Without a doubt 2020 will be remembered as the year of the virus, the COVID-19 year, the year in which we learned how fragile some of our social systems really are, how thoughtless we’ve been with some of the most common, mundane things…things like toilet paper…which is an item that (in the past at least) was probably taken for granted by the vast majority of us.
We also learned the value of things like hand sanitizer and face masks, and when those things were in short supply, many of us had to resort to homemade substitutes to get by.
We know a lot of people were impacted by these shortages and the necessity of turning to homemade substitutes, but how many is meant by “a lot?”
Since the Clover Report is all about answering questions like this, we set out to find out!
Let’s dive right in.
First off, we asked a group of 500 U.S. adults if they ever had a hard time finding hand sanitizer in 2020.
The vast majority, 80%, said yes, they did have trouble finding hand sanitizer during the year of the virus, while just 20% said they didn’t.
We also wanted to see how many people would know how to make hand sanitizer. So we asked, “If you had to, would you know how to safely make effective hand sanitizer?”
Most people (57%) said that they did not know how to make sanitizer, at least not safely, while 43% said they did.
And what about face masks?
Overall, face masks were a lot easier to come by – only 52% of those polled said that they had had a hard time finding face masks in 2020. Still, that means 48% did have a hard time finding face masks, but no where near the difficulty people experienced with finding hand sanitizer.
On the bright side, most people – 67% – said that, if they had to, they would know how to make an effective face mask (33% said they didn’t).
The table below summarizes our findings. Found this interesting? Want to dive in deeper? Drop us a line and let us know!
