Abstract Leaves

Still very wet and windy here today, but not quite as bad as yesterday. I collected up some of the many wet leaves that had come off the nearby trees in order to keep drains clear etc. The photo was boring, so I've turned it into an abstract which helps a tad. An afternoon for some tv binge watching of the excellent Netflix series Ratched, which is the backstory of Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Many thanks for your kind words and hearts and stars for my anniversary blip yesterday, they are much appreciated. 

Day 195 / Full Day 187 of Lockdown / Day 13 of Rule of Six (for my record only)
UK deaths up 34 to 41,971 (revised basis), with new daily cases up by 6.042 and with 1,727 patients in hospital. On 5th Sept there were 65 people in mechanical ventilated beds in hospital and 3 weeks later there are now 262. New cases in Spain appear to be going down again, but in France they are not, with 14,412 new cases today. More than a quarter of people in the UK are now living under extra coronavirus restrictions. An anti-lockdown protest in London resulted in 10 arrests. Boris pledges that the UK will give up to £571m to Covax to help fairly distribute a vaccine across the World. He also promised a 30% rise in UK funding for the WHO and called for improved pandemic protocols and controls going forward. 

I'm going to have a rant about Test & Trace - again! It was revealed today that the NHS Covid-19 app which finally launched on Thurs after 4 months of waiting, cannot record test results from a PHE lab or NHS hospital which represents 29% of tests carried out on Friday and undermines the whole point of it. Hopefully a simple glitch to fix, but yet another own goal to add to it not working on iPhones made before 2015 or Android phones running an operating system before 6.0. I read in the Daily Mail today about the Lighthouse Laboratory in South Wales that was supposed to open at the end of Aug which won't now come on line until October - loosing tens of thousands in test processing capacity a day.  Frankly I don't believe that it is only demand that is making the T&T process fail. I also don't understand why the Govt prefers people not being able to get a test over making cheap, local and quick tests more widely available that have a slightly lower accuracy (obviously the current tests need to be used in hospitals etc).