The instinct is to blame panic buyers, and panic buying is real. But it explains the first week of empty shelves, not the second and third. Something structural is doing most of the work.

Two industries wearing one name

Commercial toilet paper and consumer toilet paper are effectively separate products made on separate machines from separate pulp, sold through separate distributors. Offices, schools and airports emptied overnight, and all that demand moved into homes, where the other supply chain lives.

A commercial mill cannot simply start producing the soft, four-pack retail rolls people expect. Retooling means new converting lines, new packaging and new contracts, which take months rather than days.

So the shortage is not a shortage of paper. It is a shortage of the specific kind of paper, in the specific packaging, on the specific shelf you happen to be standing in front of.