COVID Lockdown: 4 Years On

It was four years ago today in 2020 that Boris Johnson announced the UK's first COVID lock-down and ordered people to 'stay at home' which we did but as we later found out, it was party time in Downing Street which became the most fined address in the land, racking up over 100 fixed penalties for breaking the lock-down laws they had themselves imposed on the rest of us.
I was fortunate to be designated a key worker which meant that Journalists were put in the same frame as NHS Workers in the front line which didn't seem right, but it did mean that i could enjoy driving on deserted roads and walking down empty streets so didn't suffer as much as the tens of millions locked up in their homes although it did mean i had to show my credentials several times to some very indignant police officers who wanted to know why i was out and about.
I did see some very haunting images of people dying alone in hospitals and buried with only a handful of close relatives, some of awful the 233,791 COVID Deaths in the UK and 6 million globally which made the impact of Boris Johnson's lying about the Downing Street even more galling.
It is hard to pick a highlight, but it would have to be the public NHS applause on Thursday evenings, the outpouring of gratitude for the people actually putting their own lives on the line to look after others was truly an emotional lump in the throat moment, especially as we later found out that their Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was sorely lacking and acquiring it became an opportunity for friends and families of the politicians to substantially swell their bank accounts.
Infectious Disease experts are saying that it is inevitable that a virus will once again make the jump from animals to humans and cause another pandemic although they cant say if it will be as deadly as the Covid-19 outbreak, the third most lethal outbreak of the last 100 years, but through global warming and deforestation bringing animals and insects closer to people's homes, we are making it increasingly likely it will happen again.
Lessons will need to be learnt and there are plenty of lessons to be learnt, earlier lock-downs and keep them in place until the threat has subsided, the Governments own Medical team called the Governments 'Eat Out To Help Out' scheme the 'Eat Out To Spread the Virus' scheme and advised against it and an inquiry heard Government scientists say that it was 'highly likely' to have increased Covid infections and deaths.
Despite constantly being told the Government were 'following the science', they obviously were not but we were unfortunate that we had probably the worst possible person in Boris Johnson at the helm at the time which should focus the minds of voters of who they pout their cross next to in an election year.
The worst possible outcome is if, or when, another situation occurs and we are told to stay at home for our own safety, after the partying at Downing Street, would the public agree and comply or say why should we because you never last time and it is the lack of trust in Government which could be the first victim next time. 

Most Important Lesson From Covid Inquiry

What is coming out loud and clear from the Covid inquiry is just how awful the Government were during it.
Almost every witness before the Select Committee have said how poor the Government performed or how little concern they had for the public health, despite Boris Johnson's denial's that he said he would prefer the bodies piled high than have a lock-down, it has now been confirmed that he not only said it but suggested he go on TV at the start and actually be injected with Covid to show that it wasn't that dangerous at all.   
As Johnson was a serial liar than nobody believed that he never said it anyway so that isn't much of a surprise but so many Civil Servants and Medical Officers now coming out and describing in detail just how awful they were does make me wonder why the hell didn't anybody say it at the time?
There have been 231,683 Covid deaths in the UK, the 6th highest in the World, and we had the warning and time to prepare as it swept across Asia and Europe before it got to us but we ended up with the second highest death toll in Europe with only Russia above us.
The Inquiry was set out for us to learn from the mistakes so we don't make them again if another pandemic strikes but the most important lesson we can learn is not to elect someone who is so woefully unfit to be our Prime Minister in the first place.

