Discrimination, feeling undervalued and Long Covid may be part of the picture re: NHS staffing shortages, while Long Covid (affecting around two million in the UK) makes you ineligible to donate, shrinking the pool of donors. Then there's the Covid-cautious population, which is probably higher than the government's official estimate of the clinically vulnerable, who might once have been regular donors but might not want to risk going to a healthcare setting where everyone is now unmasked, given the high likelihood of a hospital-acquired Covid infection and its much higher mortality rate.