evidence: It’s starting to feel like the beginning of the pandemic again, in more ways than one. The insanely infectious omicron variant is renewing old debates about school closures. Lines for tests are stretching for blocks. The Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert, the NBA’s first public COVID-19 case in 2020, just tested positive last week. And, yet again, supermarket shelves in a lot of places are looking increasingly barren. [...] Grocers have struggled to get their hands on certain items due to similar staffing shortages up the various food supply chains they rely on, forcing them to seek out different brands or to simply leave the shelves empty. For example, Reuters reports that there’s been a spate of infections among inspectors at meat plants, who according to federal law must approve meat products before they are sold commercially. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been trying to send inspectors to staff shortage hot spots, such as Wisconsin, in response. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union has further noted an uptick of infections among meatpacking workers, particularly at plants that have not urged their staffs to get booster shots. And slaughterhouses have been operating at lower capacity due to short-handed crews; on Friday, the number of cattle slaughtered was down 6 percent and the number of pigs slaughtered down 5 percent compared with last year, according to the USDA. Altogether, these supply chain hiccups, inflation, and booming demand may lead to further increases in meat prices.