V Day minus 1!!
One day and two hours until I get my jab!! Can’t wait! Freedom awaits!
It felt a bit spring-like today as I walked up my hill. The snowdrops were all fully out in clumps between the trees and on the verge. The bluebells and daffodils were all up in their green foliage!
What with the vaccine and plants it feels like the beginning of a wakening. Excellent.
Back home I’ve been doing more of my final run-through and editing while playing the Who really loudly.
Feeling good!
Out there in Coronaland things are getting better in the US and UK. The number of new cases is down – 133,747 in the US and 23,275 in the UK – and the number of hospital cases and deaths are also going down (2641 US deaths and 1200 UK deaths).
That is not the case in Brazil where their fascist nutcase Bolsonaro’s ‘little flu, has another 58,462 cases with 1279 deaths.
The EU has got itself in a bit of a mess. It’s vaccine roll-out is very slow and ponderous. They spent too long trying to get the price down and approving vaccines. Now they’ve dropped down the queue and are getting their knickers in a twist. It reveals one of the problems with the EU that fed into the hands of Brexiteers – it is ponderous and slow to act – something that needs addressing.
The UK is still doing well on rolling out the vaccination programme. We have approved three vaccines. The Pfizer and AstraZeneca are being used now and the Moderna should come in some time in spring.
There are two more vaccines pending approval – both of which have high efficacy 86%+. The Novavax and Janssen. They have been shown to be effective against variants (although it reduces their efficacy).
It would be just my luck to have a Novavax jab in the autumn and someone makes a mistake and injects me with Novichok.
I reckon that they’ll start rolling out a different vaccine in autumn – one that is more effective against th variants. The Brazilan and South African one are both causing concern. The Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs may not be too effective against them. We’ll see.
I think the summer might prove a return to some degree of normality. With the heat and the effects of a good proportion of the population vaccinated the rates should come down significantly enabling us to get back to a more normal lifestyle. It depends if there are too many antivaxxers clogging up the herd immunity. That’d slow things down. When the numbers are low enough our pathetic Track and Trace system might be able to function. W could isolate those with the virus and enable everyone to resume life. If the government finally gets its act together.
Out in the rest of the world things are happening. There are 236 vaccines are various stages of development. Some, like three Chinese vaccines – Sinova, CanSino and Sinopharm, and the Russian vaccine Sputnik V are already being injected into arms. In a short while it seems that there is going to be a surfeit of vaccines!
One worrying thing is that it appears that those vaccinated may still carry the disease although it’s transmission would be greatly reduced. They would be asymptomatic carriers. There will always be people who, for various reasons, are unable to take the vaccine and they would be at risk.
So stay safe – spring is around the corner and, despite the efforts of our clowns-in-charge, things are looking brighter.