Coronavirus streets in Manchester - XXXVII

The pandemic is over to some

Before it was midnight on what was termed Freedom Day, a nightclub already had its speakers booming shaking the walls of the venue to their foundations and anyone gyrating to the music on the long hard road to eardrum damage and deafness.

Out on my walk on Monday, I had gone so far away from home that I had to hail an Uber cab back home. Round the corner from my home was a long queue rounding the block of young revellers trying to gain entry into another club, very much like the pandemic never happened.

The pandemic is really not over

If anything, the dangers are still there, people are getting ill, even those who are double vaccinated, and they are ending up in hospital under mechanical ventilation. A close colleague of my boyfriend, though fully vaccinated and then contracting COVID-19 for the second time, passed on yesterday evening. May God rest her soul.

Whilst I have absented from the assemblages of crowds in the throes of pandemic amnesia, my visit to the local Sainsbury’s supermarket showed that the cautionary principle is essential vigilance. Most of the customers were wearing face masks, but the self-checkout tills and counters were all open rather than having alternate spaces closed off, we have reached the full abandonment of common sense in a pandemic. The staff for their own safety still wearing masks.

We lead again in infections

I can imagine there are places where reckless and wanton excess would be the order of the day, the freedom to socialise most likely becoming the dreaded super spreader that would result in a heretofore avoidable clampdown of self-same freedoms.

We are led by gamblers who have lost the advantage that a successful vaccination programme provided us just a few months ago to become the country with the highest daily rate of Coronavirus infections, yesterday, the false narrative about safety in vaccines is the slippery slope into an unmitigated disaster. We need to hear Boris Johnson say, hand on heart with full-throated conviction, “If you die, you die.” [Worldmeters.Info: Coronavirus]

The UK tops the list of new infections globally on 20/07/2021.

At least, we would really know what we are up against as everyone realises it is each person for themselves.