Richard, we shouldn't forget that people on this forum, another form of social media similar to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc but less regulated, are propagating misinformation. Of course, politicians like Gove making statements they can't substantiate don't help but he probably thought it was reasonable at the time. It's a new virus, we're still learning about it and we're in a global not a UK only pandemic. We knew there would be new variants so until the rest of the world has a high level of immunity through vaccination they will continue to develop. We could lock down our borders like New Zealand but I doubt if that would be feasible, desirable, or really effective? It was a major achievement to develop not one but in the region of half a dozen reasonably effective vaccines in under a year but we still need to reduce transmission by other means - wearing masks, testing and self isolating, etc - until those vaccines are rolled out globally. (And, sadly, as with all medical interventions a handful will suffer serious adverse reactions - I was interested that the chances of blindness in an eye is as high as 1 in a 1000; a simple and well proven operation. And, if one were to have it under a general anesthetic, whic a few people do, there must be as risk of death?) Anyway, my prediction was wrong; in March '20 I said to someone I thought it would be around 18 months before we returned to any sort of normality, and I thought last April I might be about right. But I'd based it on the 1918 flu epidemic that killed my father's parents. It's going to take longer because there's much more international travel these days (and I'm factoring out the troop movements at the end of WWI that were probably responsible for major transmissions to the US).Finally, check the date of the #10 Christmas Party this year. I'm guessing no additional restrictions or even another lockdown will occur before then ... :-)
Michael Ixer ● 1292d