It was a beautiful day today. It is my second birthday in lockdown. Though really this lockdown has almost ended! The sun was shining all day so we met up with friends for a meal in a pub. This was the first time we’ve eaten inside! It felt strange! After that we walked to the coast to see the gannets, razorbills, guillemots and puffins at Bempton. It is a fabulous place. The cliffs are full of amazing birds.
An ideal combination – friends, drinks and meal and nature! All in the sunshine! What could be better??
Well speaking of being better.
Out in Coronaland the ineptitude continues. Today has shown me the degree of the problem. We ate out in a crowded pub – and that’s in a tiny village. Going out to York last week it was easy to see the scale of the problem:
People think the lockdown is over. The streets and pubs were crowded. People were mingling.
There is a new Indian/UK hybrid variant that is much more transmissible. Put that into a crowded pub and you have a recipe for disaster. No wonder it is spreading exponentially. The virus spreads through aerosol droplets. It loves dense crowds indoors.
The hospital cases are going up and the doctors are reporting that nearly all the cases are the unvaccinated. There are millions of unvaccinated people – the young, those who cannot take the vaccine for medical reasons and the antivaxxers! We are at the start of a third wave. It is going to hit the unvaccinated hard. Johnson has set himself a stupid target. He has said that lockdown is effectively over on the 21st June regardless.
What stupidity. Instead of a date as a target he should have set a level of new cases. That level is going up rapidly. We’ve gone from 1730 new cases a day to over 4000! If that trend continues then the unvaccinated are in trouble. If the new variant makes young people very ill, as it appears to, then we are in trouble. There are still too many unvaccinated. They could well overwhelm the NHS.
Johnson, through his own stupidity, has created a problem for himself. He knows his popularity is based on the successful vaccination roll out along with the promise of an end to lockdown. If he goes back on that people will be up in arms. His popularity will dives – especially as he is responsible for allowing the Indian variant into the country. People will start to blame him (like I do) for not bringing in tight border controls and quarantine weeks earlier. People will start asking why we are paying Tory donors £37 billion to provide a T&T that doesn’t work.
It doesn’t take much.
It’s not nice to think that all these decisions are political and not based on health or science.
Fortunately I’m double jabbed. I’m safe. If I hadn’t been jabbed right now I’d be very worried. It’s becoming more dangerous with every passing day.
Get jabbed if you haven’t. Take care. Stay safe!!
I’m hoping my next birthday, if I’m lucky enough to have one, will be out of lockdown an in a virus-free world!!