Finally Some Answers To The Covid Debacle

The long awaited COVID inquiry is finally getting into gear and we are finding out some very uncomfortable things for the previous and current members of the Government.
Despite being advised by Health Officials, Boris Johnson was sceptical that long COVID was an actual thing and the then Chancellor, Rishi Sunak's 'Eat Out to Help Out Scheme' was described by the Chief Medical Officer as more of a eat out to help out the virus scheme' and the Government's top scientific advisers brandished Mr Sunak 'Dr Death'.
The Government were advised on 9 March 2020 that a lock-down was necessary as the pandemic would far outstrip what the NHS was capable of dealing with and the current measures being considered would not suitably manage the coming pandemic and Boris Johnson asked why the economy should be risked with lock-down for people who will die soon anyway and challenged the need for a lock-down at all.
Health Officials repeated the message on the 13th March and the 14 March however a lock-down was not announced until 23rd March, two weeks later.
With heavy hitters such as Dominic Cummings penciled in to appear this week, and that man knows where all the bodies are buried and kept meticulous notes, by the end of the week we should have a better picture of just how inept our leaders were to allow the nation to end up near the top of the COVID death
league table.

NOVID's Theory About To Be Tested

 They call them NOVID's, or people who have so far managed to avoid the Covid infection which wreaked so much havoc since 2020 and i am one despite being a key worker and out and mingling all the way through lock-down but as to why i have not gone down with the disease, well that will be more luck than anything else but science thinks its down to genetics.
Almost two thirds of the UK Population have tested positive for COVID at least once and one theory why some people have avoided infection is that despite actually being exposed to it, they lack the receptors needed for the virus to gain access to cells and are therefore unable to replicate to any great degree in the first place.
All this could be tested as COVID data indicates a massive surge in cases with a million new cases this month, mostly in the South West and Wales, and Boots the Chemist are reporting sales of tests have jumped by more than a third this month and hospitals are reporting a small uptick of people admitted to hospital with COVID.
The UK Health Protection Agency has announced that they are keeping an eye on the situation and blame waning immunity but we were warned that we would have to live with it which is exactly what we are now doing so it may be time to dig out those masks and sanitizing hand gel again.

Coronavirus Still Circulating

 
Coronavirus seems so 2020 and you would be forgiven for thinking it is all over but the Governments own website put last months totals as 84,000 new infections, 24,000 hospitlisations and 2,800 deaths which is higher than Influenza (2,286 deaths) which is the category the UK Government have now put Covid into.
As it is a killer, the NHS are offering Covid booster jabs are have began sending out reminders to the first 5 million people via the NHS app although most people seem to have deleted it, considering the panic over which it really isn't.  
The NHS director of vaccinations and screening said: 'As a society, we are learning to live with COVID but, for many, it is still a virus that can cause serious illness and hospitalisation', pointing to the 8,000 people currently in hospital with COVID.
As the pandemic has killed 6,893,190 globally, it is in the top 10 of the worst Pandemics ever and i am as guilty as anyone as having moved on and not wearing a mask around other people or using sanitizer on my hands as much as i should although the 20 second Happy Birthday song in my head while washing my hands seems to have stuck for some reason.
The NHS are warning that the pandemic isn't done and dusted with us just yet and the amount of
infections and deaths in the UK is worrying and there is still the chance that a new version of the virus could evolve and long Covid has proven to have some very negative health outcomes.
It is highly unlikely that the UK Government would enter a lock-down scenario again no matter how bad it gets and even if they did any health messages by the Government would be largely ignored, Boris and his lock-down partying means that that particular ship has well and truly sailed.

Take Care As Covid Rates Increasing Again

For many people, Covid was so last year but the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has warned that the pandemic isn't done and dusted just yet and the amount of infections in the UK is climbing again and even more worrying is that the increase is being driven by the 4th and 5th versions of the virus which have evolved to include a high rate of 'immune escape', meaning even the vaccinated immune system can no longer recognise or fight the virus.
Medical experts are keen to point out that these Omicron variations are not more severe but of course, it would be better to avoid getting Covid-19 at all, it is still potentially a killer and there are the negative health outcomes the disease is linked to such as long Covid.
It is highly unlikely that the UK Government would enter a lock-down scenario again and even if they did any health messages by the Government would be largely ignored, Boris and his lock-down partying means that that particular ship has well and truly sailed.
Seems then that we are going to have to live with it so the new solutions are the same as the old solutions with vaccines, masks in indoor settings, better ventilation and getting rid of the god-awful Tories.

