By Bernie Bell
I received an email from an old friend – one of my oldest friends – we were at Uni. together. He has a second hand record stall in a market and he has a friend, who works with him there.
His friend was due to go into hospital for a cataract operation, and took a Lateral Flow Test. Which was positive. So he took a PCR test. Which was also positive. I didn’t know that the letters stood for polymerase chain reaction – never thought to look that up until it got more ‘close to home’.
He’s not really ill with it and is at home, isolating. But – he will miss the appointment for his cataract operation and the way things are now, when will he get another appointment?
My friend also took a Lateral Flow Test which, thankfully, was negative. But, as apparently they‘re not always 100% correct, he’s also staying home and doing a test every day for a week – BECAUSE HE IS A REPONSIBLE PERSON! Fully vaccinated, and ‘Boosted’.
This also meant that he has had to close his shop – his only source of income – for at least 10 days.
And he’s concerned for his friend. And I’m concerned for my friend.
That’s the reality of Covid being active in Britain.
Meanwhile, he received an invitation from a couple of other old friends from Uni to meet up to see Van Morrison in concert in Liverpool in late May. That’s a while away, but I don’t see things clearing by then – not as long as people are determined to carry on behaving as though Covid is no longer an active threat to our lives and the stability of our lives.
I said he could be restrained and just say NO, or he could be unrestrained and tell them what he thinks of their daft idea.
Apparently, Van Morrison is an anti-vaxxer – which figures. A wonderful man in many ways – but has long had a reputation for being grouchy. It stops being a joke when he ignores Covid and puts on a concert. If he didn’t do the concert, folk wouldn’t/couldn’t go to it. It’s not like he needs the money.
The welfare of all, depends on all.
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Thanks for sharing… one of the realities… but there are so many more. The high pressure on the NHS will inevitably lead to a situation when the outcome of other treatments, not only planned ones and their delays, can be affected. How can one be expected to receive best care after an accident when staff are overworked, tired, knackered? Also you wouldn’t want to end up in hospital with a broken leg and come out (or not) with more than you bargained for?
It sometimes makes me wonder: if every day a plane would come down with fatalities in the range of what we have now experienced over months… would anybody want to fly? Calls would be very loud that safety needed to be addressed urgently.
In the case of Covid and all the uncertainties surrounding new variants… higher safety levels would be quite easily achieved by some discipline. Is society dancing on a volcanoe?
And again it is the xmas period where people are ‘stimulated’ (or should I say forced) into activities which in many cases might neither be essential nor meaningful.
Many decades ago my own granny said to me that she would rather receive a long handwritten letter for xmas instead of the stressful family gatherings. She could read it again and again whenever she wanted. This memory came back over the last days… she was probably sooo right.
Recently there was COP26. We should know by know that our consumption (in the rich countries) of everything… goods, energy, lifestyle etc…. is a big issue, still we are expected to participate in shopping sprees, excessive socialising… well knowing that this aggravates several problems simultaneously.
Will we ever learn? If not now, when? What is the prognosis for such a selfish species like the human race?
Just my dark thoughts for the day…
You are both not alone in your thoughts. Ps. I love the idea of receiving a long letter for Chrismas. I bet many -especially elderly people would like that. Good old fashioned style. I think I will get writing.