The New Way of Life
I’m tempted to start winding this Self Isolation journal down now, alongside the easing of lockdown. We’re waiting for the daily infection rates to drop below 500 before we make any significant changes to our lives. Perhaps I’ll stop writing every day at that point, and just write when I have something interesting or important to say. I’d love to end this with us getting on the plane to Barbados!
Lockdown life is so dull, especially when the weather is bad. It’s more and more difficult to find something to write about. I’m hating my hair. It’s so thick and long that I can’t seem to get it to look nice whatever I do!
Today, We have done very little again. The weather is dreadful again. I didn’t go out for a bike ride for the second day in a row.
We slept in and pottered about the house all day. M did a bit of cleaning. I did a bit of writing, cross-stitch and watched some TV. I even had a doze on the sofa in the afternoon. M went for a bike ride in the rain. I couldn’t face it to be honest. Partly because of the rain and partly because I’m tired and a tiny bit hungover after yesterday. An alcohol free day today should get me back on track for tomorrow.
Talking to different people, is revealing a split in society between people who are still taking care, socially distancing and following government guidelines, and people who are doing whatever they want, as if it is all over. This split is apparent even within our own family.
It’s not all over though. You just have to look at the number of new cases which are still running at over 1000 per day. Back in March, when we went into isolation, there were only 1,500 or so active cases in total.
The News
Vera Lynne has died aged 103.
The Government has abandoned their plans to use their own Contact Tracing App, that they piloted in the Isle of White, in yet another U-turn. They are going to use the Google Apple App that other countries have gone for instead. I suppose its good that they are prepared to be flexible if it is in the best interests of everyone. The government App works well on Android phones and provides accurate estimates of distance, but it doesn’t work on Apple phones as their systems are not compatible. The Google Apple App is not as good at estimating distance as the government App. They say that they are going to share their own distance algorithm with Apple to enable them to improve the accuracy of their App. I seem to recall Dominic Cummings sister owns the company that was developing the government App.
The Oxford vaccine is being manufactured by Astra Zeneca, and stockpiled in advance of it being approved. The government has announced that it will prioritise high risk individuals and healthcare workers as soon as it becomes available. This would be a godsend for us. It would be the only thing that would allow to us to get our lives properly back to normal.
The Bank of England is going to pump £100 billion into the UK economy to help fight the anticipated depression due to the virus.
500 doctors have died from Covid-19 in Russia! This terrible death toll is believed to be related to a lack of PPE.
Peru is the latest country to be badly hit by the virus.
The German outbreak has centred around an abattoir and thousands of people are back in quarantine. I wonder if we will see any increase in cases as a result of people crowding onto the beaches in the good weather a few weeks ago, and all the recent BLM related demonstrations.
The Numbers
135 new deaths. Total 42,288.
1,218 new cases.
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