What will be the new normal?

I don’t believe anyone can look back over, this last year, living with coronavirus, and the way in which the UK government has handled it and say anything other than, it has been an unmitigated disaster. Sadly the other nations of the Union were talked into a centralised (from Westminster) the approach so they ended up making all the same mistakes too.

This Boris Johnston government has presided over 100 thousand deaths in this country from coronavirus, yet this morning the national media are only interested in turning him into some sort of hero, because he was one of the first that Biden telephoned.

Without going into great detail we have ended up with thousands dead, hundreds in intensive care, a virus out of control and our economy trashed, I don’t think anyone could have done worse than Boris, if they tried.

The virus was being successfully suppressed, until they started ‘Two meals for One meals’, pubs being alowed to open and reducing the two-meter rule to accommodate their opening, allowed people to fly off to Spain on holiday and return to spread the virus amounts the ones that stayed home. Not surprisingly the numbers soured

Back in lockdown, and the numbers again started to flatten, so they lifted the restrictions again at Christmas, against all medical and scientific advice, I hasten to add. Guess What? A second, or is it the third wave of the virus spreading. Now the silver bullet seems to be, get everyone at least one jab of the vaccine and suppress the virus down to where they had it last summer. But, and there is always a but.

The first batches to arrive had to be kept at very low temperatures, once opened they could not be put back in the deep freeze so you had to have at least 150 people, standing in line, ready to go when you opened the package. So no good for care homes or doctors surgeries.

The next vaccine was approved and it is more flexible however like everything connected with the governments handling of this pandemic, they had months to get themselves ready for mass vaccination but, not surprisingly, are only now making preparations, for mass immunisation.

Why, oh, why, did they leave it to an already overstretched NHS when they have one of the biggest armed forces in the world with, doctors, medical staff and all their logistics to hand. If they had handed it over to the combined armed forces, not only would it have cost the country not one penny more, but they could have set up mass immunisation centres, toot sweet. A tent, in the local park will do me so long as I get my jab.

So we will all have a jab by, well sometime towards the end of this year, however will that make such a big difference, going back to life as we once knew it?

The government is saying, 12 weeks between the two jabs, to get more people at least some sort of immunity, the doctors and scientists are saying 6 weeks.

This is still a new vaccine and scientists are now asking what degree of immunity will it give us? Some are telling us it could mean an annual jab, some say that we could still catch the virus in the upper airways, so show no systems, but could pass it on, will we have to wear face masks as the norm for some time to come?

What will be the new normal?

Our high streets certainly will never look the same again, people have found online shopping convenient and often cheaper than the High Street stores with their high rates and taxes, What will that do to the Council coffers?

What will happen to all the shop assistants, shopfitters, window dressers……… Universal Credits, anyone.

Flying off on package holidays to Europe, will this still be possible? Well as the EU told May, –

“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”

There will be no immunity to any pandemic until there is full immunity when every corner of the world is immunised, a big ask.

So what will happen to all those aircraft that are now parked up at airports across the world and the people who serviced them flew then and looked after their passengers? Universal Credits, anyone?

They tell us that people will return to taking their holidays at home, I remember the 1960 the miles and miles of traffic to get to the seaside, do we really want to return to that? (although there is a Bill before the Westminster parliament, that will end a right to statutory holidays, well, at least Boris is planning for the future)  

And lots and lots of cars on our roads will mean lots and lots of exhaust pollution, global warming will take a big hit if the 1960s were ever to return, and of course it was cardboard and paper bags that littered the roadside then now we have plastic.

Working from home, people like it and bosses too, they do not have to pay for expensive office space, the good news there will be plenty of space for squatters in the empty high rise office blocks.

The governments are talking about ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ I don’t see it, and I’m a born optimist. Maybe I have my telescope to the wrong eye?