The Corona Diaries – Day 361

It’s still gloomy and chilly in Yorkshire. I walked up my hill in an occasional fine misty drizzle. I’m in better spirits this morning. I have already written a couple of pages of my new Sci-fi novel and the ideas are flowing. I’ll be getting down to it more this afternoon.

I did not see much in the way of wildlife on my walk – the birds were starting to sing though. That made me feel that spring is coming. One sad thing was that there were a bunch of feathers that led me to a hedge. I was expecting to find a dead pigeon (our kestrel and kites take a fair share of them) instead I found our resident barn owl. He was on top of the hedge with his breast ravaged. I think he was a bit big for the kestrel. It must have been one of the kites. I’ve not heard of them taking owls but I suppose I don’t see why not. That was sad. He was a magnificent bird.

Back home I’ve been playing Crosby Stills and Nash while I write. It feels good not to be doing the editing! I really enjoy writing but editing is a bit more of a chore.

I’m finding it a bit refreshing to hear people like Ian Hislop finally beginning to say things about the incompetence of our government and their incredible waste of our money. They are so arrogant they now think they can do anything and the electorate will still vote for them.

What the hell has happened to Labour? Why aren’t they ripping into them?

There seems to be a bouyant mood around. The vaccination programme is rolling out well and we’re coming out of lockdown soon. People are seeing the light at the end of a year-long tunnel. They all now seem to think the government is great and has done a brilliant job.

If being amongst the worst in the world for the number of deaths and the worst hit economy is doing a good job then…………………..

New Zealand had a bad day yesterday. They jumped from none to ten new cases!!! That’s terrible. They haven’t had a single death for months though. That’s what I call competence. Their economy hasn’t been devastated like ours. They haven’t had all our lockdown. They dealt with it.

I’m not so sure we are anywhere near out of the woods yet. Our rates of new cases (mirroring that of the USA) are going up slightly – 6,303. yesterday. There’s still a lot of virus out there! It can spread quickly.

As we unlock our unvaccinated become much more vulnerable. There might be a lot of very sorry antivaxxers and a lot of very dead ones!

I still haven’t heard whether there is any data as to whether vaccinated people can still be spreaders. That makes a big difference.

The virus is heading for a third wave over on the continent. Here our death rate is plummetting because the vaccine is protecting the vulnerable. So, to some extent it doesn’t matter if the rate of new cases goes up – as long as the NHS is not overwhelmede and there aren’t lots of deaths.

The antivaxxers choose to take their own risks. More fool them. That’s not a level of risk I’d be willing to take. Political leaders have not done a good job have they? Their silly talk about the AstraZeneca vaccine and playing up the side-effects is playing into the antivaxxer conspiracy theories and are going to cause a lot of unnecessary deaths!!

Fools!!

It is good to hear that the vaccines are more effective against the Brazilian strain than they had thought. That’s reassuring. As soon as I’ve had my second shot I shall certainly feel safe to return to normal.

Stay safe!!