Pats at Home have the capacity to open at a different time to support society. If they wanted to.
They could keep a skeleton staff in during the day to look after the animals; allow vets to do only emergency appointments and open to the public for a few hours in the evening to sell pet food. This would also ensure their shelves remained stocked up.
But no, instead they’ll push for ‘educational childcare’ which is not what it is anyway...and in the end that will fail because there are too many children for the amount of available staff.
On your average day, every worker is a key worker. Every single person’s job is important and valuable. From dustbin men to accountants to nurses to shop assistants. Even local authority councillors and politicians have their purposes...though granted are usually a bit more useless than anyone else (joke, don’t be offended).
But in these times we have to be really strict about who can access the childcare, to make the decision of closing schools a viable one. Otherwise, what was the point. Some schools have between 300 and 1000 children attending next week to be babysat. It’s ridiculous. If we’re going allow that to happen, then the schools may as well have stayed open.
Everyone is going to have to sacrifice something right now. People will have to sacrifice how much money they earn. How often they see their loved ones. Holidays. Occasions like weddings and big birthdays. Everyone will be giving something up, to try to save lives. Big businesses need to get on board and start looking at more flexible ways to run their businesses, or we’re going to be up shit creek.