Counting Crows

-


 

Well, there you have it. More vacillation, oscillation and sadly, inevitably; isolation. Tonight's announcement from the PM comes as no surprise to anyone with even a scintilla of critical acuity. That this latest development in the sorry saga that is the pandemic and the Government's serially laggardly responses to it was flagged up, in Covid-time, eons ago; repeating yet again the same mistakes, missteps and mishandling that have dogged us since they failed to control the borders in late February last year. Those very same borders they have been crowing about having taken back control of since Brexit reared its sorry head and thus leading to one epidemiological knock back after another throughout the whole tragic affair.

My old analogy of under-damped feedback loops still holds - lurching from one state to another without sufficient damping can not generate stability under any circumstances: try driving a car with buggered shock absorbers to get a mild flavour of an out of control system, for a start. To control a viral outbreak, the first thing needed, above all else, is containment. Blind faith in reducing the numbers for a short while and then relaxing that containment for whatever reason is either wilful or just plain stupid. And now the virus has already undergone one major mutation in less than a year; upping its transmissibility by an order of magnitude. What's to stop the thing mutating into a more lethal form in the next few weeks? Anyone that argues that a virus that kills a significant percentage of those that it infects will de facto burn itself out of existence, hasn't heard of Ebola.

If this thing decided to up its game to the next level, and we keep farting around in our current fashion, Christ alone knows how many people will end up dead before their time, in no time. Crosses on doors, bells and handcarts: we could be that close. Two things: containment and vaccination. Both essential and both need to be rigorously and equitably applied, now, not tomorrow or next month: no ifs, ands or buts: no equivocations; just decisions. If this means holding off on a years' education for the young and pumping shed-loads of funny money into the economy for a year or longer, so be it; we can count the cost later. Better that than counting the dead now.

Comments

  1. Joe Stoner5 January 2021 at 14:52

    The South African mutation may well dodge the vaccines as well as being more deadly mate!! Airlines STILL flying the rich, priveledged and STUPID all over the world with just "tick box" validations/excuses to travel.
    I like your blancmonge analogy better mate.
    Thanks for signing my petition mate, sadly not enuff folk have and our ICUs are taking the hits! Do NOT get unwell and do NOT attend hospitals espescially YG. I've just had an email from a BCUHB administrator saying that as she's NOT medically trained she can not make an appointment for me to have the MRI scan that they failed to give me a fortnight ago whilst mixing me with CV-19 patients!! TWO salient points me-thinks!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des...
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [...
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more