COVID-19 Still Around

With Ukraine the only story in town for the past few weeks, Coronavirus has slipped down the news agenda but it has still been around, quietly infecting whoever it comes across but as we have all been looking elsewhere and Omicorn and Delta have merged and mutated into Deltacron and cases of the new variant have been found spreading in America, Netherlands, Denmark, France and Cyprus with one case discovered in the UK.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) are concerned that the Delta variant had more severe effects on those who caught it, while Omicron was more infectious and if we now have a more severe infection which is more infectious, then it could cause significant problems but they have not yet raised it to a variant of concern but they are keeping their eye closely on it.
With all of the restrictions now lifted in the UK, we are no longer subject to daily briefings but the numbers are still staying unsurprisingly high with today's figures showing 71,259 new daily infections, 11,751 in hospital and 142 deaths but Boris and the Government have made their bed but it is us who have to lay in it, the health of the economy placed firmly put before the health of the nation.
The Government seem to have taken a view that if we just ignore it then the virus will go away but it isn't going anywhere just yet because unfortunatley, it hasn't finished with us yet.

Joe Rogan Not The Usual Loud Mouth Idiot

I don't know much about Joe Rogan but from what i have heard he is being portrayed as the typical boorish, loud mouth with ignorant views on things like Covid Vaccinations and Climate Change and Neil Young and Joni Mitchell don't like him for spreading misinformation around Coronavirus.
Reading his Wikipedia entry, i expected a ridiculous Trump like character and it says he started out as a comedian and supports same-sex marriage, gay rights, women's rights, universal health care and universal basic income and even endorsed Bernie Sanders during the last Election and in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, he firstly said that young and healthy people should not be concerned about
getting COVID-19 and then apologised, withdrew his remarks and called himself 'a moron'
Where the controversy comes in is his support on his podcast for non-endorsed medical treatments for COVID-19 such as Ivermectin, a drug usually taken to treat parasitic infestations which led to a spike in poison-related hospitalisations of people who had self-medicated with Ivermectin designed to treat ailments in livestock.
With his podcast having 1 million listeners, his words have a far reach and in 2020 he signed a $100 million deal with  Spotify which is where singers Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have now ordered their music be removed from as the streaming giant was allowing 'irresponsible people to spread lies that are costing people their lives'.
Even singer James Blunt has weighed in, showing a surprising sense of humour that if Spotify doesn't immediately remove Joe Rogan, he will release new music onto the platform.
Rogan doesn't sound like your normal, uneducated right winger who usually spouts off inane nonsense about things they know nothing about but due to his reach, what he says is very influential so to actively promote non-endorsed medical procedures which are actually resulting in peoples deaths is highly dangerous although the Invermectin he endorsed is not the Invermectin that his listeners have been buying over the counter and stupidly ingesting.    
Spotify, having shelled out a fortune to host his podcast, have probably done a cost analysis and worked out that the money earned by listeners to Neil Young and Joni Mitchell back catalogue is chickenfeed compared to what they make from Rogan so they can wave goodbye to those two with no real ill-effect but things may get interesting if some bigger names join the boycott.
Rogan, for his part, should make it crystal clear that the Ivermectin he supports IS NOT THE LIVESTOCK STUFF YOU BUY OVER THE COUNTER SO DON'T BE SO EFFING STUPID TO TAKE IT because in a country where 4 people died drinking bleach after the terminally stupid Donald Trump endorsed that, these things obviously need to be spelt out and it may not sooth Young and Mitchell but it could save some lives.
As I said at the start, i know nothing of Rogan and he may have some other views i vehemently disagree with but it seems it is a problem he could easily go partway to fixing and he showed before that he is not averse to correcting himself and calling himself a moron when necessary.

