A Blanket of Cloud

There was a very obvious and heavy blanket of cloud on my 'newspaper walk' at Weybourne this morning. I saw a number of people in the car park gathering with large model cars, so I thought I'd get a photo of them racing them when I got back, but they were nowhere in sight. A few more jobs done today: put up two motion activated battery lights outside; put up an ornament on the wall that I bought a few weeks ago; did some touch up painting; gathered the first of many fallen leaves; did some weeding; and planted 5 pony tail grasses. 

Day 587 / Day 98 of Step 4 of Roadmap Easing (for my record only)
New daily cases dropped to 39,962 and 800,000 jabs have been given in the last 3 days. NHS England said that 'millions' of letters will arrive shortly inviting 12 to 15 year olds to take up a jab, their parents can book it online. Dr Katherine Henderson of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said 'We are already struggling to cope.'  An expert on the Radio said that the positive cases that went undetected at a lab in Staffordshire recently could have let to between 500 and 1,000 deaths. 

I looked at the stats for what has happened in the 98 days since most restrictions were removed in England, and some in Scotland, Wales and NI. There have been 3,339,735 new cases (38% of all verified cases); 80,166 new hospital admissions and 10,825 deaths. This is all before we get fully into cold weather. To me this is an unacceptable number of deaths, let alone the disruption to business and the NHS (including the knock on impact on healthcare), a large part of which was, in my view, totally avoidable through maintaining simple measures like social distancing, wearing masks in enclosed spaces and working from home where feasible. England in particular is an outlier globally in maintaining behaviours where we protect each other. What a tragedy.