Lockdown 3, day 19

In Portugal, workers get full pay to isolate, so there's no question of people making a choice between feeding their families or stopping the spread.

In Australia, they've had more cases in their entire epidemic than we are currently having a day. They closed the borders properly, and made sure people isolated on arrival. Boris continues to 'think about' whether this is a good idea.

In Germany, there are huge fines, not just for organising a party, but for leaving your house if you're required to isolate. This is backed up, again, by financial support so there's no excuse for leaving. 

The government have repeatedly claimed to be following the science and yet enact lockdowns, only needed due to the incompetent test and trace system, much later than the scientists advise. They are using this as an excuse to funnel millions of pounds to people who are clearly not up to the job or who rapidly create companies to profit from this disaster and then branding these things 'NHS'. Nowhere near enough power has been given to local authorities. Leicester set up their own test and trace and reached 90% of people, the national picture at that point was woefully low at under a third. 

At least the vaccination roll out is going well as they've finally asked the actual health service to take charge of something. But then we are giving the vaccines in a way not researched in the clinical trials, with no idea of the impact of that. 

This new variant may have cropped up anyway but with a high caseload the chance of stronger variants appearing just increases, the incompetence has contributed to it. This morning the news mentions that it may not be only more transmissible, but more deadly, at yet still, we have dithering. 

It doesn't even make any sense economically, the longer this drags on the worse it is for everyone, in every way. If this had been taken as seriously at first as other countries did, or with a hint of compassion and realism for what we're asking people to do, we could be basically out of this mess. 

In New Zealand, people's lives are essentially back to normal, it was possible to eliminate this. 

There's a lot of stressful circumstances going on for my little corner of the universe at the moment and I'm so angry that I can't support my family and get the support of my family and friends through it all. 

My heart goes out to NHS friends, I can't even imagine the pressure you're under. 

I do hear of the the impact of this disease on the family of the bereaved, and I'm angry every time I have a new client whose relative may still be here if different decisions were made.