UK Public Not As Stupid As Boris Looks

Hitler once said if you are going to tell a lie, make it a big one which is a lesson people like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and the guy at the local garage have taken on board but there is another quote i like even more by a lady on the train this morning, 'They are so stupid that even they must realise how stupid they are'.
She was obviously referring to Savid Javid's decision yesterday to try and distract attention away from the regular piss up's in Downing Street by throwing Covid-19 restrictions, and therefore us, under a bus.
The lie the Conservatives are hoping that if they say enough times people will believe is that they have been proven correct to not bring in restrictions over the Christmas and New Year period and now because of that success, they can lift all of the restrictions and life can return to as normal as it can after a pandemic.
On the 1st December in the UK there were reported 48,374 positive cases, 123 deaths and 7,381 in hospital and yesterdays figures were 108,069 positive cases, 359 deaths and 18,979 in hospital so i'm not sure what they are using as a measure of success but more than double the number of positive cases and almost trebling the number of deaths and hospitisations does not scream success to me and certainly not time to life the restrictions.
You would need to be all kinds of gullible to not see that this is an attempt to distract from Boris Johnson's self inflicted disaster and i have yet to discuss it with anyone who doesn't believe that is exactly what this is and as for Sajid Javids insistence that Omicron is 'in retreat' and they can do this because the 'data allows it', that's not what the experts are saying.
The British Medical Association said it 'risks creating a false sense of security' which will 'inevitably increase transmission' and the NHS Confederation said 'now is not the time for complacency about this virus".
The NEU teachers union called it 'premature' while the UK'ss largest care home operators said they would ignore the Government and defy any attempt to weaken self-isolation rules while even the the Department of Health and Social Care said it was 'confusing' and Professor Martin McKee of the Independent Sage group said he was 'worried' by it while another Sage scientist, Prof Stephen Reicher, just summed it up with 'crazy'.
Boris said he would he would rather see bodies pile high than take the country into another lock-down and it seems he may get his wish, and to end on another quote: 'There's not a pill you can take; there's not a class you can go to. Stupid is forever' unlike the old and the vulnerable who are not forever but will be prematurely thrown under the bus, into a Crematoriums oven or into a hole in the ground
to save the PM's neck

ONS Covid -19 Stats Breakdown

The Government may have reported 150,000 Covid-19 deaths within 28 days of a positive test but their own Statistical agency, the Office of National Statistics, put the number of at 175,000 for all deaths where the virus was mentioned on the death certificate.
The ONS gives a useful breakdown of all Coronavirus deaths so what does the data tell us about the unfortunate 175,000 people whose deaths have been recorded to date?

Age
122,500 or 70% of the deaths occurred in those aged 75 or older meanwhile, deaths among those aged 44 and younger made up under 2% of the total, or 3500 deaths.

Vaccination status
For the first 10 months of 2021, for every 1 death of a vaccinated person, 28 deaths were for the unvaccinated

Gender
Men made up 94,433 or 54% of total coronavirus deaths.

Geographical
The death rate was in the north-west of the UK and among the four nations of the UK, Wales recorded the highest death rate.

Deaths by occupation
Male and female workers in the care and leisure sectors and other public-facing jobs experiencing higher death rates

Deaths by ethnicity
The ONS shows that minority ethnic people were at a higher risk of contracting and dying from Covid-19 compared with their white counterparts with the mortality rate was highest among black men, then black women and then South Asian groups before white men and then white women.

150,000 UK Covid Deaths

In January 2021, the UK became the first European country to pass 100,000 deaths and today after adding another 313 to the grim toll, the UK have noe also become the first country in Europe to pass 150,000 Covid deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Britain is now the seventh country to pass the milestone after the US, Brazil, India, Russia, Mexico and Peru.
The Governments figures could even be an underestimate as separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics show there have been 174,000 deaths registered in the UK where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate.
Britain is registering an average of 150,000 new cases every day and Scientists are predict the the peak for infections will come in 1-2 weeks around time with the peak for hospitalisations a week after that and peak deaths towards the end of January another week on.
Boris Johnson has tweeted on the milestone death toll, saying: Coronavirus has taken a terrible toll on our country and each and every one of those deaths is a profound loss to the families, friends and communities affected and my thoughts and condolences are with them'.
Amazingly his thoughts and condolences don't stretch to actually doing anything about it as the Government are still not making any move towards making any further restrictions and are actually making plans for 'living with Covid' which includes stopping giving out free lateral flow tests and urging people back into offices.
Professor Andrew Hayward, who advises the British government as part of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said the statistic was 'absolutely tragic' and 'I think we could have done better'. You think??

