Took my elder boy to school today only for him to be turned away at the gate because there is a Covid case in his class(actually the boy who sits next to my boy), so no school for 10 days. No doubt the whole class will be tested. I thank you all in advance for your well wishes in these trying and testing times that we live in.
First it was lockdown, then it was test and trace, then vaccines, and now total isolation from the rest of the world, on pain of 10 years imprisonment for travellers who fail to disclose they’ve been to a country on the Government’s red list. Like a constantly receding destination, salvation from the wretched virus is seemingly always just beyond the horizon, one last heave away from success. We march in hope only never to arrive, with prospects of a credible and sustainable exit strategy again looking as far away as ever. The Government promises to publish a comprehensive road map out of lockdown later this month, yet with each passing day, the criteria required for an easing of restrictions gets more demanding still. We’d all assumed that once everyone above the age of 50 had been vaccinated, which on the present impressively fast rate of progress should be by early April, we’d be home free, as there are very few hospitalisations and deaths among those in younger cohorts. But no, say the scientific advisers and modellers. A virus running free among younger citizens who are not yet vaccinated could still exact a heavy toll. Not until 70pc of the population is inoculated can we start to feel remotely safe, they say, and even then, we will still need to worry about new, vaccine-resistant variants. Is there no end to the current misery? Seemingly not. Yet it is also a statement of fact that, as Colonel Bill Kilgore says in Apocalypse Now, “someday this war’s gonna end”. Well let’s be optimistic, and assume that today’s vaccines do indeed do the trick, or at least that the vaccine developers can stay ahead of the mutants with booster jabs. If that’s the case, we should be over the worst by the late summer. What sort of a world will the war against Covid leave behind? Anyone dreaming of a return to the old normality can forget it. The disease marks a defining point in history, where lots of things which have been incubating for years finally fall into place and the world shifts decisively on its axis. Even though not a particularly serious pandemic by past standards, there is an air of fin de siècle about Covid, a shifting of the tectonic plates that tells us that things are never going to be quite the same again. Perhaps the biggest of these changes, and for the more liberally minded among us one of the most worrying, is a much bigger and more intrusive role for the state. This is often the result of a serious crisis; all of a sudden, the state finds that it is needed, that when all around is frightened chaos, it is the only game in town, and it demands something back in return. Covid has allowed the Government massively to expand its reach and powers, nationalising great swathes of the economy and, through its social distancing restrictions, reaching deep into the way people live their lives. Under the guise of the public health emergency, Covid has also – via test and trace and mass vaccination – sanctioned a great leap forward in the surveillance society. Don’t believe this is all going to be reversed once the pandemic is over. The politicians and their officials find they rather like the new authoritarian reality. They are not alone; citizens seem only too happy to embrace the warm blanket of protection and uniformity the state offers in times of crisis. Just as we trumpet our own moral superiority over the authoritarian Chinese, we find ironically that Covid conspires to become more like them. Freedom suspended fast becomes freedom removed. It took decades for the economy properly to extract itself from state control after the intrusions of the Second World War. Much the same pattern is likely to assert itself with Covid. The drift back to state interventionism was possibly preordained well before the disease struck; the neoliberalism of the past 40 years has been under populist siege for a long time now. But Covid has made it a reality. I don’t want to exaggerate; the central pillars of the free market, democratic system – transparency and accountability – remain substantially intact. What we see instead is the thin end of the wedge, or an incremental erosion of the old polity, such that, as occurs under fully developed authoritarian regimes – where there can only be one way – it becomes ever harder to distinguish truth from untruth. The new reality finds its expression in the economy too, where things are only kept afloat through unprecedented levels of state intervention.
I bet you £50 that everything will go back to normal from the summer onwards And another £100 that we won't be living under a global communist government in the next few years (or whenever it is that you/Karen predict it's happening)
I reckon, anyone that has been in prison this year, should have to serve this year again, as they've not really lost their liberties as justice demands.
There's a fair few on here that aspire to reach the dizzy heights of being average, but fall well short.
You might have to get tested yourself,best of luck and hope it ends well. please log in to view this image
There will always be some low-IQ mongs that continue to wear masks, that's obvious. Once pubs/restaurants/public events reopen all non-mongs will be out like before. London will be heaving this summer, can't wait
I've seen Asian tourists wearing masks for years before the covid and it annoyed me then,I was of the mind that if you don't like our air don't come here then,not sure how I feel now!
Tbh wearing proper masks in cities makes sense, air pollution in the summer is probably worse for you than smoking 2 packs a day I can't wait to stop wearing my EU flag facemask.
Air pollution is nothing like smoking two packs a day, and dependent on the pollutant in question, is liable to be worse in winter, and the masks wouldn't help in either event. Pretty much a nap hand of ignorance on your part there.
