#DailyCovidUpdate | 9th January 2021
Cases: 3,017,409 (+59,937)
Deaths (28-day): 80,868 (+1,035)
Deaths (60-day): 88,444 (+1,132)
Average Cases: 59,660.00 (up from 59,344.00 yesterday)
Average Deaths: 893.43 (up from 809.14 yesterday)
It's Saturday afternoon on a cold grey January and I haven't left the house today, except to fill up the bird feeder.
I went back to work after the holidays this week only to discover that my colleague Laura and her husband had Covid over the break and two more colleagues had recently tested positive so wouldn't be in for a couple of weeks. So that's 4 of my colleagues who have definitely had it now, out of 11 of us. So, being short staffed again I had a few more late nights, luckily it's a bit quieter at the moment, so the latest I stayed was 7.30pm, not 10.00pm like before Christmas.
So I should be excited to have a day off but the news is grim. We had the highest daily death toll since the pandemic started yesterday with 1,325 deaths within 28 days of a diagnosis. Today the figure is 1,035. Today we surpassed the 80,000 death toll mark. Although if you count those who died within 60 days of a diagnosis the figure stands at 88,444. The figures at the top of the page are taken from Twitter. One guy @LawrenceGilder is collating all of the information into a daily tweet. Thank god for him as the news bulletins don't mention it half the time.
Meanwhile in Australia my friend just posted a video of her family having a fun day out at the cricket in a packed stadium with not a mask in sight. How have we fucked this up so badly?
My suggestions:
The worst government imaginable. They locked down too late and too softly.
Mixed messages, especially with Dominic Cummings breaking the rules, once that happened more people decided that they could bend the rules too.
Keeping borders open. Anybody has been allowed to fly into the country from anywhere with no testing and no enforced quarantine. It's madness!
The general public being utterly selfish and just doing what they like because their bored.
The utter nut-jobs that keep promoting conspiracy theories, such as this is all planned by Bill Gates as he wants to insert a microchip into your arm along with the vaccine. Or that 5G phone masts are responsible. Or that the whole thing is actually a hoax organised by the government to suppress us.
Some total dick splashes have been wandering around hospitals filming empty corridors and wards claiming that the NHS is lying and it isn't under pressure at all. Meanwhile ambulances are queuing outside for hours and hours and there aren't enough beds and ventilators for people. Sadiq Khan has declared a state of emergency in London and police officers and firefighters are being trained up as emergency ambulance drivers. On the news they asked that people only called 999 if it's an absolute emergency. I mean, I always thought that was the only time you should call 999 anyway, but hey ho.
The news is being very quiet about the effects of Brexit so far. Although if you dig deep enough on Twitter you can find rumblings about job losses, food price increases, costs of shipping things abroad more than quadrupling and fisherman and hauliers losing out as there is too much red tape. I'm sure we'll find out more about this as the year progresses.
Over in America there was a riot/coup/terrorist attack on the Capitol Building by deranged Trump Supporters on Wednesday. Five people are dead as a result. Trump has finally been permanently removed from Twitter (about bloody time) for inciting violence. Papers are being drawn up for a second impeachment, but the news are predicting more riots before then. The inauguration of Joe Biden is 20th January and they are already saying that they may not be able to hold it outdoors due to security issues. Trump has said that he won't be attending the inauguration. What a douche bag!
Today's news also told of a plane crashing in Indonesia just 2 minutes after take off. It sounds as though all 62 passengers have perished. One man says that his wife and three kids were on the flight. It's just terrible.
In brighter news Michael Eavis has had his first vaccination jab. The news just popped up telling me that the queen and Philip have had theirs today but I couldn't give two hoots about them. One of the vaccine calculator apps currently reckons that I'll get my first jab in June and my second by the end of September. So no festivals this year then! 2021 sucks so far.
So I'm sitting on my sofa feeling totally uninspired and a bit down in the dumps to be honest. I've got the fake fire on the telly and David Bowie on Spotify. It'll be 5 years since his death tomorrow. I swear to god that's when everything started to go wrong.
I still have this crazy hope that certain celebrities were advised what was going to happen with Trump, Brexit and Corona and they got shipped to a space station somewhere where they are building a new life together. Bowie and Prince are writing a load of new songs and Lemmy is hitting the jackpot on the fruit machine.