Australia Make Right Call On Djokovic

I don't know very much about the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and what i do know isn't very flattering but credit where its due and he is due credit for his action over tennis player Novak Djokovic, hilariously newly nicknamed as 'Novaxx' Djokovic.
Whatever his exemption from the Covid-19 vaccine was, the Australian's were not buying it and declared that the tennis player: 'had failed to provide appropriate evidence to support his exemption from a requirement to be double vaccinated against Covid' and swiftly took his to a quarantine hotel and cancelled his visa.
Although the basis of the medical exemption has not been released, the federal Government have said that a recent Covid infection was not an acceptable reason not to be fully vaccinated which seems to explain why he thought he would be exempt as Djokovic had Covid earlier in 2021.
The rules for entry to Australia are simple enough even for him, it states that: 'People must be fully vaccinated, as defined by Atagi, to gain quarantine-free entry into Australia', he wasn't double vaccinated so out he goes, it really isn't that difficult.
'There should be no special rules for Novak Djokovic at all. None whatsoever' Morrison had said and Djokovic was in with the anti-vax nutters when he said that he was opposed to vaccination and wouldn’t want to be forced by someone to take a vaccine.
The president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, bizarrely said that the whole of Serbia was with him and they were everything they could to see to end the tennis players harassment and Djokovic’s father went even further and said that his son was being persecuted and that the Australian government was stomping on Serbia and the Serbian people. The apple didn't fall far from that tree obviously!
Rafael Nadal summed it up well when he said that Djokovic had known the requirements for months and if he had wanted, he could be playing in Australia without a problem and Andy Murray also showed little sympathy by saying: 'We were told they were the rules. If you want to play, you have to be vaccinated'.
Patience is finally running out with those who are willfully unvaccinated, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, said just the other day that he planned to 'piss off' unvaccinated citizens and as the next Grand Slam is the French Open, Djokovic will hopefully be swapping kicking his heels in a Melbourne Hotel room for kicking them in a Parisian one instead unless he rolls his sleeve up soon.

Boris Letting The Bodies Pile High

Not one to make the same mistake twice when he can make it three times, Boris Johnson and his Government have decided that despite being pilloried for locking down late previously, they have decided to ignore the medical advisors in his team and not lock down at all this time.
They seemed to have latched on to the report that the Omicron Variant is more transmissible but milder than previous variants and is happy to let it rip through the nation which it is, today's number of daily Covid cases in the UK has hit the highest of the pandemic, 183,037, but it isn't just in the UK that is setting grim records, over the last few days Italy, Portugal, USA, France, Greece, Poland, Denmark, Australia, Cyprus and Iceland have all reported record daily Covid cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
The gamble from the Government seems to be that as the Omicron variant is milder, this will translate into less hospitalisations and deaths but as almost 3,000 more NHS beds have been taken by Coronavirus patients over the past week, the gamble is beginning to look a very wrong one especially as it takes 2 to 3 weeks for the figure to drip through and another further couple of weeks for the related deaths number so we will know by mid-to late January we will have a clearer picture of just how brilliant, or reckless, the PM's decision was.
The much lauded review on the 28th December came and went with no change to the current restrictions, which is close to no restrictions, so New Year Eve parties have been waved through to go ahead meaning another surge of infections to increase our already deplorable infection figures.
The Government seem to be desperate to not cancel Christmas and New Year Parties and are relying not so much on Medical Experts but crossing their fingers and hoping the full hospital beds and death toll doesn't rise too much but the current numbers rocketing up are from the pre-Christmas period,
when we get those figures late January it will be too late to lock-down then, the damage would have been done.
Boris's advice today was for us all to be sensible and take Lateral Flow Tests before doing anything which would be good if there wasn't a national shortage at Chemists and even the Government Website not having any to send out which is a bit of a flaw in his plan.
He may deny ever saying 'Let the bodies pile high', but it seems to be that is exactly what he is going to get.

