What happened in the local markets after the corona was evident in Bangladesh (4)

 What happened in the local markets after the corona was evident in Bangladesh

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Dr. Md. Jafar Ullah

Professor

Department of Agronomy

Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Email: jafarullahsau@gmail.com

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Well, in the previous post/section, I attracted you to one food habit of the Chinese saying that ‘Chinese eat varying types of wild lives such as snakes, caterpillars, rabbits, bats, cats, dogs, and some other wild animals which, most of the other nations are not used to’. I did not say it upon disliking their food choice, its of their own. The point arose as there was one well-circulated rumor that eating rabbit or bats caused the virus to enter into the human body and made those humans as coronas host or vector.

We, the subcontinent people, are not above the criticism of having some bad food habit. One is chewing vine’s leaf (betel leaves) for whole the day - colouring our mouth and teeth. When I went to the Loughborough Campus of the ‘University of Nottingham (UK)’ to study my MSc in Agronomy, my Course Director appointed an African student (Agronomy) of the previous course of our Faculty to show me the market place, bus stoppages and some other important places where I can buy things from – I was a new comer in that place. The senior student helped me taking me to many places around the campus and markets nearby. Once upon a time, he asked me, ‘you people use to chew betel leaves, what about you? I told – yes, its our habit, we take it as a stimulatory item, but I do not habituated to it.

Let us now come to the point when corona hit Bangladesh giving sign in some returnee’s body (from abroad) who were mainly from our huge remittance earners. At the initial stage when the corona crisis was badly felt causing panic in Bangladesh, some people were busy to hoarding the food commodities in their houses thinking that those commodities will be in a great deficit in the market soon. Such suspicious thoughts arose in their mind because of their recent knowledge from our local televisions. When corona spread initially in some countries, some health related products ran out rapidly from the super shops of those countries due to the mass purchases by the consumers. Those customers thought of that the corona may stay for a long time and those products will be needed in much amount in their family. In a super shop of a certain country, two customers were seen even quarreling each other centering to buy a bundle of toilet paper - as only that bundle was left in that specific super market, others were sold before in a moment.

In Bangladesh, due to this mass scale buying, the price of some commodities rose to the pick. In the social media, some posts instigated the consumers as well for doing so. In the social media, there were many posts advising people in advance of corona infection saying that some food commodities such as lemon, ginger, garlic, ‘thankuni’ (Indian pennywort) leaves etc. have remedial property to get rid of corona. Such mass-buying resulted in the complete absence of some of those items in the local markets. In addition, some health items such as sanitizer, savlon, sprit, Dettol, toilet papers, facial tissue, alcohol, chlorine powder (bleaching powder), paracetamol and other histamine like drugs were not easily obtainable items in the shops.

In the hardships of the situation following the above mentioned rumours, some consumers even bought their consumable commodities for three months thinking of the consequence of the epidemic corona. They also thought that those commodities will disappear from the market, if corona finally hits Bangladesh and they found logics to buy those in massive scale.

However, after one week, the price of some the consumable commodities reduced – there were few customers, as the customers already purchased those before as their needs. In such list, the grocer items were on first lines.

But, the commodities such as hand sanitizer items, savlons and dattol were totally absent from the markets and due to this reason, individuals and some institutions started teaching how those items could be made at home. Some organizations prepared those in their laboratories themselves and distributed among the people free of costs, although those were in limited scales.

The much circulation in the mass media was also noticed giving instruction or advice to the people to use normal soap for washing hands at half an hour interval or at least five times a day. It was also told to use any detergent for other cleanliness. This was actually a good advice which was much affordable to all sect or classes of people.
(To be contin