Sunday 17 May 2020

Normal service to be resumed asap

Everyone is walking around in casual attire. There are no tourists so the locals have taken up their job. Whole families are walking around town as if for the first time, staring into empty shop windows and looking up at the architecture.

You know that feeling you get when you are on holiday in another country and pass a family of fellow countrymen on the street? You exchange a tired, knowing look and wonder if you should start a conversation in your mutual language, just because you can? Well that's what walking through Bath is like every day now.

The daily briefings stopped showing our mortality figures long before we beat Italy in the race to win the mass-death trophy. When asked why he had stopped showing the comparative charts by Keir Starmer at the ghost-town question time the other day, the Prime Minister reverted to Boris mode and mumbled something about comparisons not being helpful. He cannot bluster without a houseful of back-benchers braying behind him, whereas Keir Starmer - an experienced prosecution barrister - excels in a quiet and attentive, sparsely populated chamber. Poor Boris. Covid knocks the stuffing out of you for about a year.

The real reason for leaving out those figures ought to be for reasons of national morale, but I am pretty sure half of it is to do with the government saving face. It is probably a combination of the two.

Today they announced a massive investment in a laboratory in Oxford, dedicated to finding a vaccine, and someone spoilt the news by saying that it was quite possible that they will never find a vaccine and we will have to live with the virus for years, if not forever - or at least until herd immunity has been established by everyone getting it at some point.

I must get myself back into the right frame of mind for the long haul and stop wishing for it all to be over by Christmas. Where have I heard that wish before?

25 comments:

  1. I will be cautious (GB calls it "alert" - meaning when I have a feeling I wear a FSP2 mask, and chic gloves) - but otherwise I decided that I do not want to sit lonely but secure at home, for years - because maybe I do not have that much time on this lovely planet, who knows? - so I want to LIVE the time I still have. Toodlepip!

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    1. It would a shame to die in the pursuit of life though.

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    2. It's a serious dilemma. We sit waiting for it all to go away while life passes us by. Yet if we risk too many adventures it might be the last thing we do. At our age we may not have too many active years left. There's no way of knowing.

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    3. There is also the duty of care that we have to young people. If we have squandered their inheritance, why should they take special care in protecting us by ignoring our vulnerabity? Time will tell, but they might think a bit of weeding is needed in the Garden of Eden.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. There are enough deranged conspiracy theorists around already without you coming out with this disrespectful and insulting shit.

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    2. It was a serious comment. I am not sure where I featured in it. Everybody else can give an opinion it seems but not me.

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  3. Italy haven’t added nursing home deaths, Germany only announce people who have died of Covid-19 & not those who have it but died of something else and Sweden are gradually catching up. They are fourth highest per capita now..... alledgedly to all the above !!!!! The statistics are read depending on people’s politics ! AND, leopard print is beautiful ..... on leopards ( but each to their own ) 🤣 XXXX

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    1. There will be a final tally (if it ever can be final) amongst the countries who decide to cooperate, and there is not many of those. We will never know the truth from places like Russia and China, perhaps even the USA.

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    2. Unless and until we get rid of the Orange Menace, you most certainly won't be getting the full truth from the USA.

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  4. The Common Cold is also a Coronavirus. We don't have a vaccine or cure for that despite having a research project since I don't know when.
    I think that it is more saving face, after we do have an overdue general election....

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    1. That is a very good - if depressing - point.

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    2. ...and we have not developed herd immunity for the common cold.

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  5. I know a few who have had the virus - one or two have been quite ill with it - don't know anyone who has died. Does anyone else think as I do that if this was a science fiction film we would think it was just too far fetched.

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    1. I know what you mean Weave, but the people who know have been warning of this very situation. Difficult to accept, even if it is easy to believe.

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    2. Definitely. It would make an excellent film, probably will in a few years' time.
      A friend has two friends who have died from it and another's mum has died of it in a care home. My dad's best friend has just died of it last week in South Wales. They were friends for fifty years and my dad is so upset not to be able to go to his funeral.

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    3. The truth doesn't need to be justified to the lunatic conspiracy theorists. There was an idiot market stall holder saying, "iIt's nothing! Look at me! I'm healthy!" Twat.

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  6. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all start talking about something interesting again, Brexit for example.

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  7. Or Agriculture...notice that an Ag bill slipped through today?

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    1. I didn't notice that. I'll have to look it up.

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  8. I think the return from this pandemic will be led by civilians, and I cannot see how it will end. In my country of folks who have "rights", many who were unaffected are raring to go again. I wonder how many who have work to return to feel about it? Our federal government is doing little to make them feel safer back at their factory, service, office jobs. I'm an old geezer on a semblance of a pension; I can stay home. What about those who must work? I just don't know.

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    1. The economy must be up and running in time for Trump to take the credit for it no matter how many have to die.

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