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Isolation

 Oh thank Christ, the sun's come out.

Yes, it's been a pretty grim few days at Coastalblog Towers, as we shield the world from our pathogen riddled selves. For, gentle reader, we have the 'Rona. And a nasty little bugger it is too (as you undoubtedly know).

I know! It's all over apparently! How can we have it? Spoiler: it is not.

We first discovered this last week, when we had to cut a holiday short and high-tail it back to our Northern fastness, as Mrs Coastaltown had copped a dose off someone at school, this being the case, it was only a matter of time before yours truly tested positive, and this I duly did a couple of days later. Bugger.

Neither of us were symptomatic at the time of our positives, a particularly wizard wheeze on covid's part, as it allows you a minute or two of false hope before you start with the coughs, the temperatures, the weird feeling in your ears, all that godawful jazz.

I should, at this point, mention that for me it's no worse (at the moment) then an aggravating cold. This is enough of an irritation, tbh, I rarely have a cold, and then it's generally for about six hours, tops. Symptoms hanging around for multiple days is an unfamiliar experience for me, and not one I'm in a rush to repeat. And this, I should point out, is after two jabs. So I can surmise what a horror this was at the start, and offer up a thankful prayer for those unsung geniuses in the lab coats. Hosannah.

But , of course, narrative demands sympathetic scene-setting, so it's been shitting it down with rain for the first few days of our confinement, and misery and woe has been uncontained. The only consolation was that the kids appeared to have avoided it, though, at time of writing, this might not actually be the case.

I suppose there should be more of a point to this blog than a simple announcement of illness, so I'll add a point. As regular readers will be aware, I've been fairly critical of the Government's response, justifiably so, I feel. And now, having copped a dose myself, I'm inclined to take things personally.

I felt at the time of the tabloid-inspired "Freedom Day" that things were going too fast, too soon, and the numbers since seem to have borne that caution out. Despite the best efforts of the Government / tabloids / people who like to kid themselves to insist that everything's "back to normal", it is very apparent that this is not the case. In June, the month before "Freedom Day" there were 398 COVID deaths.

398

August: 3,125

September: 4,014

October: 3,939

Far from everything being "back to normal" it would appear that we are living with a new normal of drastically heightened death rates. As to why this is tolerated by the public, well, that's a question that's too big for me to answer, though you will be unsurprised to learnt that I have some theories. Unfortunately, I'm too knackered to articulate them now, so I'm going back to bed. So, no jokes or ranting today, but please, if you're not vaccinated, please get it, and wear a damn mask. xxx

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