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May 7, 2024 0:38:22 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2021 14:18:09 GMT
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Post by hookturnian on Jul 19, 2021 14:20:49 GMT
Food shortages are now being reported in the UK , due to staff shortage in supermarkets through covid isolation,some of it is Brexit related too. A couple of articles cover the food disruption below. This week, we have had to order online from 2 different supermarkets in our area this week. We didn’t receive loo roll, kitchen roll, milk and squash. For next weeks shop , it is already saying that the cheese we normally have is out of stock too. When things got bad last year , there was one week we only got 5 items , despite ordering 80 ish things. I said to my husband how are we supposed to live on bin bags and toilet cleaner, no food items arrived. We were late additions to the vulnerable list , only notified earlier this year, having been mistakenly missed off. So we were isolating ourselves without any support. Our normal online Sainsbury’s account which we had been using for years would not accept continued custom from people not on the vulnerable list. So we had to order from wholesalers , the other side of the country to get giant bags of pasta. We managed to get tinned vegetables abroad from France , and vacuum packed bags of food from Scotland . Getting supermarket deliveries ( from any supermarkets ) was like hens teeth . We had to portion food and ration for many weeks / months. www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/25/uk-facing-summer-of-food-shortages-due-to-lack-of-lorry-driversmetro.co.uk/2021/07/17/uk-facing-food-shortages-as-pingdemic-causes-staff-absences-14943703/Grim times ,especially when I compare to other countries and how they have handled things. Do you have a South Asian grocer near you? You might be able to buy bulk quantities of cupboard staples there.
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Post by hookturnian on Jul 19, 2021 14:24:38 GMT
British Peas, what was the hospital situation like last year this time?
I must admit I'm watching your cases and hospitalisation rates with some trepidation. We might have to make similar decisions during our summer, but I'm not sure we will have as much of the population fully vaccinated.😬
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May 7, 2024 0:38:22 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2021 14:36:23 GMT
@ktc I hope you are able to get what you need! Last year we really learned the value of keeping a stock of our favorite food items on hand, before that we had been shopping weekly and our list of staples was pretty short. But when the peas warned us we (too) slowly purchased some food items in the weeks proceeding the panic and that saved us. Fortunately, we always stocked items like TP and paper towels, soaps, cleaners, etc. We now have an extra, fully stocked, freezer in the garage and a full pantry, whereas before you could play football in there and have excess room I can't speak for lettuce as she lives in a different part of the country to me. I think gillyp lives in that region too. I haven't experienced any food shortages in my part of the country as yet and haven't heard anyone say they have. There's a prediction - just a prediction, that there might be, later in the summer if thing continue as they are. The prediction is based on a shortage of truck drivers, which was a problem well before all this and the test and trace app. With such a high number of infections more people are going to get pinged as having come into contact with an infected person and need to isolate. This is turn has a detrimental affect on a company's work force as so many people have to isolate for the required 10 days. The PM has a press conference this later this afternoon and from leaked reports or so the media says he is going to address this, for the NHS at least. They have already been piloting a scheme where if someone has had a double vaccine then they can do a test each day so they are safe to go to work if their test is negative so avoiding the need to isolate because of contact. The scheme was due to be implemented for all in middle of August after the pilot had enough data I assume to move it forward. You obviously have to isolate if it's positive for the required time.
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Deleted
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May 7, 2024 0:38:22 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2021 15:41:37 GMT
British Peas, what was the hospital situation like last year this time? I must admit I'm watching your cases and hospitalisation rates with some trepidation. We might have to make similar decisions during our summer, but I'm not sure we will have as much of the population fully vaccinated.😬 This time last year we had started to come out of it and hospital admissions and deaths had dropped dramatically and things were starting to get back to normal then bam the UK ( Kent) variant arrived. Christmas easing of some restrictions increased the numbers substantially and the vaccine had only been in use a few weeks for the older members of the population. Numbers started to come down as more and more of the population were vaccinated, then the Delta arrived. Fortunately, the vaccine has saved thousands of lives since the delta arrived. Most infections were and still are in the unvaccinated. In the same way as the hospitalisations and deaths are predominantly in the unvaccinated as things are at the moment. Yes, it's true that there is a younger age group being admitted to hospital with the delta but most of them are unvaccinated with a handful that have previous medical conditions. and some have had 2 jabs but the number are very small. But it's well known that the Delta hits a younger cohort. Hospitalisations are increasing but not at the rate comparable to the number of infections we have. That is purely because of the number vaccinated. The number of infections found does have a bearing on the number of test we carry out about 1.5 million tests a day of this about 500/600,000 are PCR tests. Over the last 7 days infections stand at 376.1 per million population. Deaths within 28 days of a covid positive test stands at 0.3. per million Hospital admissions up until yesterday stood at 4094 patients with 573 of them on ventilators for the whole of the UK. As a comparison the peak in January of this year following Christmas with only a limited number of vaccinated people, the 7 day average for deaths was 1265. The seven day average for last week was 35 deaths. On one day alone last January 4579 people were admitted to hospital whereas on July 9th it was only 549. 87.0% of the adult population have had their first jab and 68.3% are now fully vaccinated. If all goes to plan the whole of the adult population that have chosen to be vaccinated will all be fully vaccinated come the end of September. Unfortunately if people choose not to be vaccinated the numbers will still be high. There is never a right time to open up to some sort of " normal" as this virus isn't going anywhere and the only way out of serious illness and deaths and some resemblance of normal life is the vaccine. I never like to comment on other countries policies as I don't believe we have done everything right either but in all honesty Australia has been pre warned of how this virus works and they should have had all their eggs in a row ready to vaccinate the population before if started to take hold. Prevention is always better than a cure. It hit the UK before the vaccine was manufactured so in some respects we've been chasing our tails very quickly. I don't always agree with a lot of what Boris has done but I will give him credit together with everyone else involved that he wasted no time at the very beginning of this pandemic in getting his orders and manufacturing in place.
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Deleted
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May 7, 2024 0:38:22 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2021 20:17:31 GMT
. hookturnian Thank you so much for the suggestion of an asian shop, I really appreciate it. I live in a fairly rural area and unfortunately there are not any nearby . I think a very useful website to track patterns and numbers is the Office of National Statistics. Here is a link to their covid page. I think the info starts from last year and is ongoing. It covers all sorts of things from infection rates and sadly the numbers of people who don’t make it. Although it is government based they have been fairly transparent and put out figures that contradict the spin. For instance they calculate excess deaths (sadly) rather than limited time cut off figures that were quoted from other govt ministers which gave a false impression of fewer fatalities. www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseasesI think with problem with covid hospital admissions here is that there is a huge backlog of people needing care for other conditions. Routine things have at least an 18 month backlog and even cancer surgery and treatment has been cancelled this week alone. Life saving procedures for conditions other than covid have been axed recently in some areas as well. Here are a couple of useful twitter accounts as well. Dr Nisreen Alwan is a professor of public health epidemiologist in the UK She doesn’t hold back on government mistakes and tells it how it is. The other useful one is called INDEPENDENT SAGE It is a group of scientists who have formed together to counter misleading information sometimes given from the official govt group called SAGE who make covid decisions on public health. There is also an official public inquiry due in the future to investigate the government’s response to the pandemic. publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmpubadm/995/99502.htm
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