Another prick

 The last time I wrote about covid was shortly after I'd had the first of two vaccine injections back in April. Subsequently, on 30th June, I had a second one. That was that, I was led to believe, no more covid worries, herd immunity, get on with your life and all that gumph. Well here we are in December and I'm waiting for a booster. It's booked for 7th January and I'm not feeling great about it.

When they were first talked about, it was my understanding that booster vaccines were for the elderly and the vulnerable but the government are now pushing a huge roll out to everybody. There've even been glimmers of discussion around mandatory vaccination which has already begun in other countries and which fills me with horror. The horror does not come from the vaccination itself, after all I've had two willingly and I'm signed up for a third, but from the possibility of the state mandating what I put in my own body. It infuriates me that the law tells me what I'm not allowed to put in my body but to be considering a situation where people are being forced to have a vaccination, sometimes against their will, is abhorrent to me.

The booster 'push' has been expedited because of a relatively new variant of the virus which started in southern Africa, called Omicron. This variant is potentially transmitted more easily that others, including the Delta variant, and that appears to be the driving force. Not being a virologist I thought I'd read a bit about this new variant to understand why there's so much fuss about it, so I Googled it and went to the World Health Organization's website. 

This is what I read: Transmissibility: It is not yet clear whether Omicron is more transmissible (e.g., more easily spread from person to person) compared to other variants, including Delta. The number of people testing positive has risen in areas of South Africa affected by this variant, but epidemiologic studies are underway to understand if it is because of Omicron or other factors.

Followed by: Severity of disease: It is not yet clear whether infection with Omicron causes more severe disease compared to infections with other variants, including Delta.  Preliminary data suggests that there are increasing rates of hospitalization in South Africa, but this may be due to increasing overall numbers of people becoming infected, rather than a result of specific infection with Omicron.  There is currently no information to suggest that symptoms associated with Omicron are different from those from other variants.

And then: Effectiveness of vaccines: WHO is working with technical partners to understand the potential impact of this variant on our existing countermeasures, including vaccines. Vaccines remain critical to reducing severe disease and death, including against the dominant circulating variant, Delta. Current vaccines remain effective against severe disease and death.

Current vaccines remain effective against severe disease and death. 

So why, I ask myself, are we being told by the government that we should work from home again, and use a vaccine passport when going to a club, under what they are calling Plan B? And why are they drawing up Plan C to track people going to pubs and such? It makes no sense to me. Especially as it's unknown how severe this variant is. 

I've been vaccinated, practically everybody I know has been, and those that haven't have chosen that risk. Deaths of people with coronavirus — and I make a point of saying they are deaths of people with coronavirus, not from it — are down by 90% from the peak last winter (almost a year ago) and hospitalisation from the virus is rare amongst vaccinated people. So why the restrictions on liberties? And how many more times is this going to happen? 

The vaccination was the key to our freedoms and yet, despite the immense success of the programme, our freedoms are still being limited. Frustratingly they're being limited by a government that is repeatedly proving itself to be untrustworthy and lacking in integrity as bit by bit revelations of rule breaking and mid-lockdown parties leak out.

I had the job of cancelling our work Christmas party last week and it was a sorry affair because as I was doing that, thousands of others were doing the same thing around the country. I could almost hear the hospitality industry groaning in despair. These new restrictions and the fear that's being instilled in people will put companies out of business and people out of work, and yet I read time and again that the new variant is mild or, at worst, an unknown quantity. There are a lot of 'just in case' actions being taken and I don't like it. It smacks of politics. The government can't be seen to be the people that let folk die of covid (understandable) yet the longer term affects of missed diagnoses, delayed treatments by a health service prioritising covid boosters over many other appointments, or the surge in deaths from alcohol for example will, I suspect, be far further reaching.

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Since I started writing this blog a couple of days ago the PM has announced a major push in booster vaccines. One million jabs a day to get everyone fixed by the new year. Now we see on the news people queuing for hours on end (two, three, four hours at a time), the NHS working at full tilt to accommodate it and lateral flow tests, which people are offered free of charge, have run out. This coincides with the first studies, coming out of South Africa, which conclude the risk of hospitalisation with the Omicron variant is significantly lower than with the Wuhan strain or the Delta strain.

It feels to me like the government has overreacted and caused panic; I've decided not to bring my booster vaccination date forward.

Of course, these could be the last words of an idiot. I might catch the new variant and be the second person to die of it. The country might crumble under the economic and social strains brought about by Omicron and this could quite simply be the beginning of the end. Let's hope not, eh?

Then there's the media commotion. These two articles are both on the home page of the Telegraph today. So what are we to believe — serious peril or no worse than flu? It also feels like there's a lot of contradiction which is confusing. No wonder the panic.  

 

It's all just so miserable, after nearly two years of this it feels like the end is continually being kicked down the road and that people have settled with this new state of affairs. Maybe that's why I'm finding it so difficult to accept the new restrictions and why it feels like another lockdown by stealth. I appear to be in the minority.

Gas Giants, Brexit, Mutant Viruses and Christmas 2020

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.

Violent Vera

Christmas day this year was an interesting one. Interesting? In what way Richard? I hear you ask. Well for one I managed to get a photograph of every one of the sixteen guests wearing a false moustache - quite an accomplishment I'm sure you'll agree. Secondly I had the great fortune to referee a very drunken conversation between one of my cousins and one of my brothers about the true reason for the invasion of Iraq and the state of the situation in Afghanistan. Neither Rachael nor Matthew had the slightest clue what they were talking about in their drunken state and I, in my drunken state, grasped the opportunity to throw in all manner of pointless - and in some cases untrue - tit bits of information just to encourage more ridiculous claims and counter claims regarding the various situations.

It was also on Christmas day this time around that I learned of my cousins' grandmother's nick name. When Vera arrived my dad asked her in a loud voice, "Have you got your machine gun Vera?" which struck me as quite odd. Vera being nearly ninety and not so nimble on her feet. Within half an hour someone else asked her the same question which again was a little puzzling. Anyway it turns out that Vera (pictured with moustache) is also known as Violent Vera and has a reputation for fighting, using excessive violence and killing people with semi automatic weapons.

Other highlights of Christmas day included a walk on the beach at Rossall near Fleetwood (picture taken about 2.30 in the afternoon on Christmas day) and the hunt for spirit orbs with my Aunt Amanda at my dad's house - made all the more amusing by the fact that my cousin Rachael kept referring to the whole experience as 'hunting for oicks.' Rachael is 33 years old.