lianbeng noted many idiots reading this post leh! me too lah!
Those hoarders are not idiots.
They are the product of the govt policy and long reiterated philosophy that:
"you must depend and fend for yourself. You must not be lazy and let others steal your lunch"
These daunting and fearsome words have been repeated ad nauseam.
So these hoarders are the typical people who "fear" and have little confidence in the govt. Rightly or wrongly (you be the judge) they fear that when we hit Code Red there will be little or miserly help from the govt.
Their fear, when Code Orange was announced without any hint or forewarning, in a tense situation where we have the ministers-in-charge making grave (pun intended) statements about the seriousness and unpredictability of how the virus may impact and evolve and severely disrupt the economy caused them to panic. They fear that the govt may just as abruptly raise the warning level to Code Red.
Then the frightening and oft repeated uncompromising "fend for yourself.Dont let others steal your lunch" ingrained into them, will hit them in the guts - if they are unprepared. Hence, they stampeded to the supermarkets.