Yesterday was warm and sunny and today is cold and cloudy. At least we don’t get bored with the weather.
Today I went for a walk with my friend Nick. We watched the new lambs gamboling and feeding. New lambs mean spring to me. We had a look at the old church at Lowthorpe with its medieval Celtic cross and marveled at the pace of change.
For hundreds of years life did not change from one generation to the next. Then a couple of hundred years ago everything went berserk. The rate of change is enormous. The world of my childhood is a historical relic. The games I played are no longer played. The freedom I had is unimaginable.
We had a talk about the church – once the centre of the village – now a dusty old relic hardly surviving and with no congregation to speak of. If it wasn’t for the very old and immigrants all our churches would be empty. People no longer believe.
We had a natter about why that was. Back in the old days you had twelve kids and expected a lot of them to die. Death was ever present. Perhaps religion was just a way of coping? It took us back to Covid!
Back home I did some editing on my Sci-fi book and listened to some Talking Heads.
Out in Coronaland the madness continues. Our clown of a leader does not seem about to learn any lessons. It’s Deja Vu all over again. First we have complacency and inaction followed by panic.
So we watch the new variant take off in India and cause havoc. We ignore it. We keep our borders open so thousands of people come back to the UK with no checks or quarantine.
SURPRISE!! SURPRISE!!! We are suddenly inundated with new cases of Covid Indian flavour. As it is much more virulent it is spreading like wildfire. Then we have a panic at this ‘unexpected’ situation. DOH!!!
So now we are chucking lots of money at it. We are rolling out vaccine to all over eighteens. We are testing like mad and it’s a battle to contain it.
DOOOOOH!!!! Wasn’t this perhaps foreseeable? Shouldn’t we have closed the border from India when this started up??
Is Johnson stupid???
You don’t have to answer that one. I think he was trying to forge a trade deal with India and this is the price!
So now they are talking about not lifting restrictions and further lockdowns.
What a bunch of incompetent twats we have in charge of us? Already the rate of new cases is going up!!
The question is – does it matter?
The good news is that it does not seem to evade the vaccine. We are still safe!! (How much longer is it until a variant evades the vaccine??)
The other thing to consider is that most of the vulnerable have been vaccinated. The young are not greatly at risk. The only people at risk are the antivaxxers. Perhaps they need to lockdown while the rest of us are free? The rate of new infection can go through the roof but if it does not make people really ill it doesn’t matter. We’ll just reach herd immunity quicker!
On the other hand maybe we do need to care about our vulnerable antivaxxers?
One question we can ask is ‘How reliable is the data?’
A lot of Americans are believing the guff about this being a con by big Pharma to make money and that the number of cases are being exaggerated..
Only idiots believe that.
This is a world-wide pandemic. It is affecting all countries and causing chaos. It is true that ‘Big Pharma’ are making a fortune. But why should any country exaggerate the stats? Why should any country want to lockdown. Politicians don’t gain from this. The economy doesn’t gain. There are no votes in it. Just because the pharmaceutical companies are making a killing does not mean it isn’t real.
We’ve all seen the imbecilic leaders like Trump, Bolsonaro, Johnson, Erdogan and Modi who were complacent, in denial and made light of it. Their countries have been devastated. We’ve all see the other leaders like Jacinda Ardern who took it seriously, closed borders and locked down. They have it under control.
In India Modi is trying to cover it up. Shutting down the internet, massaging the stats and trying to make out it isn’t as bad as it is. In Delhi they counted the funeral pyres and compared them to official stats. There were four times as many funeral pyres as appeared in government stats.
If the stats are being massaged I reckon they are trying to make light of it!!
Anyway, I’m off to do some more editing.
Stay Safe!!