Blickling Tower

It’s been a beautiful sunny day with little wind, so even though it was chilly it was soooooo much nicer that it’s been for days. After all the rain yesterday, G and I walked the 4 mile cycle path at Blickling as it’s the least muddy place to walk locally. It was lovely to see so many people out for a winter walk, the car park was heaving. I always wonder if the tourists are enjoying their stay in this remote tower. 

Day 664 / Day 31 of Plan B (for my record only)
The Sunday Times has reported that the UK had a quarter of a million backlog of PCR tests this week and people were waiting between 5-7 days for results, with some tests being void due to the delay. There were 141,472 new cases reported today. There’s talk about cutting self-isolation to 5 days from 7 days as ‘in the States’, but what most people don’t realise is that the UK measures self isolation time from the first day of symptoms (or the first day of a positive test whichever is earlier to cover asymptomatic cases detected by LFT) and the US measures it from when you get a positive test (which might be days after your first symptoms if symptomatic). Personally it sounds self-defeating to me if the scientists think there’s a risk of it being transmissible as more people would end up being off sick, not less. The Education Secretary denied reports that the UK is planning to stop making LFTs freely available except to high risk settings - another daft idea at this particular point in the pandemic. I was initially sceptical about Boris’ ‘moon shot’ of having so many tests freely available for all, but given he’s made England an outlier in Europe in having only a few, weak non pharmaceutical interventions - I think the LFTs have and will be a key control to get us through this Winter. The Welsh First Minister has said ‘I think they (the UK Government) have not done what the science would have told them they should do.’ An epidemiologist said today that ‘rates of infection are still increasing in all areas except London.’