Feest Isolation Days – 1 February 2021
As I write it is still the last day of January…Sunday afternoon and the snow is falling! Soft and pretty – when you are inside and cosy and warm! Not sunny summer warm, but its hypnotic effect beats the rain and the gloom that we’ve had for a large part of the week.
We move into February with great expectations. The pretty local television Points West news anchor, Alex Lovel, said on Friday that it was the 350th day of January. She also said the month felt like the 13th month of 2020. I know what she means! But if that’s the case, Happy New Year! It’s February!
There have been over nearly nine million vaccines delivered in the UK so far – including into my husband’s arm. Mine is due this month according to my vaccine watcher app. That should mean that within ten weeks we will both have had our second jab and the worst worries of lockdown will be behind us. By May the world might be a little bit more navigable. However, Labour are politicising the vaccinations and want all teachers to receive the jab this half term, before older folks like me. Could be enough to make me vote Tory…..
Our Bristol University specialist, Dr. Adam Finn sets out the reasoning behind prioritising vaccines as they are. He says, “We worked out that if you give 20 people in a care home a dose of vaccine, you’ll save a life. If you give 160 people in their 80s a dose of vaccine, you’ll save a life. But once you get down to people in their 60s, you’re up to more than 1,000. If you go down to teachers or policemen, you’re approaching one in 50,000. It’s an extraordinarily inefficient way in the crisis to use vaccines – to start going out to these other lobbying groups who are perceiving themselves to be at enhanced risk of exposure, but who are not actually and demonstrably at enhanced risk of getting sick and dying. If in the next month you immunised 200,000 teachers, there will be 200,000 people in their 70s who won’t get that vaccine. You’ll save a few teachers’ lives, and you’ll waste the lives of a lot of people in their 70s. It is politically, socially and ethically unacceptable that we turn our back on older people and say, ‘It’s too bad, just stay home and die.’”
Follow the science people! Every report and statistic agrees with this assessment. Let’s hope the government hold firm. As it’s the Labour party suggestion it seems we might indeed be safe. As for my voting intentions? We’ll see, four and a half years is a long time until the next election. I’ve never voted Tory in my life, I suspect I won’t now either.
Vaccinations are now the hot topic in the papers. The EU shot themselves in the foot over their handling of the Astra Zeneca vaccine and on that the debate goes on. The EU Commission had to back track on ridiculous statements and trying to invoke an article in the Brexit plan that would hurt Northern Ireland. What were they thinking?
As a Remainer, even I was pleased the UK weren’t part of the EU vaccine plans. Oh dear!
Well as we aren’t out of this yet by a very long way…I’ll have plenty of time to think about the politics of it all. For now, I am just watching the snow and enjoying a quiet and contemplative Sunday. Isn’t that what New Years Eve’s are for?
Stay safe!
With love
Kathy x