Counting Crows

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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!!

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