(2020-03-06) — Government warnings to avoid touching your face, aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19, the novel Coronavirus, have spurred a run on disposable hands. Looming threats of a federal face-touch ban have drained the nation’s strategic reserves of the single-use sanitary appendages.

Regardless of official caution pronouncements, Americans either won’t or can’t stop touching their faces. Many citizens started stockpiling disposable hands weeks ago. Both Costco and Sam’s Club report near-zero inventories of the most popular brands, with remaining supplies selling at upwards of $700/gross container.

The Federal Bureau of Sanitary Human Appendages reports the nation’s strategic reserves — mountains of lifelike hands stacked to the rafters in an underground depot near Kansas City, Missouri — have been depleted to levels not seen since they were made of tin and sold in oaken casks during the great influenza epidemic of 1918.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control still discourage panic buying and recommend the use of sticks and twigs for the purpose, but caution that the hand-substitutes must be destroyed by burning after each use.