Another mild damp day with splashes of sunshine through the cloud. I walked for two hours before lunch, up to Western Avenue over the Taff, down through Bute Park, over the Millennium Bridge and back in time to share in cooking lunch. On the Bute Park side of Blackweir Bridge, I noticed that since yesterday there's been a incident of breaking and entering. Both ends of the bridge are boarded with ugly scaffolding and long planks. It's been out of use for a whole year now. Being narrow, it's a H&S risk. A low door built into both ends allows access for inspection. The Bute Park side is padlocked but the padlock mounting has been prised off with lock attached to open the door and the panel at the far end, kicked in.
I photographed the scene and tweeted it to Cardiff Council straightaway, and had an acknowledgement within a hour. I do hope it's fixed quickly before other mischief can be indulged in. My walk around Bute Park from home was just under 10km, but when the bridge is open it's 6km. Cyclists and pedestrians coming from Gabalfa to Pontcanna, on the most direct route, many of them students, or hospital workers have to make a detour of up to three kilometres due to the bridge closure. It's surprising this hasn't been broken into before. Or if it has, it was fixed before making the local news.
Two Wales and West Utilities engineers' workshop vans were parked in the street when I left for my walk. They're preparing to replace the street's entire gas main system, right up to the gas meter in each property. Last week the project manager visited each house to brief us on how the job will be done. It'll mean that cars parked in the street will have to be parked elsewhere in phases, while the pavement under which the trunk main runs is dug up.
A large coil of yellow heavy duty plastic tubing has appeared in their work enclosure, to replace the old one underground. From what the manager said I think, in part at least new narrower piping will fed in stages through the old wider bore main piping but that remains to be seen. It takes me back to the time when new gas mains were installed during the city centre redevelopment, and this necessitated replacing sections of older mains pipes right down Westgate Street. It was well managed, but traffic congestion was inevitable for months on end.
The death of Captain Sir Tom Moore was announced today from covid19, though it seems he was being treated for pneumonia prior to entering hospital, and for that reason had been unable to be vaccinated. His example of positivity and persistence in turning his daily hundred paces garden walk into a modest fundraising effort for NHS charities caught the world's imagination and ended raising over thirty million pounds instead of his thousand pound target. For people of all ages he became an inspirational figure in a time of great trial since World War Two.
I was surprised to learn that he was a Burma veteran, one of worst theatres of war in terms of lives lost and long term damage to health of combatants. To survive at all was an achievement, and to live to be a hundred even more remarkable. In his quiet good humoured stoical way he gave an example of what's needed to get through this crisis and not lose ourselves. In his last year of life he achieved so much and showed the light of encouragement and hope to the world. Dying at Candlemass give special meaning to Simeon's Song, at the heart of this day's liturgy 'Lord now lettest thou they servant depart in peace ...'
There's been news of more developments on the vaccine front today, with statistics on the Oxford/AZ vaccine showing that it's just as effective after twelve weeks as hoped for and gambled upon in delaying application of the second dose in an effort to reach as many people as soon as possible. Some experts weren't happy about the risk without the proper evidence, but now it's there.
The Russian Sputnik V (for victory, we were told) is now demonstrating 92% effectiveness, and shown to work with surprising effectiveness as a booster second jab. Being able to mix different vaccines without losing efficacy or putting the patient at risk is quite an advantage in the chain of demand and supply. There's also the first reports of evidence showing that two thirds of vaccinated people, if reinfected, don't transmit the virus they are immune to. This really can have an impact on infection rates as numbers vaccinated spread.
That's a lot of good news for one day, much needed, given that more cases of spontaneous virus mutations similar to South African and Brazilian strains have been detected (13 in Wales), in people not in contact with anyone from abroad. A variant of the Kent strain which has been largely responsible for the massive surge of deadly infection experienced in the past two months has just been identified, and the rush is on to do mass testing and map the spread in order to impose localised containment measures to curb contagion while the vaccination roll-out is going on. It seems vaccine immunity does give a high degree of protection against the new strains, albeit slightly reduced.
There's talk about schools resuming after Easter if not before, depending on regular testing being in place, and staff vaccinated as much as anything else. We've now booked a four day family holiday break at the Oxwich Bay Hotel static van site, like last summer, it'll be possible to repeat. Foreign holidays are being booked in hope by many, but we've no idea how control of new variants or overall suppression of the virus will happen once the mass movement of people starts again. I'd be surprised if things return to any approximation of normality until next year, seeing how viciously innovative coronavirus is turning out to be. And there's no magic bullet solution.
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