COVID first wave 2020

Staff email: 18th March 2020.

Subject: Personal Pandemic preparedness

Dear Colleague 

Our family is a “just in time” household. My wife quizzed me last night about our pandemic preparedness. We are a “just in time” household and having bare supermarket shelves has impacted on us. We don’t have a freezer so buy meat very regularly. Our 10kg bag of rice that lasts some months is now empty. We didn’t pre- empt. 

My logic is that, in time, those people that stocked up won’t have anywhere else to horde their wares and so will not be able to keep on emptying the supermarket shelves and we will get back to normalcy in the near future. I may be wrong of course. How much frozen mince can anyone really store?

Our insurance policy is a couple of pumpkin plants that have taken over the backyard. The calculation is that by the time our cupboard at home is fully empty that the dozen or so pumpkins will have reached maturity. My wife is increasing the productivity of the plants by hand pollinating the female flowers when they blossom. It seems to be working. Rubber bands around the flowers stops them getting filled with water when it rains and retains the pollen. Each pumpkin sits on its own little mat made of cardboard. It is called a risk mitigation strategy. Of course with global warming we may have a prolonged pumpkin season which would be a useful thing at the moment. 

We have harvested our first pumpkin of the season two days ago. A 2.5kg butternut.

The COVID-19 issues are all embracing at work and at home and one day we will look back on it with our own stories. Right now, though, we have a job to keep us and our clients and patients safe and well. That is a big job for us all and I am proud of the AccessHC team. 

Best wishes 

Harry