The Road To Spring 11: Swabbing the Deck

I will never understand why wearing a mask is so troubling for some. Like all the tradesblokes and manual workers who pile into the local bakery for their pies and pasties. Or the old boy behind me in the shop coughing while his mask straddles his chin. Or the lad that works in the same shop who only seems to wear his as a fashion accessory and never practically. I find all of this desperately frustrating. It's a situation wherein nothing can be done. Either you'll provoke antagonism, potentially of the violent kind, or you'll be told they have a health reason and be left with no choice but to leave it at that. Who wants to bully people who may well have a genuine exemption (other than Tory politicians).

Today may well prove the coldest day on record. Certainly if my old bones are to be any witness. Yet there are still people, in the midst of this pandemic, forced to live outside. They are forced; it's never a choice. You wouldn't choose these conditions. Yet the Tories and their scummy ilk have to believe tht in order to avoid the even greater realisation that their system doesn't work for everybody. Sure it works for the few, but that's not just ignorant of the many, it's at their expense. You don't get rich under capitalism, and have power within it, alone. You become that powerful through exploiting others. No matter how much responsibility the capitalists appeal to, no matter how ethical they try to appear, capitalism always wins out. They are its slaves, never its masters, and we are theirs. If there was such a thing as responsible or ethical capitalism, where tycoons did things like use their profits to help employees or society on a rainy day, don't you think that would be happening right now? It isn't, they don't, they won't. They can't.

My test kit came today, I was invited to participate in the REACT study. I'm doing my bit for queen and country. Neither in fact, those two are outdated anachronisms, but if participation helps then all good. I certainly don't think I have Covid, but if I do, and it would certainly be asymptomatically, then knowing is probably a good thing. My mother still hasn't had the second, and thus complete, dose of the vaccine. It's taken them a week to send the package to me, but the turnaround is very fast. I have to complete the test in the morning ready for same day collection. Oddly I'm nervous about it; I don't like gagging so swabbing the back of my throat won't be fun. Still I'd rather do it than Nurse Ratchet I guess. It's strange, but when it comes to medical matters I am actually very squeamish. They will email me the results about a week later. This means a fortnight will have passed which, if I were (or am!) infections, would be a problem. I presume some latitude is being allowed for this specific process, and they probably don't expect everyone participating ot be infected, as it's a study, not test and trace per se. But even so, if they do turn up active cases they would have to act quickly.

It is impressive how the machinery of state has marshalled together these resources. I get the test kick, the packaging, an instruction booklet, and even an online video to watch to walk me through all this. It's presented reasonably simply taking great pains to make sure you do it right, for obvious reasons. If only this degree of effort could have been made by the government throughout all this. But that's expecting too much.

Oh how I wish people would just wear their damn masks.