Wind Was Blowing, Time Stood Still
Another rainy day with not a lot to write home about. A quick look at the news shows mostly election coverage to the exclusion of everything else. The single most impressive thing that caught my eye this afternoon was Derby County staying in the Championship by somehow drawing 3-3 with Sheffield Wednesday despite having only 36% possession.
In the meantime, Nicola Sturgeon has done her usual trick of (a) suggesting before the vote that a vote for her/SNP is not a vote for independence then (b) after the vote, claiming all votes for her/SNP as a vote/mandate for independence, or at least a referendum. She’s played a decent hand on Covid, but her underlying mendacity remains intact. Despite Brexit, the current Prime Minister and a compliant media, the net result of the Scottish election is pretty much no change, except her minority government has a slightly greater number of compliant Green Party poodles to count on.
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I slept well last night, although at some point I woke up and jotted down an idea for the work-in-progress. Naturally enough, when I woke up fully and looked at the note I was scratching my head to figure out what my note meant.
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There was an interesting article this morning in the South China Morning Post, as interesting for the fact it was published at all, let alone for its content: As West races back to travel, ‘zero-Covid’ economies like Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia face hermit risk The gist of the article is that the very thing that protected most Asia-Pac countries from the worst of the pandemic, particularly closing borders, puts them in a disadvantageous position now that ‘the West’ is opening up again.
Early in the pandemic, Asia-Pacific countries learned to see border closures as their secret weapon to avoid countless deaths from Covid-19.
Governments across the region now face the challenge of how to safely exit their self-isolation as the United States and Europe look towards reopening and kick-starting international travel for hundreds of millions of pandemic-weary citizens.
For authorities reliant on border controls to tame the virus, the path to reopening looks uncertain, experts say, as sluggish vaccine roll-outs, virus mutations, and an ingrained zero-tolerance mentality towards infections threaten to cut off Asia-Pacific economies from the world indefinitely.
“The problem is that I think there is a fear and risk aversion that has got worse in countries that have done it well, rather than better,” said Peter Collignon, a professor of microbiology at the Australian National University.
The answer, I guess, has to be mass vaccination, but that seems to be a problem. As I keep saying here, we are not out of this.
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Music : on this day in 1977, I was thinking about my upcoming 6th year exams and, hopefully, university entry later in the year. This song was at number fourteen in the UK charts,
Peter Gabriel : Solsbury Hill, one of the few hits in 7/4 time
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