He adds that frozen dinners and snacks can also be the most expensive grocery items, in terms of unit price. While their allure is strong for a time-crunched population with a hectic work schedule, now, when that same population is buying in bulk to stock up for the possibility of weeks at home, the price point becomes a negative and the convenience becomes less relevant. In a way, it feels like a certain class of people remembering what food really is, can, and should be when they’re freed from the constraints of a 9-to-5 life.

“There’s going to be no rush hour during any of this,” says Small. “For city-dwellers that’s obviously a huge reduction in business, in general, but even for people who drive, the traffic patterns are massively shifting.”

As our housebound hours and days all blend together, Small says the sudden absence of rush hour and the relative dissolution of weekends should provide stores a respite from customer swell and a chance to restock. Importantly, this will also allow shoppers to spread out and avoid joining health-hazardous crowds.

Parasecoli notes that the way big-box grocery stores are set up cuts consumers off from truly understanding where their food comes from, making it harder to trust that there’s plenty more food coming to refill those empty shelves. It’s part of what fuels the panic-buying spiral that Small mentioned. But Parasecoli is confident that the empty shelves are largely a reflection of the way that supermarkets rotate stock, which is to say: They don’t keep months worth of food in the back at all times.

Even if the strength of the supply chain isn’t a major concern at the moment, the long-term arc of human behavior might be. Parasecoli, who lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, recalls that grocery stores looked similar leading up to and in the weeks after Hurricane Sandy, but says the particular contours and outlook for this pandemic is unprecedented.

“When there was Hurricane Sandy in New York, at a certain point food was running out because there were no trucks coming in. At that point, people started freaking out, but that crisis lasted like one week,” he says. “This kind of crisis, I don’t know, do we have a precedent that can tell us how people will behave after two weeks, a month, two months?”

Small is more optimistic that we will learn to adapt, but, crucially, only if we can catch a small break from the ever-changing outlooks for our collective short-term future.

“It is the case that we’re all going to somewhat adapt to this if it goes on for a long time, but there’s so much uncertainty, it’s hard to predict what will happen with people’s behavior,” she says. “But if we can maintain a steady state of life for a few weeks, I think people … will not be as extremely anxious.”

And what better sign that our collective anxiety is lessening than a fully stocked supermarket?

