Virtual Venice

I attended a fabulous Zoom walking tour of Venice this afternoon via the Arts Society. As you can see, it was a lovely sunny day with a clear blue sky. Our personal tour guide Luisella did brilliantly and it was wonderful to see the city and hear her so easily without all the tourists. She said when she started as a tour guide in 2000 there were 7m annual visitors and there were 37m in 2018. We could ask questions and interract, it was a real tonic, particularly with the terrible news today that our Covid deaths have passed 100,000. As well as being a personal tour guide, she does a monthly blog on her website if you're interested www.seevenice.it.

Day 317 / Day 22 of Lockdown 3 (for my record only)
UK deaths up 1,631 to 100,162 (revised basis), with 20,089 new cases, 37,561 patients in hospital, 4,032 on ventilation and 3,341 new admissions.  c6.9m have now received their first dose of the vaccine. A terrible milestone passed today of 100,000 covid deaths, double the number reported on 11th November and such a terrible loss of life with so much sadness for their families and friends. The ONS reported deaths with Covid on the death certificate of 107,907. An expert on the BBC was saying that each death represents an average of 10 years life lost, so over 1m years life lost in the UK so far. He also said that in March there were over 1,000 separate epidemic outbreaks in the UK. Whilst the new variant has played a big part, to me it's clear the Govt has repeatedly acted with too few and too weak controls, bought in too late. And lets be honest, compliance with regulations and particularly self isolation has not been good enough, plus as a nation we're too fat which leaves us more vulnerable. For the sake of our health and our longer term finances, it must now have a strategy of eliminating cases in the Summer with the help of the vaccine and closing borders, then opening up with great care, with a much more targeted and robust local test and trace process and ensure it doesn't ever get hold again.