Alan Dearling has assembled some reports and posts on the Covid pandemic, vaccinations, curfews, restrictions, and views on ‘personal freedom’ and ‘safety’. He has anonymised the identities of a number of commentators. For the last six months (or perhaps more now), Alan has, with sadness, been predicting the spread of civil unrest, riots and increasingly polarised opinions in more and more fractured societies and communities across Europe and beyond.
NBC reportage of the riots against Covid curfew and vaccinations in Amsterdam and Eindhoven:
NHS England on Covid vaccinations: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/coronavirus-vaccine/
Tipi Dave:
I’ve thought long and hard about the situation facing the world by the pandemic.
As I see it, vaccination would be in effect a protection from a virus by infecting me with it.
My decision not to have it may be seen as selfish, but my reasoning is along the lines that the world is already far too overcrowded. I’m prepared to take my chances. If my fate is to catch and die from anything, be it Covid or something else, so be it. I don’t judge those that want to have the vaccine. Some may consider me selfish, but if they have the vaccine, me not doing so won’t make any difference. I have considered a more drastic form of suicide, but as I’ve already said, I’m happy to leave it to fate.
Love and respect
Jail tales from Australia video (posted on UK FB page) with this comment: Scum ? won’t be long before they try this shit in the UK!
https://www.facebook.com/JailTales/videos/300431261213815
Andy Worthington (real name and personal opinions)
So this morning I received my first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which I was given because I’m in a high risk category as someone with a rare blood disease. I received my vaccination at my local doctors’ surgery in Lewisham, and it was a very well-organised affair, with numerous volunteers helping the NHS staff administering the vaccines. In case anyone needed reminding, this is the NHS organising itself to do its job, and getting wonderful support from local community volunteers.
This is in stark contrast to the private companies who have been given eye-wateringly huge amounts of money by the Tory government — like the £22bn spent on the failed ‘test and trace’ system, “helmed by Conservative peer Dido Harding and mostly run by contracting giants Serco and Sitel through thousands of call centre workers”, as Wired explained in November — and who have mostly failed to deliver anything of value.
So how am I feeling? Well, a little tired, I must admit, but otherwise fine — and I did quite spectacularly fail to take it easy after the vaccination, cycling into the City and the West End this afternoon in search of my daily photo for my ongoing photo-journalism project ‘The State of London.’
It’s reassuring to see the vaccine being rolled out so successfully, with over 5.4 million people now having received their first vaccination, and I can only hope that those opposed to vaccinations, and caught up in all kinds of fears about it, realise how damagingly counter-productive their position is. Vaccines have eradicated smallpox worldwide, and have massively reduced instances of polio, as well as delivering numerous other triumphs in the global struggle against disease.
The world is a much safer place, from the point of view of health, because of vaccines, and yet the anti-vaxxers seem, explicitly, to be willing us to return to a world in which we are ravaged by preventable diseases, and suffer many more deaths as a result.
For ‘The State of London’, see:
https://www.facebook.com/thestateoflondon/
Fred says:
Having just searched for #greatreopening on here and Twitter there seems to be a small but vocal support for this on the 30th January…looks like there’s a Telegram group for it also.
This is undoubtedly a dangerous idea. Trying to get businesses to open en masse on one day, before it’s safe could have a devastating effect on virus numbers, the NHS is struggling enough as it is.
None of us are enjoying this situation I’m sure, and despite difference of opinion we’re absolutely in this together. I loathe the Tories and they’re doing a terrible job at controlling the pandemic in the UK. They’ve let the virus get out of control, but so have some of the public to an extent it’s true.
God knows I look forward to the day we can go out and have fun again, but only when it’s safe for everyone to do so.
Alan Dearling adds, re-The Great Reopening:
We will be lucky if much will be open in the UK even by the autumn of 2021. More people in hospital ICUs, more deaths, concern over how effective vaccines will be both to protect individuals and also the spread. Same around the whole world. This is totally fake news
Marcus: Here is a good collection of why lockdown causes more damage than good:
https://HealthTruth.info/weve-got-it-all-wrong…/…
Janet:
I spent about 4.5 hours out and about getting shopping, short walk for my doggy and then dropping flowers off for a friend in town today who is poorly and waiting for test results after numerous scans and tests. Shopping was ‘essential to me shopping’. More paint and DIY stuff, dog food, groceries and a few little bits on my travels for Dad’s birthday next month. Supermarket hopped through 7 different stores. Exhausting! Probably not entirely ‘legal’.
