A Wells Wander

G and I decided to go for a walk around Wells today, our first trip since the pandemic arrived as we were expecting it to be back to the 'normal' number of people after all the tourists leave. Unfortunately it was very busy and social distancing was a challenge - not least as tourists behave as if they're on holiday from the virus and current restrictions don't apply! Hopefully we'll be able to walk in peace from November. Lovely to see the sun again and geese arriving - see Extra. I wanted to test out my long lens, Canon couldn't find anything wrong with it although I'm still finding it unreliable in focusing. 

Day 206 / Full Day 198 of Lockdown / Day 24 of Rule of Six (for my record only)
UK deaths up 70 to 42,515 (revised basis), with a 14,162 rise in new daily cases, 3,145 patients in hospital and 410 in ventilator beds. England has about 1k more Covid patients in hospital than a week ago, a rise of 50%. The UK now has more daily cases than either Spain or France with Italy and Germany still have daily cases under control, so we appear to soon be the worst affected in Europe again! I'm certain national restrictions now need to be considerably tightened - I'd close pubs and restaurants (bar takeaways) and stop households mixing inside. In Scotland, pubs, restaurants and cafes will be barred from selling alcohol indoors for 16 days from Friday and areas with high Covid rates will only be able to do takeaways. Total cases to date passed 36m last night, up 1m in 3 days. 

A group of scientists have called for a herd immunity approach, allowing those at low risk to live their lives as normal whilst protecting those more vulnerable (largely pensioners). Whilst there's a low possibility they're right, it would be a massive risk as the evidence to date suggests immunity doesn't last long; younger people do suffer from long-Covid; plus in reality the age groups mix all the time. NHS England is setting up long-Covid clinics, saying that there were 'tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands' of patients affected' and with some estimates saying that 1 in 10 of those infected will be affected. The most common symptom is extreme fatigue.