Covid-19

Today marks a year and a day since the United Kingdom imposed a lockdown due to the spread of Covid-19, a virus that was seen to be causing devastating numbers of deaths and hospitalisations across the world, in Europe and was taking effect in the UK.

I cycled this morning to get my first dose of the Astra Zeneca vaccine for Covid-19. I’m really impressed by the number of available centres and the way it has been organised, and I’m really happy to have done my bit.

We are living through a major pandemic. Yesterday the UK ‘reflected’ on its 1 year anniversary of lockdown. This is fact, it’s not fiction. Wishing that it weren’t so changes nothing. I was thinking back to last spring when I would stare at people wearing masks on public transport, thinking “Oh that’s a bit much!”.…

It is hard to believe that a year has passed since the start of our first lockdown in the United Kingdom, and we’re now in our third which had required the schools to close for about 2 months from the beginning of January.

We cautiously prepared not to expect any vaccines for at least a year, and that getting them would take even longer. We now have at least 3 seemingly viable vaccines, with jaw droppping efficacy rates of up to 90%. One type is based on introducing mRNA into the host, inside a lipid container, where it…

I write this on the day that the USA goes to the polls, after 4 years of having an openly, unapologetically terrible man as the President. I don’t think that the country had been perfect before he took office, but I think removing a leader who gives validation to the very things that hold back…

So the summer holidays are over, things have calmed down a little, and the kids went back to school this past week. It’s almost like everything is ok now. Or is it?

Summer is almost over, the weather is turning towards autumn a little bit. I’m sitting at home in my garage, looking at the back garden recovering now from the unusually sustained heatwave we had a few weeks ago. Where there were bare patches and scorched grass and moss, new blades are sprouting up from the…

I just returned from holiday, seeing family in Finland. Initially I was really nervous and unsure if going away was a good idea, but it turned out to be a lifesaver.

I haven’t left my hometown in 4 months. So it was really strange to find myself getting ready to get in a cab, go to the airport and fly abroad to Finland.

Restrictions are relaxing, and from the 4th of July this weekend more shops and bars are going to be allowed to open. Whether this will be a good thing will depend on how diligent people are in acting sensibly.

A strange week. George Floyd was killed on 25th May by a policeman in Minneapolis. He’s not the first, but it was caught on a smartphone by a brave girl. Since then we’ve had riots in the US and internationally, calling for racial justice. Statues of oppression, of slave owners, are being toppled in cities…