Bad For Players, Worse For The Fans

Usually about this time the Football managers begin utterances around how many games their teams are to play over the Festive period and it is even worse this year because not only do they have a packed fixture schedule, but many squads are depleted by Coronavirus and the Premier League is standing firm that if there are 13 fit players available, then the games must be played.
I do have some sympathy with strains the amount of games in such a short period of time puts on the teams for the likes of the managers like Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp, Aston Villa's Stephen Gerrard, Arsenal's Mikel Arteta and Chelsea's Thomas Tuchel who have all come out to say the schedule is too harsh made worse by the Covid situation amongst the players, but none of them have questioned the wisdom of allowing tens of thousands of supporters into a ground during these times.
Last night 59,027 fans packed into The Emirates to watch Arsenal beat Sunderland in the Caraboa Cup Quarter Final and tonight there are three more games tonight at Brentford which holds 18,000, Liverpool with a capacity of 53,390 and Tottenham 62,850 which means potentially 134,000 fans sat shoulder to shoulder for two hours.
As the Government seem to afraid of their own MP's to do anything this side of Christmas, that is a lot of people who could be taking something a little bit extra home for their family this Christmas so while i feel sorry for the footballers, my real sympathy goes to the fans paying £60 to get themselves into a situation which screams danger while the highly contagious Omicron is circling.

OM-Nee-Cron, O-Mike-Ron or OH-My-Cron

Naming Coronavirus variants in the Greek Alphabet was always going to cause problems and we had no problem pronouncing Alpha, Beta and Delta but as the likes of Epsilon, Zeta, Iota and Kappa didn't turn out to be variants of concern, we went to Omicron which very much was of concern and so began the debate over OM-Nee-Cron, OM-Mee-Cron or OH-My-Cron.
Scholar, Dr Armand D'Angour, explained that in Ancient Greek it would be said as 'Oh-Mee-kron' with the long e sound but in Modern Greek it's 'Oh-me-cron, with a short e.
Seems fair enough to me, it's their alphabet we are using after all but the Merriam Webster Dictionary people say it should be 'OH-muh-kraan' and that is the way i have heard World Health Organization officials pronounce it but the Oxford English dictionary guys have piled in with 'o-MIKE-Ron' as the word is a compound from the Greek 'o mikron' which means 'small o'.
The British seem to have developed inserting the letter 'n' in it to make it Omni-Kron and that is being put down to it being more pleasing to an English speakers ear with words we know such as omnibus, omnipotent and omnipresent but that is just all sorts of wrong.
Until another variant pops up, (pi next and there can be no doubt over that one) it’s going to be contentious but more importantly, contagious so let's not have any big meetings to discuss it.

