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Panic buying stupidity

The empty vegetable aisle in Sainsbury’s which illustrated your report of panic buying (SA, March 20) was replicated when I went to Waitrose this morning. Several other product aisles were also almost empty. It appears panic buying has now extended to fresh food, much of which, I suspect, will end up being thrown away because it will go off before it can be eaten.

This is much more serious than the often reported hoarding of toilet rolls. Lack of fresh food, especially fruit and vegetables, will cause further health problems if some people are unable to get any.

The coronavirus crisis will be with us for a very long time. I hope the thoughtless and selfish people who are panic buying will change their behaviour. If they do not the government may need to force them to do so by reintroducing food rationing, last seen during and after the Second World War.

Peter Gallagher, Folkestone Road, Swindon

Donate sanitisers

Ok people of Swindon and surrounding areas.

Your help is needed for the smaller care/residential homes. Lots of them have had problems due to people stockpiling, so cannot get the normal shopping and antibacterial items that they use every day. Do you know a care worker that you can donate things like handwash, sprays wipes too?

If so please pass them on to keep your family, friends and relatives safe. Us support staff are doing our best to try and buy the items but our working hours have not been the best for shopping for them. Thank you if you can help.

Tracey Ettwell, Support worker

A lesson in isolation

I am a widow and despite spending my life wining and dining, travelling, renovating properties and undertaking voluntary work, I still come home and rise in the morning to no one. I spend life in isolation with no one.

Isolation is now the order of the day but many fortunate folk will luckily do isolation with someone. I have to say that knowing that everyone is enduring isolation at present makes me feel a tiny bit better - only because unusually, I am almost in the same boat as everyone else.

When this emergency is over, may I ask folk who have experienced isolation, to please show some consideration for those of us who will be obliged, by an unwanted quirk of life, to continue to do life this way.

Mrs Louise Hill, Old Vicarage Lane, South Marston

Don’t carry on as usual

Is Bill Williams for real? He says in his letters he will carry on as usual (SA, March 18 and March 23).

I assume these letters were written before Boris’s latest directive about staying at home, and I would hope now he has modified his view.

If he carries on as usual he could be spreading infection and making the NHS task harder.

Has he not listened to all the publicity and realised the danger of the situation?

None of us want to be confined to home.

But the government would not put such measures in place if they did not believe they were imperative to our safety.

If we follow the guidelines given about who and when to go out we will not be carrying on as usual but adapting our behaviour to address this very worrying situation.

With his imagination, as expressed in his letters, I’m sure he will be able to think of ways to keep occupied without watching TV repeats and not all ladies want to go to bingo anyway, me included.

I will agree with him though, we will succeed in the end.

Ruth Cooper, Shakespeare Road, Royal Wootton Bassett