I’m not unsympathetic to hoarding food. I’ve done more than my share of it in my time. The current circumstances, of course, are different, but I think the impulse is similar, if not exactly the same: when everything else feels chaotic, dangerous, uncertain, food is one thing that we can control.

I’ve never had a pantry or fridge so full as I did when I was at the height of my illness, when I went grocery shopping twice a day, but barely touched the things I bought, my body and brain compelled to do this even though it made no sense (to say nothing of the fact the pastime was an expensive one that I could not afford). This is a side effect of malnutrition: an irrational desire to surround oneself with the food that the body so needs, regardless of whether or not you might eat it. Just having it there is some kind of comfort. So I’m not unsympathetic, not at all. But this widespread panic buying, the eerily-empty supermarket shelves that is has lead to, these are hard for me to bear.