It's that time again! Time to spin the

[conuly]

WHEEL! OF! SHORTAGES!

What new things have I discovered we have shortages of this week?

And the answers are:

Veterinarians!

Oat milk!

aaaaaaaaaaaand...

Clear recycle bags!

Thanks for playing! Our lucky winners win a pound of butter, if and only if supplies - nope, we're out.

Comments

[siderea]

Veterinarians!

What's going on there?

[conuly]

You know, the sign at the vet did actually go into detail about the cause of the shortages. Lemme see if I can remember...

They definitely did *not* mention the high rate of suicides, which I assume also goes along with a high rate of people leaving the job before they hit that point. That's gotta be part of this, though - I mean, the whole reason there *was* a sign was to remind pet owners that it's no good getting aggressive because of the long wait, the situation is truly out of their control.

I think they focused on the pandemic disrupting the flow of new vets and techs, while also creating an entire influx of new pet owners.

And google mostly backs this up: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/07/not-enough-veterinarians-animals/661497/

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/18/1129717818/why-you-cant-find-a-vet

Come to think of it, I think I saw that Atlantic article before, so I guess I did already know about the vet shortage. I just forgot about it until it affected me!

[siliconshaman]

Hmm.. that's odd... our local pets and PDSA in Leeds also have similar signs up saying the wait times are longer due to a shortage of vets. The PDSA hospital even says how many they're down by. (roughly half)

Seems to be fairly wide spread problem.

[robby]

I don't have a Veterinarian for my pets. I use the pop up clinics and when my dog was really sick in April, I had to take him to an emergency vet in another county.

[conuly]

The vet shortage is apparently especially acute when it comes to emergency vets.

Honestly, if I could've gotten a morning appointment for Finn at our normal vet I would've really pushed harder to wait, it would've almost certainly have been cheaper, but the earliest I could get was, like, 8pm today. That wasn't feasible.

[robby]

I'm glad Finn is feeling better. My Halo was really sick in April, but is doing well now.

[pauamma]

Shopping list storage space.

[conuly]

Whatting what?

[pauamma]

Shortage of storage space to keep shopping lists in.