Dude if this was unthinkable to you a week ago you have bigger problems then sitting there instilling fear into people who really don't need it right now.  There's no food shortages, the shelves are being restocked nightly, there's no toilet paper shortages either just because a large retailer with hundreds of customers are selling out, toilet paper is plentiful elsewhere.  Maybe in countries where this virus just happened to roll on over them like a bad storm in the night but here in the US they've been preparing for it since Dec.  From what I am seeing is a slow roll out to what they see as panic buying that was going to take place and they took steps to mitigate under those circumstances.  Yes it was kind of deceptive to those who'd be left fleeing to the stores at the last minute but none the less by the time they got there stuff was there, if what they wanted was out they only had to go back the next day to find it or look in another store.  The slow roll out of announcements to what states had seen cases enabled them to send over stock to those area's, once that came to a trickle they'd announce other's states...the government was no fool, they knew what was going to happen, people were going to freak and panic it was just getting them all not to freak and panic at once.  Same with all these test they are lacking....they don't really lack them and I highly doubt anything was wrong with them, it's just if people know everyone has them they'd be running to the doctor/hospital with even so much as a sniffle, for some that's all it would be is a cold but others would have the virus thereby spreading to everyone else.  They had to design a system that kept people from overwhelming hospitals and that process is being implemented now by setting up drive through test sites.  We'll get through this, hopefully with not a lot of lives lost but the fear mongering bottle is full right now, people's nerves are already on edge.

ps:  flour, sugar, salt, yeast and butter were not out in any stores I went to, just because you can't buy  a loaf doesn't mean you can't bake one.