The Corona Diaries – Day 683

It’s bloody freezing!! The temperature must be minus 700 or thereabout. The house is freezing. Outside is freezing. The electric fire has icicles!!

Why the hell did my ancestors move out of Africa? It can’t surely just be because of the spiders, can it? Some of the hairy house spiders we’ve had in our place probably eat tarantulas for a snack!!

The wood for our woodburner arrived today. I had to go and load it all into the wood store. It snowed on me!! I thought that was ridiculous. It’s much too cold for snow!!

This is absurd. Global warming is messing with the weather. A few days ago it was seventeen degrees!! That’s a drop in temperature of 717 degrees!!

I’ve stayed in reading and drinking coffee. Off to see some friends shortly.

Meanwhile, outside in Coronaland, the proof has emerged that Boris Johnson lied and broke the rules. I know! Must be a shock for everyone. Him of all people!! Shock Horror!!

Here we go – the emails:

Seems that Theresa left the place like a pigstye (you’d have thought that was how all Tories live and Johnson would have been right at home – but no). and Carrie couldn’t bear it. It required  £112,549 to make it liveable! Many people would give anything for  £112,549. It would buy them a house!!

So Johnson knew where the money was coming from, lied about it and promised to give Brownlow the great exhibition he wanted. Quid pro quo. In this case many quid.

We officially have a lying Prime Minister who takes bribes. But that’s alright isn’t it?

I was interested to see that most people thought that all MPs were the same. That actually isn’t true. The vast bulk of the huge earnings from second jobs and lobbying is squarely with the Tories.

The fact is that bribes and favours is the way Johnson runs government. Want a knighthood? Just sign the cheque!

Mind you, there were two things that I might just agree with Johnson on. Firstly that all this antivaxxer conspiracy nonsense is mumbo jumbo (particularly in respect to the fact that 40% of the people critically ill are unvaccinated – and them making up a small percentage of people). Secondly, the idea of rewilding and looking after nature. I’d like to read the small print on that though just to make sure it isn’t a Tory ploy to give sums of our money to rich Tory landowners for doing fuck all.

So, yesterday, there were another 194,747 new cases with 334 more deaths and the epicentre moved to the North West. Only fair to share it around.

Hospital admissions are zooming up with 24 NHS Trusts declaring critical status. (Although a Tory minister said this morning that there is absolutely no problem with the NHS. To say so is a leftie plot. The Tories have ploughed £45 trillion into the NHS only last week and put in place another 4 million doctors and a 100 billion nurses. Likewise with carers. There are now 700 carers for every elderly person in the UK.)

There are currently 50 MPs at home with covid restrictions. But hey, who needs ’em? This government has treated parliament with utter disdain. They do what they like, break laws and rules whenever they like.

I had to laugh when I read that we were lifting all travel restrictions. Well, we would, wouldn’t we? We’ve probably got more covid than anywhere else!! People coming into the country could only make things better!!

Is this a way of blaming jolly foreigners again??? Are we going to carp on about them not allowing us Brits in??

Of course they shouldn’t!! We’re all riddled with Covid!! Brits should carry around bells and shout unclean at the top of their voices.

It’s OK. Everything’s normal!! Carry on!!

Stay safe!!

The Corona Diaries – Day 383

Strange day today – sunshine and snow!! I went to meet up with my daughter and grandchildren for a walk at Goathland out on the Yorkshire Moors. We stopped off at Horcum Hole on the way. A big snow storm had come through. The place looked beautiful. We went for a walk along the old railway line. We started off in snow and ended in sunshine. It was a nice walk and good to meet up!!

I’m beginning to see the end!

Meanwhile, out in Coronaland I thought it would be good to take another oversight of the situation.

CountryNew cases yesterdayDeaths yesterday
USA81,769950
UK3.25651
Brazil93,3173,693
Vietnam150
New Zealand100

As you can see the USA still has a high level of infection and deaths. The UK has a steady number but the death-rate has come right down. It is going berserk in Brazil. Vietnam and New Zealand have very few cases and no deaths.

What can i glean from this?

  1. If you are foolish enough to elect a populist macho fool of a leader (as with Trump, Bolsonaro and Johnson) you are doomed. Their denials, foolish assertion, lies, lack of action and ignorance will result many tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
  2. If you have a good leader who was prepared, took early action and gave good clear instructions you can get on top of the disease (well done Jacinda Ardern and Nguyễn Xuân Phúc). Whereas Trump, Bolsonaro and Johnson didn’t give a fuck, Phuc sorted it out!
  3. Closing the borders early was paramount. Once you let the virus establish it is too late! A lesson our clown still hasn’t got into his head.
  4. Locking down and track and tracing enables you to get on top of it and get back to normal. Another scandalously expensive failure.
  5. The vaccine is breaking the link between the virus and serious illness/death.

It is beginning to look as if the level of vaccination in the UK is close to delivering herd immunity! That would be great. Normality beckons.

My hope is that once we have sorted our herd immunity we can help the rest of the world to get immunised. Only when they are all done will we be safe!!

Hopefully they will boot Bolsonaro out of office and Brazil can get itself sorted. It is a hotbed breeding variants at the moment and Bolsonaro telling people that the vaccine turns them into crocodiles does not help.

Well I’m going back to listening to Larry Williams and doing some rewriting!!

Stay safe where-ever you are and use your vote wisely – it’s life and death!!