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I don’t suppose you do, why would you? But it was quite a significant day. In a Berkshire hospital a woman’s death was recognised as covid related. She was the first. I gather from the snippets of news that leak through to me that we are approaching 110,000 now. And from a newspaper headline I saw we are going to quarantine people in hotels when they arrive from abroad. Surely a year to late. Stable doors and bolting horses come to mind. Also leaking through from change.org came the news that some people wanted a state funeral for Captain Tom. I saw him interviewed several times on tv and my opinion that he was a humble man was never diminished. I have to ask myself if he saw his garden trek as worthy of such recognition. If it was, why are we not holding state funerals for all the carers and NHS staff who have died in the line of duty. They could have walked away from their jobs and be alive today, but they didn’t because they cared about their patients and the rest of us. Every day nurses and doctors took the chance that their ppe was enough to protect them. How will their sacrifice and bravery be recognised? Probably not in a pay rise.

The benefit of cutting oneself off from the media for a week (still ongoing) is that you aren’t at risk of being lied to, misled or having your hopes falsely raised. However, you aren’t cut off from reality and your own thoughts. Reality says that one month into the vaccination programme and my 90-year-old mother has not been vaccinated, nor have the other residents of her home or the staff. At a blood test (or letting as I prefer to call it), my GP surgery could offer me no information on the vaccination programme as they had none. Bubbling to the surface of my thoughts came the idea that being British, having the qualities of Britishness, was more important than any political status (I have no faith in anyone purporting to lead an English party). But Britishness will have to wait for another day as it became evident that all the things we might have taken pride in do not measure up on the international scene or are not British at all. Take the NHS (and thank you again for the service I have received in the last six months and the service you continue to provide for everyone against all odds). Sorry, take the NHS, a flagship of being British and we find that, out of 33 countries in an OECD* survey, we came 22nd. The survey counted the number of doctors for each one thousand of the population. Needless to say Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Lithuania and Italy all have more than four. The United Kingdom narrowly beats Slovenia. We have 2.8 doctors for every one thousand people. Doesn’t seem that significant but those top countries effectively have 30% more doctors than we do. Then we note that, from a House of Commons report, one in seven of our NHS workers are not British, there are 170,000 of them. Some 67,000 – 5.5% of the total workforce – come from the EU. Why, we are so good, aren’t we? British nurses will take a degree before they qualify and accumulate all the debt that goes with it, as much as £50,000 is estimated. The government have just offered to pay £5,000 of their £9,000 a year tuition fees. Nurses can expect one of the lowest returns on their investment of anyone earning a degree. Great incentive to get into debt. In Germany, nurses train within hospitals as they used to do here, and get paid (yes, they get paid for their work on the wards) they get paid up to £1,000 a month. Enough said. Then I looked at the other things that are quite important to my life – the water company is Canadian, the company that empties the bins is French, the electric company is French, the big investors in BT (it used to be British Telecom) are German, American, Swiss and Norwegian, the train company is Dutch, of mobile phone companies O2 is Spanish and 3 is Hong Kong owned, Shell has its headquarters in Holland, my car is nominally German but all makes use components from all over the world, Land Rover and Jaguar are subsidiaries of an Indian company. Vodafone and British Gas remain, essentially British. What can we cling to that identifies us as British? * Another doctor survey put us at 48 in the world trailing the Bahamas, Egypt and Mongolia.

