Back to thick grey clouds and intermittent rain today, with more to come in the next few days, and threats of flooding. At least I didn't get too wet, walking before and after lunch. I cooked rice and Brussels sprouts with boil-in-the-bag mussels again, tastes to cheer us on another miserable day.
Official covid infection statistics released today show continued downward progression. In three weeks time phased re-introduction of children to classes in school will begin. Groups of four people from just two households will be able to meet again outdoors from this weekend - but judging from what I observe on my daily walks in the parks, this has been taking place already for weeks, few are even an arm's length away from others, let alone properly socially distanced. There's no sign of enforcement taking place, except in car parks.
It's good to hear more being said about the risk from airborne infection. The existence of more contagious new variants calls for this to be emphasised, outdoors as well as indoors. I find it strange that early research nearly a year ago revealed the likely role of airborne transmission, yet only in the past three months when the contagion risk had been observed to be much higher has it been given increased prominence in public health advisory videos.
Drivers of taxis, buses, and above all, ambulance drivers have suffered disproportionately high infection rates due to the amount of time they spend in enclosed spaces transporting, then waiting with patients, and treating them. Their standard of personal protection equipment needs to be much higher than in reality it is. I'm not sure we're hearing much from either unions or the government on what's being done to reduce the risks to health and safety in a crisis. Who cares for the carers here?
The Parish weekly notices are now being delivered by means of Microsoft's Sway, one of the apps that is part of Microsoft Office. The diocese also uses Sway to circulate its weekly info round-robin. An Office user can bring together text, images, web-links, audio and video into a presentation hosted on One Drive and accessible via a URL It can even be used to create a website. In effect, each week's round-robin is a little website of its own. Sway has been around for seven years but like video conferencing apps has seen new uses and users during the pandemic. It's rather passed me by, as I'm no longer delivering 'content' to anyone. I wonder if it will supplant the Christmas newsletter pdf in years to come?
This afternoon I watched this week's episode of 'New Amsterdam' on catch-up, and later in the evening the last episode of 'Rebecka Martinson - Arctic Murders'. Not for the first time in this series, a presumed murder turns out to be an accidental death whose circumstances cause others to lie about it. Tragedy in life can have many layers to it.
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