Testing without tracing

I offer this letter from a British student to illustrate the fact that the British handling of covid 19 is just as chaotic as that of the US:

To The Independent
I am a third-year physiology student at Manchester Metropolitan University. Like all students, we were encouraged to return to university for the start of the autumn term. I live in a house with seven other students; last weekend, I and some of my housemates started to show Covid-19 symptoms, so we all got tested. The speed and ease of the testing system was good and we quickly got our results back. Of the eight of us in the house, six came back positive, one negative and one unknown. I immediately contacted my mum and dad, along with friends I had seen, and they went into isolation with immediate effect.

The next morning at 8am, I was in bed with a fever, and was woken up by a phone call from Test and Trace. I told them all the places I had been and gave them the numbers of friends and family that I had been with. My housemates all received similar calls. The next morning, again at 8am, I had another call from them saying that I was not on their database system, so I had to go through the same questions I had previously spent 45 minutes going through again. Throughout the following day, I received the same calls about needing to go into isolation, etc. There were 11 phone calls and six missed calls with voicemail messages left on my phone in one day. My housemates have also received numerous calls; between us, we have received 76 in just three days!

Test and Trace have not yet contacted my parents, my friends or my boyfriend, who has since tested positive. Matt Hancock has said that the test and trace strategy could help to suppress the transmission of coronavirus, and that it will be essential to slow the spread of the virus. Public Health England said that people who are at risk will be contacted and given advice on what to do. Instead of contacting my parents and my boyfriend, the Test and Trace organisation called us so many times that it has become a nuisance.
How can the Track and Trace organisation actually work if all they are doing is harassing unwell people, rather than ensuring that their friends and contacts are not spreading the virus further?
Frances Hill, Fallowfield, Manchester

A lousy deal for the young

Nearly two-thirds of childless single British adults aged 20-34 have either never left the family home, or have moved back into it, according to new research into the “boomerang” generation. There are now an estimated 3.5 million young single adults living with their parents in the UK, a third more than a decade ago. (The Week 24 Oct 2020)

My take: No wonder there is resentment against the old, the wealthy and comfortable. House and apartment prices are out of reach for the young, even if they have jobs, pensions and a measure of the security which manifests itself in the confidence to take on large mortgages. Yes, Grandad and Grandmother will die and leave money, one assumes. Meanwhile, frustration and disappointment grow. I will not see the social results, but can imagine them. This is not healthy for any nation.

Brexit up to date

One major sticking point is the EU’s insistence on curbing the UK’s right to support local industries. State intervention may once have been anathema to true Tories, but Covid has “legitimised a more activist state” and the PM is sold on the idea of a new and vigorous industrial policy. He won’t give in easily on this.

But deal or no deal, the prospects for the UK are bleak, said Joseph de Weck in Foreign Policy. The agreement London and Brussels are trying to negotiate “doesn’t even come close” to the arrangements the EU has agreed with Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and even Ukraine. For example, whether the “all-important” financial services sector can continue to get access to the EU market will depend entirely on the “whim” of Brussels. The UK economy has shrunk more than any of its major European rivals during the pandemic. It can only shrink further. (Larry Elliott, The Guardian, Larry Elliott 24 Oct 2020).

My comment: All totally foreseeable amd an impending disaster. The Brexiteers have a lot to answer for, but the Brexiteer in the street doesn’t seem to care.

Emissions

The wealthiest 1% of the world’s population were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world between 1990 and 2015, according to Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Carbon dioxide emissions rose by 60% over the 25 year period, but the increase in emissions from the richest 1% was three times greater than the increase from the poorest half. Overconsumption and the rich world’s addiction to high carbon transport were exhausting the “carbon budget”. (Reported in the The Humanist Sep/Oct 2020).

My comment: no society in history has survived for long when a tiny minority possesses more money than the rest of the population put together. not to mention emitting twice as much carbon dioxide than everyone else. In their own long-term interest the 1% should pay higher taxes, but also give more to charity and go for carbon neutrality (Mr. Bezos, are you listening? You advertise your company’s commitment to reducing emissions, but what about you and your rich friends?)

Drawing

“Lockdown was good for me,” says David Hockney. Holed up in his farmhouse in Normandy, with no visitors to distract him, the artist was able to devote himself entirely to his work. He has drawn the fires in his grate, pears ripening in orchards and even droplets of rain on his window. “I don’t think a day has gone by when I haven’t drawn.”

Drawing is of fundamental importance. “The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking,” he explains. “That’s the importance of art. To remind us to look and to see. Even if you are stuck inside with only one tree outside your window, you can see the leaves happen, you can see the tree grow and change. I mean, lots of people noticed spring this year and they hadn’t looked at it before. They had been too busy to notice. But when they looked at it they enjoyed it.”

If art has a purpose, he says, then this is surely it. “Most people don’t really look, they scan the ground in front of them so they can see to walk. But it’s possible to teach people to look. Really look. And it’s a very beautiful world if you really look at it.”
(Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times and The Week 17 October 2020)

My comment: It’s so nice to read something unconnected with doom and gloom. I have enjoyed drawing for years (no David Hockney, of course). During the covid crisis I took up watercolors and have been busy working through my ten volumes of pencil drawings, interpreting them in colour. A more Epicurean pastime I cannot think of.

Yesterday. I paused and thought,”You are doing this too quickly. Quality, quality! Slow down. It’s for fun – records of foreign trips, elephants and French chateaux, Italian scenes and designs for Christmas cards. My wife and my grandchildren might appreciate them, but this is really about
sanity and peace of mind in a time of threat and daily bad news. Hockney is right.