United Together

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Photo: Carrog Station, pre-Covid - 


Well, here we are again in lockdown. No great surprise, all things considered; but there you go. Something woke me early this morning at around a quarter to five. In the weeks since my retirement, my internal alarm clock had stopped waking me at six AM every day and I had adjusted to a later, more gentle start to my mornings: so such an early one was a bit of a shock and has left me feeling a tad weary. So a day of rest and relaxation it is to be then; starting with writing this and listening to The Moonlight Sonata from the warmth of my bed.

A much-attenuated Christmas awaits us all, but it was always going to be a quiet one this year: any expectations otherwise being wholly unrealistic anyway. We're just hunkering down for the duration till our place in the queue for vaccination comes around. I read with interest in The New York Times this morning about how the city of New York coped with an outbreak of Smallpox in 1947, inoculating six million Americans in the space of a month, potentially saving countless people from death or disfigurement from that unholy disease.

By 1980, Smallpox had been eradicated from the world. Armed with good science and the truth rather than snake oil and lies, our species has the capacity to deal with most things that threaten us. In the case of a pandemic such as Covid, the only effective way is the collective way. There wasn't an anti-vax movement in 1947, nor the creeping paranoia of misinformation spread by those living in the parallel universe we seem to have created for ourselves over the last quarter of a century online. Thing is, viruses infect the deluded too, and imagining that just wishing something ain't so will make it go away, is the stuff of childhood.  Stay safe out there and help each other out at the same time.

Comments

  1. Joe Stoner20 December 2020 at 16:45

    This bastard has NOT finished mutating and has ONLY natural selection to limit it's lethallity to its hosts; hold VERY tight we're in for a ROUGH Winter. I'd include a link to my flrdgling petition to kick some sense into our governmental "masters" but Google excise owt like that!!!
    I feel guilty (as we all should) that we've witnessed the generation and proliferation of these "Free speech" platforms that abrogate moderation and have only recently cried for legislature to cover the crimes of spreading delusion, cant and missinformation. I have eschewed F/Buck & Twatter almost from their off. It is interesting that whilst they have carrered headlong into creating their warped dimensions ACTUAL free-speech and proper discussion is being curtailed in our universities and other institutions of higher learning where the NEXT generation of our leaders are being "edumacated"!!
    Interesting that T.Rump is showing who his masters have been all along by defending the Russians bollocking around in State networks to try to do untold damage to the USofA's infrastructure!!
    PIP Pip!

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