{"id":1521,"date":"2020-12-30T20:44:41","date_gmt":"2020-12-30T20:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=1521"},"modified":"2020-12-30T20:48:23","modified_gmt":"2020-12-30T20:48:23","slug":"wednesday-30th-december-2020-day-289","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2020\/12\/30\/wednesday-30th-december-2020-day-289\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday, 30th December, 2020 [Day 289]"},"content":{"rendered":"

As soon as we woke up this morning, we were greeted with the news that the Oxford University\/AstraZeneca virus has received\u00a0the\u00a0approach of the regulators and hence can be released for immediate use (from next Monday onwards) Whereas the dosage is normally one jab\u00a0followed by another some weeks later, the regulators have approved the protocol that the first dose can be administered (giving about 70% protection) followed by a second dose some twelve weeks later. This approach means that the protection is being spread\u00a0much more\u00a0rapidly than if you had one jab followed by\u00a0another some three weeks later. In order to protect the population, though, it is necessary to\u00a0inoculate some 2 million people a week and\u00a0whether this is achievable remains to be seen. The\u00a0manifest advantages of this particular vaccine are its cheapness (about \u00a33 a shot\u00a0rather than \u00a325 for the Pfizer alternative) \u00a0and the fact that it only needs normal\u00a0refrigeration conditions (and not the -70 degrees of the Pfizer alternative) This makes it much easier to get into residential homes. Also the government has taken out an option for 100 million doses of the vaccine should be sufficient to\u00a0inoculate the whole of the ‘at-risk’ population in the UK. But it is undoubtedly a race between the\u00a0rapidly advancing new variant of the virus on the one hand versus the\u00a0rapidity with which the new vaccine can be ruled out across the population on the other.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meg and I walked down to collect our newspapers in relatively overcast but not snowy conditions. It looks as though the Midlands lay in between two swathes of snow bearing clouds to the north and to the south. However, where the sludge had turned to ice along the\u00a0upper\u00a0reaches of the main road had to be\u00a0negotiated with a certain amount of care so we either walked on the road or\u00a0navigated our way with extreme caution along the pavements. Conditions improved as we approached the park, though (warmer temperature? more feet to melt the snow?) After we collected our newspapers, we popped into Waitrose<\/em> for a carton of milk \u00a0and then swung onto the High Street in Bromsgrove to go to replenish supplies at one of those cut-price ‘health and beauty’ shops that seem to have\u00a0sprung up recently. This is because we suspect that we may be moved from\u00a0Tier 2 to Tier 4 later on today when the changes are announced by Matt Hancock so we were planning ahead for a lockdown (or ‘semi-lockdown’) lasting at least a month. When we got\u00a0home, we had a nice meal of our\u00a0favourite Waitrose<\/em>\u00a0fishcakes and then settled down to\u00a0watch the\u00a0latest news on the\u00a0rolling news programmes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today was the day when the EU-UK trade bill was\u00a0being rushed through Parliament, with the idea being to get all of the stages passed and then through the Lords ready for the Royal Assent later on this evening. The Labour Party has been whipped to support the bill but in the opinion of many, the Labour Party should have abstained leaving the Tories to pick up all of the fall-out that will undoubtedly occur once the full\u00a0implications of the deal start to become\u00a0apparent (not least the mountain of paperwork that is now required, the fact that the fishing industry has been left in the lurch and crucially the position of the services industry is still undetermined) The Commons finally approved the ‘deal’\u00a0bu 521 votes to 73.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last night, I wrote a long email to our friends in Spain who seem to be experiencing some\u00a0difficulties in coping with the long\u00a0months of lockdown – I get the impression\u00a0that the Spanish police are much more assiduous with enforcing regulations than in this country (which may be a long felt hangover from the days of Franco even though he died in 1975). \u00a0I am\u00a0offering whatever advice and support I can, even including the suggestion that they try some Yoga which may have some benefits in\u00a0alleviating long-term stress. It is interesting that the BBC is offering an item on their website under the title ‘COVID-19: Five ways to stay positive\u00a0throughout the winter<\/em>‘ in which they have assembled the help of several mental health experts who have provided a series of tips that may prove helpful for many.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, we in Bromsgrove (and many other parts of the country) have been moved from Tier 2 to Tier 3. I am not exactly sure how much more\u00a0stringent this will prove to be in our day-to-day lives. It means that some three-quarters of the population are in the highest possible Tier 4 and most of the rest of the\u00a0country in Tier 3. From the point of\u00a0view of the\u00a0politicians, at least they can say that this ‘Short term\u00a0pain for long-term gain as the vaccine is on its way’<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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

As soon as we woke up this morning, we were greeted with the news that the Oxford University\/AstraZeneca virus has received\u00a0the\u00a0approach of the regulators and hence can be released for immediate use (from next Monday onwards) Whereas the dosage is normally one jab\u00a0followed by another some weeks later, the regulators have approved the protocol that […]<\/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-1521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521","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=1521"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1526,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521\/revisions\/1526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}