Filling up streets and even a densely-populated stadium at this time is a really awful idea

S I noted the other day, amid COVID-19 surge we’re meant to think that winning Euro 2020 is more important than winning against the virus. I went to town (Manchester) thrice this past week, only to see few people wearing masks and many who don’t respect people’s space with appropriate distancing. Here in Manchester, especially the centre of town, the number of cases is very high. We’re talking about more than one in a hundred. Not even counting recoveries, people who are not symptomatic etc.

Later today there’s a final in Wembley (again Wembley, not the capital of English football), this time the big chance (first in 55 years) to play the Euro final and maybe even win the whole tournament.

Our government is well aware of the coming COVID-19 crisis and likely imminent lock-downs/circuit-breakers, but to intoxicate the public with nationalism and a sentiment of national pride things are being opened up prematurely and the public is told that being reckless is OK. No need for masks, distancing etc. As if some dodgy firm administrating some (still experimental) doses will magically solve everything.

RMS, who is as pro-vaccination as I am, has just said: “Indonesia has been using Chinese vaccine, and it’s better than nothing, but a substantial number of medical personnel have caught Covid-19 anyway and cannot work.”

Our government keeps promoting a false sense of security; people are led to think or believe that vaccination alone — no matter whose — makes one invulnerable. This is clearly not the case. While vaccination certainly helps it does not mean that we can act as if COVID-19 is a thing of the past. Winning in football is nice and all, but packing up a stadium with fans sends the wrong message about public safety.

AST week I wrote about Wembley being half full in spite of a raging pandemic. Tomorrow we can expect Wembley to be in 2/3 capacity (about 60,000), but Manchester has large enough stadiums (almost as large as Wembley) with more decorated clubs (in the trophies sense) than any of the London clubs. Why is it that in 2021 every match still ‘defaults’ to London? Are Mancunians lesser people? Every now and then there’s an international match here, but clearly not often enough. In any case, those stadiums ought not be filled for the time being; with 37 new deaths today (linked to COVID-19) we’d be too arrogant to pretend it’s “all behind”…

Put the teams and the filming crew inside; that ought to be enough.

Manchester and the northwest badly hit

ust over 3 weeks ago we went into lock-down again (personal decision), seeing the non-linear growth in the number of COVID-19 cases, not to mention how the government had (re)opened lots of non-essential things — all this while denying access to very critical services. They forced us to take a phone of a friend to bypass their oppressive restrictions [1, 2].

Apparently you can meet ‘mates’ down the pub but cannot see a public official to get important work done! Worse yet, those public officials don’t even respond to you. They don’t speak to you and there’s nobody to talk to. Not even in E-mail or over the phone.

While vaccination does lower death rates, it comes at a hidden cost. And morever we cannot entirely rely on it as if it makes people invulnerable and thus we can just go back to “normal”.

If you value your safety and well-being, and if it’s possible for you to work from home, consider doing that for months to come. Don’t trust what our ‘Orange One’ says. We have a psychopathic and insane Pry Minister who keeps spreading false optimism about coronavirus (this misplaced optimism is bound to make things even worse!). Patients admitted with coronavirus are up 40% this past week alone, yet the lying psychopath pretends it’s all going to be “business as usual” next month. Deja vu (last summer).

We shall stay home. Our leaders are nihilistic (what sane person says “bodies [can] pile up high”?), far worse than incompetent and more sinister than merely misinformed.

am not against vaccination, I am definitely a strong proponent of vaccines, and am vaccinated almost since birth, myself (all the typical vaccines). But I also recognise the importance of making informed decisions where choices do exist and a word of caution is warranted. Self-censorship rarely makes society safer and we can develop herd immunity to misinformation, we should not be resistant to humble stories of real people.

Today I caught up with an old friend. He’s actually not old at all. We met in person again. He is a kind and gentle cop over here and he is about my age, i.e. late thirties.

Two months ago he got vaccinated along with colleagues at the Sport City near Etihad/City Stadium. He and 13 colleagues were given, under some pressure, the AstraZeneca jab (time was almosy running out for these). Up until then he visited homes — well, as part of his work as a policeman — and had no real issues. He walked around with a sanitiser and masks. He felt OK. He felt reasonably safe.

