The covid situation in the UK is pretty dire right now with close to 60,000 cases per day. It’s worse than it was back in March at the height of the first peak. I read that hospitals in London are now cancelling vital cancer surgery. This is the reason covid is so deadly. It may be a mild illness for the majority of the population but if enough people get sick and need hospital treatment then our hospital system becomes overwhelmed. This could, hypothetically-speaking, mean cancelling life-saving cancer surgery for a 35-year-old woman with breast cancer because the hospital is filled with elderly covid patients.
Scotland has been in Tier 4 since Boxing Day which means all shops closed except for essential services. You can only go out for exercise or to get groceries and/or medicine. Yet for some reason there’s still so much traffic. It’s not like it was back in March when the streets were quiet. I don’t understand where everyone is going since we’re not allowed to leave the city and everything is shut.
Nicola Sturgeon today announced Scotland will go into a full lockdown tonight. We were already in Tier 4 so all that changes is the stay at home message is now legally enforceable and you can only meet one other person outside for exercise when before it was groups of 6 (not counting children under 12). I think the announcement is more to make the gravity of the situation clear since it seems like many people are carrying on as though nothing unusual is happening.
Daniel and Elizabeth both went back to school today because they’ve been going to an online school since April last year. I told them last night how lucky they are because they’re the only children in Scotland going back to school today. They both rolled their eyes at me.
I do think state schools need to adopt an online model until the vaccine starts to take effect since it’s clear lockdown with schools open is not working. At the very least they should do online learning for high schools since high school children don’t need someone at home to babysit.
The only glimmer of hope on the horizon is the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine which has made it into people’s arms for the first time today. They’re aiming for 2 million jabs per week but I really think we need 2 millions jabs per day. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that none of the variants can circumvent the vaccines or we’re back at square one.
Here’s a photo I took of Duthie Park yesterday morning when I went running. Note the discarded face mask on the ground.
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