Just been offered appt for my second jab. I was already really feeling positive about the vaccine now, never more so. Still, that is tempered with the reality that the long term health cost for many survivors is upsetting, and going largely unnoticed.
I've got off lightly, but still am carrying a handful of very minor issues.
A lot of people out there are already affected by a lot of small health issues. Unvaccinated people spreading COVID would make life worse for a lot of people. And there's nothing like the minor benefits of good health to make you feel ok about things. I think 40 sths are going to feel it hard, because you are at that point where, it's very noticable that the regeneration of health slows down to a crawl. I am pretty much persuaded that COVID is therefore likely to effectively age some people prematurely. Fuck that shit.
It's not perfect, but this stuff needs to be dealt with as quickly and effectively as possible.
67% more transmissible than the variant from Kent. Fuck.
(PHE report).
Yeah. This is how it's going to go. We've done a reasonable job in reshaping the conditions to favour the the really virulent variants. As long as they aren't any more harmful or unstable, we're really just crossing an almost inevitable hump in the road.
The final, long term answer might well be a dummy COVID virus that spreads harmlessly in humans and animals. Because it's either that, vaccines that are much more effective in preventing transmission. Or genuinely closed borders, a working track and trace that can swoop down on new variants.
I mean, a real working track and trace, like Germany HAD, before they lost focus.
And then there are the measures they would need to ensure they could eradicate it. Which could look something like house arrest.
Anyone fancy that? Not the politicians. No chance. It's the kind of thing that would poll like enforced beatings for sickly children, until it became a thing, at which point, people would accept it - as they did lockdown. But there's no chance we'd get to that point, because we can just play this game of keeping enough people out of hospital that an excruciatingly slow progression towards normal life continues until the event of another heavy outbreak that threatens tens of thousands of lives, by which point, people will have been out and about for long enough to be ok with a period lockdown again when polled, and politicians will gladly take that as an easy choice and undemanding option that they can't really screw up or fail to deliver on.
Damn, it appears my cynicism has never faded, and I just stopped thinking or reading about it all for a few months to sort myself out.
I think I'll go back to that.