Then the jab came and ‘knocked him out’. Violently ill for a week. 4 days just in bed. A week unable to function. As it turns out, all his colleagues got ill too, also with the very same symptoms. Only one did not get ill, so that’s 1 out of 14. Their ages range from 22 to 50, i.e. not fatal or lethal age range for many with the potential of contracting (and possible then passing) COVID. 8 out of 14 were under 30.

But wait, it gets worse. My friend now refuses to take followup jabs and regrets taking the first one. He says he has since then contracted the flu easily, which he didn’t before. Flu wasn’t an issue before that. And now he has chronic respiratory problems, even 2 months down the line. He never had that before. It’s not going away. He wakes up at night unable to breathe. He is my age and just one jab of AstraZeneca did this to him. That was around the time concerns about blood clots was already becoming a thing, then building up in the press. Then orders were canceled, then the notorious renaming campaigns.

AstraZeneca is in trouble. Don’t let it add trouble to your life too. Just because the products change name won’t mean increased safety but covert introduction to unsuspecting recipients.

He and his colleagues, all except one, were so ill they could not do the police service or open the station. They went back home. Service at risk. Essential service.

This is a real story from a person I deem trustworthy and truthful. I’d also add that this is about one particular vaccine. Others might be OK. Many exist already and long-term tests have been limited, with media keeping tight-lipped at times. AstraZeneca still hasn’t explained what happened in South Africa last year. AstraZeneca isn’t being honest, and hardly even transparent with its shareholders/stakeholders.

I am just publishing this information not as opponent of vaccination but as a person who simply cannot trust AstraZeneca. It’s about AstraZeneca, not vaccination in general.

Well done, “super-spreader”

The Manchester experience, day 1

or the past two weeks if not longer we’ve sort of looked forward to some stores reopening. After about 80 days of lock-down some things in the house were broken and probably needed replacing. I expected the city to be packed with people and stores to have loads of discounts (sales). How wrong was I…

To be fair, we have no prior experience when it comes to this. The last pandemic that hit the UK (at a scale remotely like this) was over 100 years ago and a lot of things were different back then, so any shallow/superficial parallels don’t quite apply.

Today was my first time putting the mask on because usually, at least for food shopping, I chose small stores where isolation was super-easy and a mask barely needed (there’s already a plastic screen near check-out tills/clerks. Cash is OK as long as you don’t touch the face, even when it’s itchy.

The mask is really irritating. The heat in particular. Breathing isn’t too easy either; it’s kind of a nuisance. So you’re already uncomfortable just by ‘virtue’ of being there. Not for a few minutes but hours….

We left the home at 9AM and came back at around 1PM. I don’t think we’ll go back to these stores for at least a month. We just bought what we really needed. And looking back, maybe it wasn’t really worth the bother; we could wait a while longer…

The main observations worth making:

1. There are very long queues, sometimes huge ones. It depends on the stores’ size and appeal. Hard to think of people so desperate to stand in line (waiting in those means being outside)…
2. There were very few people in the mall and out in the streets. Like 10 times less whatever I was expecting. Even after almost 4 hours we still didn’t see many people. So it’s not about our early arrival time…
3. Most or least at very many stores are still shut, they don’t bother even if they’re now formally allowed to reopen. Makes one wonder how many are technically bankrupt or may be too afraid to reopen for health reasons/or and expectation of dire sales. Maybe people aren’t receiving a salary, so they lack finances or financial security/confidence (uncertainty about the future).
4. For each store that is open, bar few, the experience inside the store is like a guided tour; it’s so limited, losing much of the appeal of in-store shopping (permissible and impermissible walking routes)
5. We got lots of hand sanitiser, as each shop advises if not forces you apply it. Again and again.
6. Not only does store staff issue guidance; inside the malls (not stores), even while merely walking in the aisles, one has to follow some odd rules and instructions of mall workers must be obeyed

The bottom line is, unless it is really essential, like an item that must be purchased and carried in person (or paid for anonymously), I’d advise to not bother. The way things stand, the experience is painful, unsatisfying, and I think reduction in consumerism may be the best solution right now. We aren’t going back there any time soon; not because we don’t want to support local stores (we do!) but because there’s clearly a severe problem here. And if people are not willing to spend or lack the budget to spend (borrowings must be hard now), I dread thinking about what summer will look like for businesses, causing social unrest if not societal breakdown.