{"id":1365,"date":"2020-11-27T22:19:21","date_gmt":"2020-11-27T22:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=1365"},"modified":"2020-11-27T22:19:21","modified_gmt":"2020-11-27T22:19:21","slug":"friday-27th-november-2020-day-256","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2020\/11\/27\/friday-27th-november-2020-day-256\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday, 27th November, 2020 [Day 256]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today turned out to be quite a fine and bright day,\u00a0although it was pretty cold at the start. We are evidently in the midst of a\u00a0high-pressure\u00a0weather system at the moment and so enjoying the reasonable weather whilst we can. Today was the day when our domestic help\u00a0arrives and we always have a good chat and a laugh about life’s vicissitudes before we start our morning walk. We met with two of our sets of friends today and\u00a0enjoyed a chat on their drive – which actually\u00a0passed quite a lot of the morning away. And so to home and to a risotto made according to my newly developed recipe (cauliflower rice, kipper fillets) which is turning out to be a Friday favourite. This afternoon, after lunch, I decided to have a second\u00a0brisk walk into Bromsgrove on my own this time. I wanted to buy some cleaning\u00a0materials and hardware type items that never quite\u00a0make it onto our weekly\u00a0Waitrose<\/em> order – I am always amazed at the bits and bobs of things that you suddenly find you need (mainly cleaning materials) and I ended up buying and lugging home a large bag full of the kinds of\u00a0things it is\u00a0always incredibly frustrating to run out of. For\u00a0example, I\u00a0always like to have a supply of sponge cloths available to cope with a sudden spillage or other emergency and these start \u00a0a progression down the cleaning order (ready used get relegated to car cleaning before their eventual demise) Several large parcels\u00a0arrived\u00a0including some shirts and other Amazon deliveries to\u00a0keep us well supplied. I try to avoid Amazon when I can\u00a0largely for ethical reasons and they are not always the cheapest – but they do tend to be the fastest and with ‘free’ delivery (via Amazon ‘Prime’) \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The COVID-19 virus is causing myriad controversies. The Sage group are advising that the Christmas celebrations\u00a0could cause the incidence of virus to\u00a0increase ‘by \u00a0a large amount’. Last night at the Prime Ministerial briefing, Chris Whitty the Government’s chief medical\u00a0officer said ‘Don’t hug grandma if you want her\u00a0to survive Christmas<\/em>‘. So there seems to be an indication that if we do collectively relax our guard a little (for quite\u00a0understandable reasons) there will quite a price to pay in the New Year. The\u00a0difficulty is that this is just the period of time when hospitals naturally\u00a0experience a lot of\u00a0pressure\u00a0with ‘normal’\u00a0respiratory conditions that require\u00a0hospital\u00a0treatment. So this does\u00a0place most people with real Christmas dilemmas – do we engage in something that approximates to a ‘normal’ Christmas with relatives or do we\u00a0attempt to soldier on for a few more\u00a0weeks, knowing the end (via a vaccine) may be\u00a0within our sight?<\/span><\/p>\n

The Americans are facing quite an acute dilemma at the moment as they are\u00a0trying to negotiate how to celebrate Thanskgiving (which is when many\u00a0American families traditionally get together) with a pandemic that is still wreaking a terrible toll. The incidence rate is approaching 13.5 million and another 8 million have apparently had the virus and recovered. The death toll is 270,000 (more than a quarter of a million) and it could be that if the situation approximates to that of the UK, then this figure may almost double once we take into account the number of people who may have died prematurely because they could not be availed of suitable treatment when resources\u00a0are\u00a0diverted to cope with COVID-19 cases. I did read a\u00a0terrible ‘Vox pop’ account about a week ago where some people who were dying of the virus had so swallowed the Donald Trump line about ‘false news’ that they refused to believe that they were actually dying of the virus – they thought they were dying of pneumonia. There\u00a0is a conspiracy theory of which the majority of\u00a0Americans have heard that powerful people actually planned the\u00a0coronavirus – 5% of people think this is definitely true whilst another 20% believe it is probably true. If we were to stratify\u00a0the\u00a0responses by educational level, then\u00a0approximately half of the\u00a0American sample (educated only with a high school\u00a0education i.e.\u00a0without any form of higher education) believe that this conspiracy theory \u00a0is definitely or probably true. Of course, this section of the population formed the bedrock of\u00a0support for the Donald Trump vote so beliefs in the virus have\u00a0helped to form a chasm in American society similar to that formed by Brexit in the UK.<\/span><\/p>\n

Donald Trump has finally\u00a0admitted that he will leave the White House if the\u00a0Electoral College votes for Biden (which\u00a0they will) But he explains that it is hard for him to concede\u00a0because ‘we know that was\u00a0massive fraud’\u00a0<\/em>Of course, we do not know whether Trump is so\u00a0deluded that he believes his own propaganda or whether it is all part of a massive game to keep his support base as high as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today turned out to be quite a fine and bright day,\u00a0although it was pretty cold at the start. We are evidently in the midst of a\u00a0high-pressure\u00a0weather system at the moment and so enjoying the reasonable weather whilst we can. Today was the day when our domestic help\u00a0arrives and we always have a good chat and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1365"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1368,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions\/1368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}