I wasn’t looking for a benefit from Covid, in fact I was shocked when I realised that there might be one. Now I’ve found it I’m thrilled and delighted that we might have put an end to one of the blights of modern society. Social distancing has put an end to the ‘kissing’ syndrome. I’ve no objection to the occasional snog, but I’ve no time for the false kissing of everyone you meet. As a kid you’re obliged to kiss all adults and accept their slobber. However, the use of the kiss declines from about the age of four, after which it was usually reserved for your mum, nan or great granny who was inevitably bristly. The kiss then re-emerges around the age of 14 as a fantasy but one that was specifically targeted (as a boy) at some generally unavailable girl, often a few years your senior. Then, in my antiquated experience, it eventually erupted in a generally inadequate, ill-executed, first kiss. The rest of that is history, but fortunately was restricted to you girlfriend, partner and children. All were bona fide kisses directed at people you love. Now we have created a ‘Hug and Kiss’ hierarchy where kissing slips lower and lower down the list. 1 Strangers, handshake if necessary. 2 Friend, longer handshake (used to be the end point for all men) increasingly a ‘kiss’. 3 Close friend, hug but not too close or of too long a duration (to use the Big Bang time standard), one Mississippi. (These can be male/female, male/male if you’re on a football pitch*, female/female.) The ‘kiss’ is obligatory and often appears feigned. 4 Very close friend, a two Mississippi more snugly sort of hug but without rubbing or over intimate contact. (These can be male/male if one of them has just scored a vital goal, but generally seen only among women, though some women will inflict it on men who they feel they know very well, while the men are thinking, ‘who is this woman?’) It may be necessary to use musical nomenclature to identify gender specific hugs. Women do the augmented hug (a sharp) while men will go for the diminished hug (a flat) which is barely a hug at all. To complicate the issue, this ‘kiss’ has made a relatively recent appearance. The kiss is something totally different. In my innocence I grew up thinking that a kiss meant your lips actually make contact with a person. I now admit my ignorance. It has grown from the formal medieval chivalric kiss on the hand (taboo nowadays unless the hand has been very recently washed while singing Happy Birthday) to an exaggerated pantomime gesture where cheeks are waved next to each other (the lips not coming within four inches of the face), the lips are pouted and various forms of ‘moi’ emanate. Being British, most of us forced into such contortions omit the sound effects, but there are a growing number (and too many, in my opinion) who go for the Oscar, that is best sound rather than best actor. And, where you were safe in only being kissed by female blood relatives and your own offspring, nowadays many women will inflict this on you at meeting you for the second time – and in the presence of you partner (which leads to other issues, not for discussion here). If nothing else, maybe being out of Europe will enable the normally cold-blooded Brits to readjust their kissing procedures as we have neither the style or aplomb of our French and Italian counterparts. (*Long gone are the days when, after a game of sport, you would merely shake hands with the opposition. Today you have to grip opposing hands and reach round to pat each other on the back with the free hand. What’s that about?)

I sat and watched you on the tv. You, Boris, told me and millions like me to stay at home. You told us to work from home, if we could. You told us to exercise locally, not to travel outside your local area. You said it, our leader, the person we are expected to listen to and, potentially, obey. So why did you go from London to Bristol to visit a vaccination centre? Your home is above your office, listen to your own guidance. And let’s face it, you were of no practical use in a vaccination centre. If retired doctors and working dentists don’t have the required 20 odd bits of paper to stick a needle in my arm, you certainly don’t. It was a political move, a photo opportunity. If you had got on your bike and pedalled, I may feel less offended, but, in all probability, you travelled in an official car, with an official driver, a security guard and one of your press team. That’s four people in a vehicle for several hours with no social distancing. Smart. It’s almost inevitable that another security vehicle followed and there were police outriders. In Bristol, according to the local paper, you met healthcare workers and journalists. More potential transmission. What is particularly galling is a photograph of you standing and watching someone get the needle. Why? We have seen a plethora of old people getting their jabs recently, why did you have to get in on it? Oh, politics. Should have guessed. So why did you go to the Olympic park for a bike ride? No one has come clean yet on whether you cycled there or got a lift (more people coming into close contact, even when masked). It doesn’t really matter does it? We are allowed to go to an open space for exercise. It’s a shame you haven’t got anywhere more local you can go. Silly me. You can almost throw a cricket ball into Horse Guards’ Parade from where you live. Then there’s St James’ Park, a distance of 250 yards. Green Park just over half a mile away and Hyde Park a distant 1.14 miles away. There was no excuse and certainly no need for you to take your motley crew to the East End of London, particularly when you home post code records 624 positive tests per 100,000 and the Olympic Park area has 946 positive tests per 100,000. So why can’t you and all your ministers agree on exactly what the guidance is, what local is? Why are different police forces expected to implement guidance when they are given no clear instruction? Why is Priti Patel telling me this morning, in the Daily Telegraph, that the number of positive tests is dropping and they were focusing on compliance rather than any toughening of the measure, while the Daily Express says Priti Patel has backed a tough crackdown on the nation’s lockdown rule breakers. Meanwhile Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the BBC it was “those individual decisions” that determine the virus’s spread and it “comes down to the behaviour of everyone”. “Together we can make this the peak if enough people follow the rules which are incredibly clear,” he said. Better tell Boris.  

