The Road To Spring 2: But It Could All Go Wrong

The South Africa variant appears to have arrived by natural selection into the UK. That is, the strain emerged independently due to the prevalence of the virus here already. A bit scary, but if people continue to obey the rules we should be ok. Clearly this sort of situation is going to be the normal now, the virus is here and it's going to take a long time for that not to be so. In the meantime it will mutate and adapt. Hopefully that means into something less fatal.

I have been invited to take part in the Imperial College study, the REACT study, testing people for the virus. My name was randomly drawn (yay!) from medical records. I could have declined but I guess it could be important. I will receive a test kit in a few days with which to swab myself and, having returned the kit, I'll get a result within a week. If I am positive, somehow, then by that point I'd be out of quarantine anyway. I haven't shown any symptoms, but of course it's possible I could be an asymptomatic carrier, though I think it unlikely. I guess we'll find out for sure, although the test isn't 100% accurate. I don't think anything should be read into that, no test is 100%.

What bothers me the most is the total lack of support from this government. I take it a day at a time, Winter is proving to be challenging. The weather most of all is the problem. Were this like last spring and summer it would be a more pleasant lockdown. But hte irony of the winter weather is that it just reinforces the conditions, taunting me to go out even when it's cold/wet/dark/windy/all of the above. I find it a real struggle to go out because it's so unpleasant, but I don'd want to sit indoors all day. Unfortunately there is nowhere to go but the same streets and the same puddles. It's taxing mentally. There's no denying this. Fortunately, each day takes us one step closer to Spring and, hopefully, some blessed relief. 

Throughout all of this, there has been nothing from the government. The reports I've seen say that most people, applying for help, get nothing. Most people aren't getting enough. Kids are, as I never tire of saying, being starved. Meanwhile these rich over privileged filth get everything. Do you really mean to tell me that, throughout the last ten months, they could not have come up with something to offer to people? Everyone is struggling, not just the people at the bleeding edge. I'm lucky in that I'm not starving, but even so, I'd be lying if I said this wasn't difficult. Especially now. Yet they have had all this time to do something, anything. Whatever happened to Sunak's helicopter money; pie in they sky I guess. Broadband communism. Just providing people with something to help them through. As much as I disagree with the deniers and the cranks, they are correct in that we can't go on like this forever. But nothing has been done, and I will never ever forget that, nor forgive.