It’s the day after Boxing Day. The month since I last wrote has whizzed by and the world again seems to have been tipped on its head. I suppose that’s one thing you can say for sure about 2020 – there’s never been a slow news day.
At the end of the last lockdown the tier system of restrictions was restructured and strengthened. In Manchester, which remained in tier 3, pubs and restaurants didn’t reopen but some shops did. Rules about Christmas gatherings were announced and as expected they were to keep it low key. It was all a bit gloomy.
Then followed the news that the MHRA had approved a Covid 19 vaccine for use in the UK which was a massive breakthrough. Within a matter of days the first person in the world received that vaccine in Coventry, on 8th December, and to date around 800,000 people have been inoculated. I suspect that because of my age and good health I’ll be quite low down the list and may get my chance in late summer.
As we’ve come to expect from 2020, with the good news comes the bad. Reports of a significant mutation in the virus were hot on the heels of the vaccine. It appears to have originated in Kent and infection numbers in the SouthEast began rocketing. The new variant which was identified in September and sequenced in October, transmits faster and is more infectious than its predecessor. The increasing numbers prompted the Government to put London and a chunk of the SouthEast into a new Tier 4 with almost immediate effect. Christmas plans were scuppered for millions and the capital essentially shut down, but not before thousands of residents, keen to get to their families for Christmas, rammed train stations and a mini exodus out of town took place on cramped trains.
Countries around Europe, fearful that the new strain might land there, immediately banned flights and ships from the UK. Most noticeably France, simply because so many cross border goods go through Dover and Calais. The channel tunnel was closed and Dover port became a car park with hundreds of drivers stranded there over Christmas. I read reports of locals lowering food packages down to them from motorway bridges and skirmishes with police as drivers who wanted to be home for Christmas became increasingly frustrated. I suppose the travel restrictions were to be expected but I suspect the mutant virus (as the papers refer to it) is already on the continent given that it was seen so many weeks ago and it’s been recognised in Brazil too. On top of that, a third strain has been noted in South Africa leading to further flights being grounded from that country.
There have been other UK restriction changes in different parts of the country as of Boxing day, though Manchester remains frozen in suspended animation as it has been for months. Infection rates across all ten boroughs have begun to creep up again, but not at the same rate as they have in the SouthEast. In fact rates seem to be on the increase across Europe generally as well as in parts of Asia and it feels like there’s a race between Covid and the vaccine. A second vaccine, developed at Oxford University and with AstraZeneca is due for approval imminently and as it’s easier to handle and transport than the Pfizer vaccine it’s hoped that the programme will speed up.
In the meantime Christmas has come and gone. For many it’s understandably been a quieter, pared back affair, though the Government did authorise mixing of households for those not in Tier 4. We had Chris’s folks round, as we have done many times before, so it didn’t feel all that different.
Outside of the pandemic – for there is still a world out there – and just in time, a Brexit deal has finally been agreed. Boris Johnson addressed the UK on Christmas Eve to tell us that trade deals have been agreed alongside fishing rights, a move away from the European Court of Justice, agreements on data security, policing and travel. Naturally there is still a split between those who voted to remain in the EU saying we’re in a worse position than we were before and those who voted to leave saying we now have the freedom to chart our own course. Time will tell who is right though I reckon it will more than likely be a mix of the two. I for one am optimistic about the future – let’s see what happens eh?
And in celestial news, on 21st December, the winter solstice, Jupiter and Saturn, two of the solar system’s gas giants, were in alignment with the earth in what is known as the Great Conjunction. Their positions, so close to each other in our skies, made them look like one bright body and while this happens about every twenty years it seems they were closer than they have been for some for eight centuries. Typically it was cloudy in Manchester so we didn’t see a damn thing.
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