Sorry, anger and sadness are odd bedfellows. First: ‘The weeks ahead will be the hardest yet,’ but we are apparently entering ‘the last phase of the struggle.’ So says a prime minister who promised on Sunday it was safe to send children to school and then closed them down the next day. On Monday morning all the papers said that scientists agreed we were at Covid Alert Level Five – there is a material risk of healthcare services being overwhelmed. Surely they didn’t keep that a secret for the weekend. If the news media knew that on Sunday (to write Monday’s papers) it beggar’s belief that no one had told the Prime Minister, or perhaps his £145,000 a year press secretary kept it from him. Second: Somewhere along the line, the politicians are being misinformed or selectively choosing the information they share. We have been presented with this illusion that the vaccine will defeat the virus and we can ease the lockdown in February and enjoy Christmas at Easter. I have no desire to burst anyone’s bubble, but do our leaders pay no attention to what the scientists are saying. While Moderna’s and other’s vaccines do appear to prevent people from getting ‘severely sick’ from COVID-19, ‘they do not show that they prevent you from potentially carrying this virus . . . and infecting others.’ This is not a quote from a random scientist, this is Moderna’s chief medical officer Tal Zaks. He makes that vaccine. ‘I’m very confident that transmission between people will be reduced by such a highly effective vaccine—maybe not 90% but maybe 50%.’ Again, not a random scientist, but Professor Ugur Sahin, founder of BioNTech which developed its Covid vaccine with Pfizer. And they were talking about a full dose, not the half measures we will be dishing out. It seems that even after vaccination you can still spread the virus. This matters, a London hospital doctor said he was seeing as many patients under his age being admitted as those over his age. He was 54. This is no longer an old person’s problem. Finally, by the end of the month we will almost certainly have recorded 100,000 deaths – family and friends who have Covid on their death certificates.

Hooray, the vaccine’s here. Almost. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says the UK must double its vaccination target to two million a week to avoid a third/fourth wave this year. Easter does depend on who you consider to be at greatest risk from the virus. Statistically those at greatest risk are those over 50 and those with an underlying illness. The government hopes to be vaccinating one million people a week by the middle of January, this month. Let’s assume, probably erroneously that everyone in care homes and all the care home workers have had their first dose (which many of us will know they haven’t), the vaccination programme looks like this. Group 1 Care home residents and workers – 1.1m – done Group 2 People aged over 80 – 3.4m, frontline health and social care workers – 1.6m – 5 weeks Group 3 People aged 75 to 79 – 2.3m – 2.3 weeks Group 4 Clinically vulnerable – 2.2m, those aged 70-74 -3.3m – 5.5 weeks. So those people will be done by Easter, if we meet the schedule. And that takes us up to 13 weeks when all of those will need a second vaccination. It is more than likely that it will be the end of June before they have all had the proper course of two vaccinations. But how about the others at risk? Group 5 People ages 65-69 – 3.4m – 3.4 weeks Group 6 People aged 16-64 with underlying health conditions – 8.5m – 8.5 weeks. That is another three months before they have had their first jab. We add another three for the second jab and… we’ve reached Christmas. Groups 7,8 and 9 are people aged between 50 and 64 – 12.9m – 13 weeks. It will be June of 2022 before those at greatest risk have been vaccinated. The current population of the UK is 68m. To achieve herd immunity we need at least 90% of the population to have had covid or the vaccine, that is 61.2 million. If we remove those over 50, health workers, carers, and with underlying illnesses etc, we have a balance of 22.5m whose two injections will take another 45 weeks which takes us past Christmas 2022 and towards Easter 2023. The PM said Easter but did not specify a year. (Population figures from Office of National Statistics data from 2019. Current population from Worldometer which draws its statistics from the United Nations, World Bank and OECD.)