Sombre prospects

A merciful return to sunshine, blue skies with fluffy clouds today. What a difference it makes after the penitential grey skies and rain of yesterday! Before and after lunch, walks in different parks filled with kids letting off steam and mums with pushchairs chatting socially distanced (sort of), displacing walkers into the still rain saturated grass. It's quite treacherous in many places, to walk on turf whose surface is suffering badly from lack of drainage - there's a lot of clay subsoil around here. It's like walking on a layer of thick soap. Carefree boys at the end of a park outing are often caked with mud below the waist. Heaven help their mothers!

When our weekly delivery of groceries from Beanfreaks arrived this morning, there was a fine looking organic lettuce tucked in with the order which we hadn't ordered, but wished we had. Clare rang the store and reported this, and ten minutes later, Simon the delivery man returned and collected it. Someone had mistakenly added it to our order. It happens occasionally with our home deliveries, inevitably when you consider how complex a task it is to deal with scores of items for scores of customers a day. 

At tea-time Clare and I rehearsed together our version on the Beatles' song 'I saw her standing there', and then recorded it with a birthday greeting for Rhiannon who'll be seventeen next Monday. Kath has asked for video greetings from family and friends to edit together and show during their home celebration. Clare learned to play a basic piano accompaniment by heart, part of her jazz piano learning, so she can still keep playing when she can no longer sight read. 

She's also got the hang of recording videos as well, though she gets very annoyed with her new phone, which she thinks is fussier and more complex than the previous one with an earlier version of Android. Both of us composed 'Rhiannon' limericks to record and send as well, just for fun. Clare had the idea and that spurred me to creativity for a change. Apart from taking photos I haven't done much that's creative recently, so this little effort has done me good.

Today's news again reports reduction in the rate of infections and deaths, and discussion on the easing of lock-down restrictions which are still the main factor driving down the numbers. The mortality rate among elderly people has dropped sharply and this is the first indication that vaccination is having an impact. It's not surprising that infection rates among children, teens and young adults are still high, even if they tend to recover quickly from covid19, have mild symptoms or none at all. 

The trouble is, they can transmit the virus to older and more vulnerable people in the general population, so re-opening schools, even in a phased way with regular testing regimes in place is still a risky business. Observing the way children and teenagers behave outdoors with few wearing masks and little or no distancing makes me wonder just how the transmission of the virus can be reduced to the point where the general risk is very low.

Testing for the virus and population sampling for variants is going to become even more important as a result of the ability of covid19 not only to produce new ones, but also to combine variants that have survived into even more effective versions that are more efficient at spreading and vaccine resistant. This may happen randomly. Most 'recombinants' may not survive to spread, until one does and wreaks havoc. 

Preventing the spread of new forms depends on continuing to do what is already recommended to be done: mask wearing in enclosed spaces, social distancing, hand hygiene etc., even for the vaccinated. This is going to be tough for everyone, but we'll run the risk of promoting our own extinction as a species if we don't. Global warming is not only melting ice-caps but producing conditions favourable to the evolution of many more kinds of virus we may not be able to prevent from harming us and robbing us of our future.

Going through this Lent, reading scripture, reading the unfolding story of this pandemic and the world's heroic efforts through medicine and scientific research to see an end to this plague, is going to be the stuff of my spiritual endeavour. Would that there was something more practical that I could do.