Party On Say's Boris

Hours after a Government scientists told people to be careful over the Christmas with the Chief Executive of the UK Health Security Agency, Jenny Harris, even deciding that she isn't going to just thoughtlessly blurt out whatever nonsense the Government ask her to and said that we should decrease our social contacts a little bit to help keep the new variant at bay, Boris comes out and poo-poos all her advice.
Boris, in his style of cheering that everything is going to turn out for the best right up until the time it invariably doesn’t, say's that there is no need to cancel Christmas parties although the bit he left out was 'like last year', well not for them anyway because while he cancelled Christmas for everyone else, his parties still went ahead in full swing.  
Now to us pheasants, a booze up with a couple of dozen people in one room with food and games is a party but not to Boris who is trying to persuade everyone that it wasn't a party but 'a gathering of work colleagues' and no Government guidelines were breached in the December 18th meeting which would hold more water if two days before, on the 16th, he hadn't announced London entering a Tier 3 lock-down, meaning people were not allowed to mix indoors with anyone outside their household or support bubble.
Just to avoid any confusion, the guidance specifically stated: "You must not have a work Christmas lunch or party, where that is a primarily social activity and is not otherwise permitted by the rules in your tier'.
As people were fied up to £10,000 for holding parties during lock-down last year, the Police are sure to be taking an interest but the Tories are pursuing their fatal agenda of economy first, people who keep the economy going, second and moving on to this Christmas and saying that they will be holding Festive Parties and everyone should 'Keep Calm and Carry on with whatever they planned.
I’m not sure how we'd cope if a load of Tories caught Covid which kept them out of work for an extended period of time but i suppose we would just have to keep calm and carry on i guess.

Omicron On It's Way To UK

I have always given the Government the benefit of the doubt with the Coronavirus when they said that their main target was to stop the NHS being overwhelmed, to me the main target should be to stop people dying but if we stretch their comment then if the NHS is overwhelmed then people will die as they cannot be treated so i cut them some slack on that one.
Now with the new Omicron Variant worrying enough scientists that it will be able to evade the vaccines we were banking on to return to some sort of normality, it feels like we have taken an almighty step backwards and there was one scientist on TV this morning saying  that the mutations are so numerous that it could be considered a new virus altogether, COVID-21.
It's still early days and the scientists are still gathering the data so it would be irresponsible to jump to any conclusions until we have all the details but many nations have already decided that it is worrying enough to bring down some of the shutters they had tentatively been lifting recently.
Here in the UK the Government, hopefully learning a lesson from their previous awful decisions and horrific death-toll, have rolled back on some of the restrictions they recklessly threw out completely in July with face masks being mandated again in certain situations and booster jabs considered being offered earlier than the six months gap although the advice from their own science advisors is that they need to go much further.
We have a new Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, after the last one was photographed breaking his own Covid rules with a female 'friend' who wasn't his wife, and Sajid was on TV over the weekend saying that: 'The reason we've set out these measures is to protect the progress we've made so we can all continue to enjoy Christmas with our families'.
Hmmm...with around 150 people a day still dying from Coronavirus in the UK, and with 26 days until Christmas that’s approximately 4,000 people whose families will be sadly having an extra seat at the Christmas Dinner this year, the Government obviously are happy enough to accept that devastating figure and maintain the status quo to avoid bringing in tougher restrictions which would affect the progress we have made.
We know by that they mean the economy, it was the reason they threw the restrictions out in July, they even made the case a few weeks ago that we won't be affected so badly by another wave which was building in mainland Europe because our figures are already so high and when your argument against stopping something awful happening is because things here are already so awful, you will always find it hard to argue with the absurd mentality behind it.
Hopefully the Omicron variant will not be as game changing as feared but if it isn't it will be despite Boris and his gang rather than because of them and we can look forward to Christmas and staying with the appalling 55,000 Covid deaths a year the Government are willing to tolerate.

All Over By 2026-ish

I found Boris Johnson's warning that the storm cloud were gathering over Europe and a new wave of Coronavirus could reach our shores if we are not careful a bit strange as we currently have a higher daily Covid-19 infection rate than any EU country thanks to his less than sensible Covid strategy of what the hell, let's just open up anyway.
Not sure what happened to his Plan B, over 200,000 new infections and 1,000 deaths a week obviously isn't enough to impose it, but he today announced that they are working on introducing a vaccine passport to prove who has been jabbed and who can therefore enter venues such as theaters, cinema's and concerts, a measure that has began to be rolled out in other countries.  
The UK Government released a report last week that shows they are working on an assumption that Coronavirus will be with us for a while yet and have three scenarios – optimistic, central case and worst case which suggest the pandemic will end between 2022 and 2026.
The optimistic scenario sees the virus peaking in 2022/23 and the worst case scenario will see if lingering until at least 2026 but the one they have most confidence in is the middle case where we will have some restrictions in place until 2023/24.  
How it will end is more clear cut with Government scientists predicting it will be manageable with vaccines and the virus will naturally mutate to become less deadly and cause milder illnesses although it will continue to kill but more in the vain of Flu and other respiratory diseases.
It will be the Woirld Health Organisation that declares the pandemic ended and they have said that they will not declare it until everyone has been vaccinated and as some poorer nations are still scrambling for the first vaccine while the West are talking up the third, it may be a while yet so plan for the worst but hope for the best as the old saying goes, or in the case of the current UK Government, plan for the worst and fully expect it.

