Whitey Grandad

Yes, definitely a need but the schools aren’t open on weekends or bank holidays and the need is still there. The lockdown arrangements have to take account of this.

You didn’t say which day this was. Anyway, key workers tend to have to work bank holidays too. We just don’t know.

That there is now very little need for schools to act as childminders.

My daughter is classified as a key worker. She supervises the dinner ladies at our local infant school. Two weeks ago they had 60 children in the school. A week ago they had four.

Agreed. We cannot comment on people we see out having a walk because we don’t know their circumstances. But people like my neighbours who obviously had some smalll gathering going on yesterday in their back garden are wasting all the sacrifices that most of us are making.

Now that is what really annoys me. The police won’t raid because they’re too busy scaring off sunbathers.

I agree, that is very wrong, but we have no way of knowing the circumstances of the people we see. Just suppose, a single mother with two young children is an anaesthetist at a local hospital. Who looks after her kids on a Good Friday? Two grandparents have their grandchildren living with them. There is nothing wrong with them all going out together.

The example of apparently older people being seen out with what appear to be very young people.

They’ve been like that for years.

Do you know for certain that they were their grandkids? They may have all been members of the same household. You just don’t know. Why are you getting so worked up over it? They’re not a threat to you or anybody else and they are not under threat themselves. Let’s keep a sense of proportion here. .

You don’t have to be a key worker to be allowed to go to work. Anyone is free to do so if they cannot work from home. This example was not increasing the chance that either they or their loved ones might catch the disease or die from it. Nothing irresponsible about their action.

They are doing nothing wrong. Stop being mad and look after your own health.

Not only unbeaten but no goals conceded.

We are both over 70 (just) and have the flu vaccine every year. They are tailored to the expected strains of flu but cannot ever be perfect. You can usually get these jabs in you local pharmacist but last autumn they had stocks of the wrong vaccine. Apparently there are different cocktails for the elderly and for the youngsters.

Our condolences to your Good Lady and to your families.

2021?

Legally we have left but for all practical purposes we haven’t. Yet.

If you already have the disease then the vaccine won’t cure you although it may boost your immune response. The idea of a vaccine is that it stimulates your body into producing antibodies that will fight the virus if it ever invades you.

If suppressing the disease doesn’t give you any immunity then why would a vaccine?

This may have been mentioned elsewhere but I have just logged onto my Virgin Media account and there is an option to pause payments for Sky Sports and BT Sports.

This article in The Guardian raises some important issues. It points the finger at changes to intensive farming techniques. “As industrial farming concerns took up more and more land, these small-scale farmers were pushed out geographically too – closer to uncultivable zones. Closer to the edge of the forest, that is, where bats and the viruses that infect them lurk. The density and frequency of contacts at that first interface increased, and hence, so did the risk of a spillover.“ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/28/is-factory-farming-to-blame-for-coronavirus

It’s entirely possible. Not everybody would be wiped out but ‘life as we know it’ would be a distant memory.

So sorry to hear that LD.

Good to hear.

The government will also pay the employer’s NI and pension contributions. It may not be generally realised that no money has been handed over yet. The employer still has to pay the wages as usual and then claim them back later. ‘Hopefully’ the government website will be live during the week after next and reimbursement should follow within two or three weeks of that. As for the £10,000 grant to business ratepayers I have been told that ‘hopefully’ EBC will be sending that out later next week too.