My wife and I have had similar conversations over the past few weeks. And, I'm very concerned about this winter.

The medical industry, as I'm sure you know with family members in the profession, has been struggling with staffing issues for the last 17 months. Now you add on mandates with forced termination, burnout and no big employment pool to find new workers, you are looking at a potential catastrophe. Whether someone is pro vaccination or not is irrelevant in this conversation. If you have individuals willing to give up 10, 15, 20 year careers due to their personal convictions, and no one to replace them, you are creating a much bigger issue. I certainly don't want a family member, friend or myself, to visit a medical facility and be told, "we're sorry, we can't help you, there's not enough staff" or have to rely on someone who is not as competent as the person they replaced.

Not only do we lose the years of experience and knowledge which is not quickly replaceable, but you don't even have new workers ready to take their spot. And, then all those who are still on staff have to work even harder and I'm sure like you start to consider other professions because it's definitely a worker's job market right now and will be into the foreseeable future.

My son was born last summer during the pandemic and, at first our head nurse in delivery was a traveling nurse. Not only was she not competent in the normal operating procedures of the hospital, it was obvious the other nurses did not like her. I was happy we only dealt with her the first night, but I imagine this problem has and only continues to grow worse. I read recently in the state of New York, there was a birthing center that temporarily closed down due staff shortages because too many nurses & doctors had resigned or would not cooperate with the mandates.

And, another personal anecdote, I'm fairly young, but have had two long time doctors retire in the last six months and there was no replacement for either. The first closed down his practice. The second told me, "if they don't find someone to replace me in the next few months, the worst case scenario will be someone will travel in to town a couple of times a month to meet with my old patients". The problem is, he had a full patient load so I don't know how an outside specialist being in town a couple of times a month is going to help. I guess we'll see what happens.

This is only the medical field. You touched on the education field and I've heard very similar things throughout many schools since my wife is also a teacher. No substitutes, burn out, positions remain unfilled and discontentment is growing stronger. I hear all of this and think we're barely hanging on. Then you look at other fields. There are a many in the military who I've read from first hand accounts will be leaving their chosen careers soon due to vaccine mandates.

Look up a map of the number of cargo ships currently waiting to unload in both New York and LA. Apparently it's a four week wait and growing. There's not enough people to unload the ships and not enough to drive the supplies where they need to go. A prominent public official was in Vietnam in mid August and one quote she said caught my attention. "Parents should buy their Christmas presents now!" I thought that was such a weird thing to say especially with so many other things going on in the world at the time. But, now reading about the cargo ship issue, seeing the continuous problem, as you pointed out with school lunches, of items remaining unstocked for weeks/months, Christmas is going to be a doozy.

Not that this should be the thing that wakes the masses up to see what a big problem we have on our hands, but when parents can't buy little Johnny or Suzie their most prized Christmas toys this December, there will be madness on the streets : ). "Hell hath no fury like a scorned parent without Christmas gifts" or maybe that's "Hell hath no fury like a child scorned".

But, you asked for positives. I'm not sure right now. The main thing I look at is the US has always been able to overcome whatever issues we've had in the past. And, I would hope if we have another crisis, whatever it is, that maybe finally we can start coming back together, instead of being so polarized because it obviously isn't working. But, until then, start Christmas shopping now!