As Clear As Mud

I imagine it isn't easy to find ministers willing to be sent out to do the Sunday morning media run after the last few weeks because they seem to spend the first few shows defending the Governments position on something only for the Government to do a screeching u-turn and the embarrassed minister then finds himself made to look even more of a fool.
It happened again this Sunday with Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi painfully explaining to Sky News why the Government are introducing Covid Passports to protect everyone only for Boris Johnson to put out a statement that they have been scrapped moments before he was appearing on BBC News and Zahawi found himself explaining why Covid Passports are not all that important actually.
Ever since the pandemic started, the Government have been as indecisive as Donald Trump faced with a KFC, Mcdonald's and a porn star and one of Boris Johnson's very first press conferences was to joyfully say he had been shaking hands with Covid patients just after his Chief Medical Officer had finished warning about not shaking hands with anyone. Obviously Johnson went down with Covid and ended up on a ventilator but that is par for the course for him.
Now after last week's announcement that Passport's were definitely coming in followed by yesterdays announcement that they aren't, a press meeting has been called for tomorrow where the Prime Minister will set out his plan to deal with coronavirus during the upcoming autumn and winter months, including Covid passports which he has said could now be an option.
So just to be clear, the official message is work from home but don't work from home and take public transport only we don't want you to take public transport but try not to go outside and shake anyone's hands but make sure you stay in and don't actually shake hands but you can go outside but you will need a Covid Passport which they are not introducing but definitely will soon.
Got it? Good, now explain it to Boris because he hasn't got a clue. 

US Still Pointing Covid Finger At China

I have always found it a bit of a coincidence that the Coronavirus virus began in Wuhan which just happended to be home of a scientific laboratory which was performing scientific experiments on Coronavirus's but i am willing to go with the science and the science is saying the outbreak was exposure to an infected animal.
Despite probes by China and the World Health Organisation, US President Joe Biden gave the US intelligence community 90 days to figure out the source of the coronavirus which has infected over 215 million and killed more than 4.4 million people around the globe.
The report was made public on Friday and it came to the decision that it didn't know how it started although it is right to question just how scientifically credible a report from a nation currently desperate for a scapegoat for its own awful response and involved in a battle for global supremacy would be as it is right to question how credible China's report is considering it is under the spotlight as the source of the outbreak.
What the US report did confirm was that the virus was not 'a biological weapon', was not 'genetically engineered' and the China’s officials 'did not have foreknowledge of the virus'.
China has repeatedly dismissed the lab leak theory as an attempt to politicise the pandemic and are now demanding a similar probe to investigate American laboratories for the origins of the virus based on several studies that found traces of Covid-19 in the US before Wuhan.
The earlier WHO probe described the likelihood of the coronavirus escaping from a laboratory in Wuhan as 'extremely unlikely' but for some they never accepted that and have long made their own mind up that China is to blame as we saw under Donald Trump who first floated the idea and named it the 'China Virus' while doing very little to protect his own citizens from it, hence the lofty position at the top of the deaths league.
I expect the game of trying to pin the blame on China will continue as it is convenient for America to do so as a distraction but it seems to be on it's own as the rest of the World seem to be happy to follow the findings from the WHO, the only independent and medically experienced author, that the origins were from an infected animal.