Since the delta variant sweeps across Indonesia, more people seem desperate looking for preventive measures. This is where the chain messages from whatsapp containing information on how to prevent or cure covid reaches people including my family.Though information in these messages are often inaccurate, people are still buying the hype. One of its information is this milk brand called "Bear Brand" which is allegedly able to cure and prevent covid-19.
This milk called Bear Brand is a pure milk product from Nestle. This specific milk was mentioned as one of the products that helped in the recovery process of covid-19 patients. So, since then people have been panic buying the milk brand. Even in some places, the sellers are jacking up the price.
Not only Bear Brand, vitamin D is also the other product that people are currently panic buying. Some e-commerce sellers are increasing vitamin D prices to very unreasonable prices. For example, a brand called my well that I normally buy for 20.000IDR now is priced around 80.000IDR in some e-commerce sites. Even when that was the price, people are still buying the product.
These unreasonable behaviors are something that I keep seeing in this pandemic. And there are quite a few explanations on this like this BBC article on Psychology of Panic Buying which the expert argued that it’s the way people cope with fear. There is even a paper examining the psychological causes of panic buying by Kum Fai Yuen Et all which lays out some reasons why people are panic buying during the pandemic. Both examples mentioned that people panic buy to cope with the uncertainty. It can’t be far from the truth since living in covid-19 world, everything constantly changes.
A friend in the past told me that it would always be best to get into the plane last instead of during the rush. In the end, you will still get into the plane minus all the hassle and all the inconvenient pushing with other people. That applies to panic buying as well. In the end, we will still get the product even if it’s from other sources.
Bear brand is actually just 100% sterilized milk and there are other brands offering the same product. So is vitamin D. There’s even the sunlight where you can get vitamin D for FREE. Some foods are also containing vitamin D. So, even if you can’t buy vitamin D right now, there are other sources. Besides what most people don’t really know is that too much of certain vitamins are also harmful even vitamin D which you can find the reason via this Vitamin D Information from NHS. Again, this taught me to always examine information and also be extra skeptical about any information I or my family received these days.