parts of society until the danger had passed."

https://www.thecollegefix.com/epidemiol ... re-lifted/

From the "masthead" of The College Fix, the webpage where Darren found this latest bit of 'scientific' wisdom:
Original. Student Reported. Your Daily Dose of Right-Minded News and Commentary from Across the Nation
(the italicization of the word "right", by the way, is theirs)
Must be the student newspaper of what used to be Trump University.

-"BB"-

[Darren]

In the past 45 days — as multiple cruise ships had serious COVID-19 outbreaks onboard — the cruise booking site CruiseCompete.com saw a 40% increase in its bookings for 2021 over its 2019 bookings.

A recent report from UBS also found that 76% of the people who had a canceled cruise in 2020 have chosen to accept credit towards a future cruise in 2021 as opposed to 24% who accepted a refund.

https://www.businessinsider.com/cruise- ... rus-2020-4

[Scooter]

Of course, those numbers obscure the fact that many cruise lines were not offering refunds and passengers who cancelled were only offered a choice between a future booking with certain incentives (which would inflate the booking numbers) or a future cruise credit (which would inflate the numbers taking that option).

[Econoline]

OOGA-CHAKA, OOGA-OOGA!

[Darren]

THE OIL PATCH IS GOING BACK TO WORK!

Way to go Mr. President!

Anyone else wondering what the stock market will do tomorrow?

"The world’s top oil producers pulled off a historic deal to cut global petroleum output by nearly a 10th, putting an end to the devastating price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... 1k5UF9ixz8

[Econoline]

[Scooter]

THE OIL PATCH IS GOING BACK TO WORK!

Apparently you missed the not so fine print:

OPEC+ will cut 9.7 million barrels a day -- just below the initial proposal of 10 million. The U.S., Brazil and Canada will contribute another 3.7 million barrels on paper as their production declines.

IOW, this deal factors in the reality that U.S. production will continue to decline.

So much for "going back to work".

[Darren]

THE OIL PATCH IS GOING BACK TO WORK!

Apparently you missed the not so fine print:

OPEC+ will cut 9.7 million barrels a day -- just below the initial proposal of 10 million. The U.S., Brazil and Canada will contribute another 3.7 million barrels on paper as their production declines.

IOW, this deal factors in the reality that U.S. production will continue to decline.

So much for "going back to work".

Like I said. Let's see what Wall Street says tomorrow.

[Scooter]

Wall Street isn't going to create a demand for oil out of thin air.

[Darren]

Wall Street isn't going to create a demand for oil out of thin air.

That's true.

Inventories with China offline will be high for some unknown period of time. China also stockpiled oil before the pandemic.

The issue is finance and bankruptcies of oil patch companies. Banks are facing less risk of defaults if oil prices rise along with the economy improving.

[Scooter]

So the best you are hoping for is staving off even greater production declines than already projected by avoiding bankruptcies, rather than any hope of the oil patch "going back to work".

[Scooter]

Here's someone hoping the country gets back to work soon:

[Darren]

So the best you are hoping for is staving off even greater production declines than already projected by avoiding bankruptcies, rather than any hope of the oil patch "going back to work".

All and I mean ALL in due course as the shutdown parts of the economy come back on line. Besides herd immunity there's herd mentality. Think lemmings into the abyss.

More and more of the negativity will go away this month and most definitely after May 1, 2020.

Believe it or not the network media can't stampede all of the lemmings.

[Scooter]

Care to be specific about what is supposed to happen after May 1? And when, more precisely?

Because "the economy might get back to pre-pandemic levels by 2025" is a scenario that fits your vague prediction as well as any other.

[Scooter]

There Is No Plan for the End of the Coronavirus Crisis

In this context, the complete absence of federal leadership I’ve written about before is especially conspicuous. The White House has offered no meaningful guidance, best-practices advice, or coordinated support to those states and communities around the country living either in fear of the arrival pandemic or in its grip already. Absent a federal policy or public plan, all we have are vague and poorly informed hopes: for a vaccine, which may take a year or more, though tests are already underway (no vaccine for any coronavirus has ever been created, and 18 months would mark the fastest production of any vaccine of any kind in medical history); for treatment (at the moment, we have no drugs proved to help cure the disease, despite the president’s premature endorsement of chloroquinine); for herd immunity (which may take as long to develop as a vaccine); and for seasonality (which could dampen the spread come summer but which most epidemiologists suspect won’t radically alter the trajectory of disease).

So we have no idea how long “this” will last and how it will end. In the meantime, all we have is a daily White House press conference starring a shortsighted, uninformed, and self-contradicting showman of a president, with multiple competing response teams occasionally emerging from the shadows to reveal a basic ignorance about the meaning of federalism. Neither Jared Kushner nor Donald Trump seem to understand what it means for the federal government to act as a backstop, or what the purposes of a federal medical-supply stockpile could be (given the comparatively tiny size of that government), and how few medical supplies could ever be required by its workforce.