It's not breakfast without an egg.

Cultural thing, sure.

But the pancakes/waffles/cake/bread of any fluffy sort take eggs to make, and in the morning the best thing to tie your leftovers across the starch is an egg. Fried, poached, what have you.

And sure, there's substitutes. But I didn't grow up with those, and it ain't breakfast without an egg.

Basically tons of baked goods like bread are going up. Breakfast in general is mostly based on eggs here, is it a requirement? Nah, but it is a staple.

People are freaking out over eggs like they did with toilet paper

I'm not vegan, and I agree. I'm the cook in my household, and a dozen eggs feels like it lasts forever. In my experience, they're largely optional outside of baking, which is admittedly probably only because I haven't experimented enough with applesauce/auquafaba/flax/etc. to get consistent results. Sure, some recipes like carbonara or shakshuka need eggs, but by optional I mean you can plan to make something else where they're less essential.

The funny thing is I've only noticed dramatic price increases with shittier quality eggs. My local co-op's prices have held steady throughout the bird flu pandemic, and they sell fairly local cage free dozens for like half the price of the big chain grocery's store brand.

I get that many folks relied on eggs as a cheap protein source that's quick and easy to prepare. I hope people that have poor food security are able to pivot to other cheap proteins like lentils and beans. There's a little learning curve, and they're not as quick, but they're not hard to dress up with aromatics and stock to make a tasty source of protein and fiber.