My nice is bright, inquisitive and creative - and starting from today, she's having that beaten out of her every day for the next twelve years
Two things should have happened during the epidemic and didn't. 1. There should have been daily questions and daily reports on progress towards the handful of things which may end or greatly alleviate the epidemic: a successful vaccine improved treatments universal distribution of masks a process to track and isolate infections. 2. Meaningful data concerning the epidemic should have been collected and analyzed by a panel of qualified scientists, who should have provided periodic updates on what we have learned, what looks like the most sensible things to do, and why. Instead we've had the media playing with their usual nursery toys of human interest stories and reports of grievous woe (rather than demanding answers to the most important questions); politicians unable or unwilling to prioritize tasks in such a way as to serve their constituents; and decisions affecting billions continuing to be made on the basis of the same squishy combination of pseudoscience and so-called common sense we had at the beginning of the pandemic. (And this despite the fact that applying common sense to medicine frequently has disastrous consequences, like the polio epidemic.) Surprising? No. Disappointing? Absolutely. Rant full of run-on sentences over.
Very. I wish that Game of Thrones had, for the demise of Olenna Tyrell, had put there in that room a portrait of her in "Emma Peel" vintage, just so the unaware generations who were blown away by her acting would have also known just how beautiful Diana Rigg was in her prime.
