Risks of Shopping & Government Guidelines

 by John Wilkins

I MUST admit I was a little slow to understand the risks of continuing to shop myself initially because my wife is 77 with underlying health conditions so although I might be fit enough to overcome the infection she would be far, far more susceptible. So either drop shopping at the door for mum or if that is difficult for her, obviously keep the 2 metre gap and wear gloves when handling objects.

 I agree that the message is loud and clear now but appeared contradictory a few weeks ago and that gave some people justification for over shopping, but we have seen sections of the public react like that before. We as a nation are far more self centred as can be seen by people's driving habits, queue jumping (unheard of as queuing was a national pastime once) and living beyond our means. Perhaps our generation benefited from the rationing after WW2 and understand the need to work through difficult times collaboratively. Supermarkets could have done more to restrict people stockpiling at unprecedented levels and the Government were slow to response also. One hopes as they are one of the few beneficiaries from this crisis they will cut back on misleading prices on offers thus ripping customers off who in their haste do not check their bills. 

 On the issue of the Government's response it is probably not the right time to scrutinise it at the moment but it does confirm our fears that our health service, social care, education, police and indeed almost all public services have been so underfunded for a long time and sometimes farmed out to some, not all, incompetent private providers.

 Some statistical evidence published in The Guardian and Daily Mirror on provision of hospital beds, doctors and critical care beds per 100,000 shows the following: Critical care beds 23/29, hospital beds 29/29, doctors 25/26 (only Ireland worse). This shows how unprepared we were prior to the pandemic but also how unbelievably hard our health and care workers have responded with a comparative lack of PPE and testing kits etc. Questions need to be asked of successive governments about not just the amount of spending on public services but HOW it has been spent. I only need to mention the Tory policy of PFI which Blair's Government engaged with so emphatically.

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