{"id":1957,"date":"2021-03-13T21:00:56","date_gmt":"2021-03-13T21:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=1957"},"modified":"2021-03-13T23:14:32","modified_gmt":"2021-03-13T23:14:32","slug":"saturday-13th-march-2021-day-362","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/03\/13\/saturday-13th-march-2021-day-362\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday, 13th March, 2021 [Day 362]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today turned out to be a fairly typical Saturday. The big storm which had swept across the UK from the Atlantic had done its worst but there were still the\u00a0remnants of some following winds and rather lowered temperatures. We picked up our complement of\u00a0Saturday newspapers, replete with supplements ready for a good read later on today. And so we made our way to the park which seemed a bit more empty of children on bikes and dogs which is normally the case for a Saturday morning. There we met with our normal crowd of park\u00a0<\/span>habitu\u00e9s – we tend to sit on the same benches every day and as people pass us by, they stop for a little chat. In this colder weather, the older amongst us have realised that it is not a good idea to stand for too long nattering \u00a0as our knees get set and our bodies get cooler so most of the passers-by just stop for a few minutes to exchange gossip of the day. Nearly all of us have been jabbed by now and some of us are awaiting our second dose of the vaccine in\u00a0about 3-4 weeks time. We are all making tentative plans for the things that we intend to do during the summer when the lockdown has been alleviated. However, many of us of us are working out the people (generally relatives) that we would\u00a0like to meet up with again as soon as we can and the crucial date is March 29th which is two weeks on Monday. On that date, up to six people drawn from two households will be\u00a0allowed to meet in an open space such as a garden, so I imagine that many people will take that opportunity.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Quite a lot of COVID-19 news has surfaced today. For a start the number of (first) vaccinations has now reached 23.6 million which by my\u00a0calculations is over 50% of the\u00a0adult population. One would\u00a0have thought that there would been\u00a0much celebration at passing the 50%\u00a0milestone but. if this has occurred, I have missed it. The\u00a0number of new infections is down to about 6,000 a day which is approximately one tenth of the daily rate\u00a0announced at the height of this phase of the pandemic (last January). In the last two weeks of March, however, is looks as though the UK is due to receive some extra batches of vaccine and therefore the rates of vaccination might increase dramatically. Various vaccination centres have been put on maximum alert to greatly\u00a0<\/span>accelerate the rate of vaccination and asked to ready their staff in\u00a0preparation for this. There is a target to get all adults\u00a0inoculated by the end of July but it is quite possible that with an acceleration of the rate, all UK adults may be vaccinated by early June. In today’s ‘The Times<\/em>‘ an\u00a0analysis has been reported that the cost of the lockdown is some \u00a318 billion per month in GDP. So every month earlier that the vaccination target is brought forward should more than pay for the costs of the vaccines themselves. Of course, there is ‘many a slip t’wist cup and lip<\/em>‘ as they say but we do, as a country, seem to be a long way ahead of\u00a0any of our fellow European countries. The last set of comparable figures\u00a0that I have seen published put the UK at 34% but the\u00a0average for\u00a0Spain,\u00a0Italy, France and Germany is about one fifth of this (at 7%) Of course, there is always the\u00a0possibility that new variants may arise (against which our existing vaccine will not be very\u00a0efficacious until they have had the chance to be reformulated)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This afternoon proved to host one of the most exciting rugby matches in years – in this case between England and France. Had\u00a0the French won, they would have\u00a0been on-course for the ‘Grand Slam’ i.e one team beats all of the others in the competition. The French certainly had the better of the first half and actually scored their first try after about 80 seconds of the match in a piece of\u00a0<\/span>brilliant\u00a0French\u00a0flair and\u00a0opportunism. The\u00a0French led at half-time but the English\u00a0gradually overhauled\u00a0the French in the\u00a0second half.\u00a0However, they\u00a0were still behind three minutes before the end when\u00a0Maro Itoje (who had a terrible game against Wales\u00a0conceding a clutch of penalties) squeezed over the line and was adjudged by the TV official to have just about grounded the ball, thus earning the try which secured victory.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Tonight there have been disturbances in South London as several women’s groups were planning a vigil in honour of Sarah Everard (murdered by a serving police officer). The\u00a0vigil was not allowed by the police\u00a0despite promises by the organisers to\u00a0social distance – but a lot of\u00a0women turned up to the vigil in any case only to run into\u00a0clashes with the police. Under the circumstances, the police probably ‘called this one wrong’ even though mass gatherings are against the law under current COVID regulations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today turned out to be a fairly typical Saturday. The big storm which had swept across the UK from the Atlantic had done its worst but there were still the\u00a0remnants of some following winds and rather lowered temperatures. We picked up our complement of\u00a0Saturday newspapers, replete with supplements ready for a good read later on […]<\/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-1957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957","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=1957"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1962,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957\/revisions\/1962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}