Monday 30 March 2018: Shopping day! I knew I had to get the the pharmacy today for rash cream and New World to shop for groceries (ours, parents and their neighbour). Also had to consult our vet over Otto's recurrent ear infection. In addition I thought I would have to go and collect my new work laptop but a manger needed to go through it to check everything was working and I was waiting on her so all in all the day was up in the air. As it was I spent the morning doing housework and ventured into Matamata after lunch. Laptop to be collected tomorrow.
On going to the pharmacy there is a barrier at the entrance. A staff member asks you what you want and if you are sick/been overseas/been with someone who has been overseas. If responses are acceptable you are allowed in, after using hand sanitiser, but cannot take things off the shelves. My pharmacy assistant collected them for me. I had a conversation with a pharmacist and got the cream advised, among other things. The staff are hugely over-worked but remain cheerful and helpful.
Next the supermarket. Same routine as before, security allowing one person in as another leaves. People were good at keeping the required 2m spacing and all was very ordered. I could get everything I wanted, if not the exact brand but some shelves were low on stock. Many staples had stock limits on. I wonder if that is a psychological ploy? I picked up two of something but realising the stock was limited put one back. I'm glad milk did not as I was buying 10 litres! The tills now have perspex screens up.
With the queue time and then shopping my knew was really aching when I got home. Thunder was rolling in the skies above but we managed our 5pm walk with no rain. Just started spitting as we got back to the Jeep. Had a good yarn from the road, which meant we kept a distance well in excess of 2m, with a neighbour who said he lost two hives last winter (we lost one of two).
I have a concern about ventilators! UK news today (I listen to the BBC for most of the day) was dominated by talk of various companies coming on board with ventilator and CPAP device production (amusing listening to presenters getting their heads around something they clearly think of as new but has actually be used for decades in hospital ICUs and high dependancy units). My assumption is that the ventilators planned for mass production will be computerised, all bells and whistles versions of what we currently use. If so I think it would be a mistake. They are complicated beyond belief and require highly specialised operators and repairs. They also will be redundant in 10-15 years time. What happens to them all post-pandemic? No one will have a clue about them when they are pulled out of storage for the next pandemic in God-knows what year. Would it not be better to make lots of really basic, non-computerised ventilators of the type we used when I started my life as an ICU nurse back in the late 1970's? If these went wrong you could usually take the back off and go to work with a few basic tools to repair them. All ventilators after the iron lung use the same principles of ventilation so any ICU nurse worth their salt could operate them with a basic manual. That way, come the next pandemic they could be dusted off and operated again. I also wonder of they would be of use to developing countries when no longer needed by the NHS? Better lots of desperate patients having access to basic ventilators than a few accessing the top-of-the-range types that populate our ICUs currently. I pity the healthcare workers whose job it is to choose who they are.
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