Jim Stewart's Blog

Decided on a bonus blog tonight.

I’ve noticed the BBC are reporting stuff I blogged a day later.

So here is the BBC news for tomorrow. “Why did the EC redact the delivery date from the AstraZeneca contract?”

Today has been a quiet day – waiting for my broadband to be upgraded (twice the speed for £6 a month less – same company). So I only did a little bit of work and watched a few TV programmes.

Antiques roadtrip featured a hotel today. One that I had stayed in before and had rated quite high in terms of the luxury level in the common areas.

This is the Shap Wells hotel, and if you enjoy walking and nature this is a fantastic place to stay.

What surprised me on TV was that this hotel was a WW2 prisoner of war camp for German officers.

The other thing that surprised me was the pointless fact that 25% of people knew that the moon landings were called “Apollo”. Now that shocked me.

It struck me that we could benefit from random fact education. Thinking I might do some Zoom “random things you didn’t know” evenings. A sort of reverse quiz – an evening of answers.

And then there was the Arnie film with men in suits trying to dance disco – reaching for some stomach medicine….

I’ve noticed that there are a lot more ads appearing in my Facebook feed recently.

Tonight I had an advert for a care home.

I also had a bank, my doctor, a newspaper, BBC, a holiday company, private education company, a book company, UNICEF, BBC (a second time). And the list goes on.

At the same time I am seeing my spam box filling up faster and faster. And they are getting smarter and smarter at producing fake emails.

But the main drive I see is in “your internet connection / amazon prime account…”. And since I am in lockdown I have decided it is nice for these people to call me and chat – so I have turned of my call blocker.

I like to exchange pleasantries, or maybe speak a different language (which may or may not exist). Some of them see the funny side. But I have been having fun over the last few days.

The argument over vaccine supply is growing, how hot will it get?

Countries in the EU were apparently getting ready to purchase vaccine deliveries when they were persuaded to act as one (better together). However this seems to have delayed orders.

A lot of people have been talking about the number of doses of vaccine bought by rich countries. The EU have ordered 2 times the number of doses than they need. But as I pointed out a couple of times these are not guaranteed and not guaranteed soon. In fact even if the total number of doses expected are delivered the EU may not be able to vaccinate all of their population this year.

Now the vaccine supplies of the vaccines being produced in Europe (Pfizer) for the current roll out are dropping behind schedule and vaccinations are stopping because of limited supply.

And then comes along the news that the vaccine that has not yet been produced may not be available as quickly as possible. So the EC are jumping up and down demanding more of a vaccine they have not yet approved.

It all sounds like a bit of a mess. It sounds like the EC underestimated the risks when ordering supply. But this shouldn’t be first come first served they say (as far as countries ahead of them are concerned – of course their supply should not go to those poor countries that have not yet ordered).

I smell blind panic – and maybe justified. It would be hard if the EC fail to deliver and their ordering process is blamed. It would be very hard indeed for the EC to cope with a failure to meet the EU needs while a recent EU exit like the UK managed to deliver. The effect of that on the EC could be massive and would probably shake the EU to its roots. It would almost certainly roll back the centralisation of power in Europe.

Oh and some people might die.

So I predict this will get very hot – I think the EC are fighting for their lives.

Apparently there will be a second coming of Trump. The conspiracy bots are suggesting this will happen by 4th March.

The UK was reported as “the worst” in terms of COVID deaths today – while there are actually several countries in the 1400/1000000 death rate. You need to contrive the presentation a lot to find a way to make the UK worst (it seems to be “the UK is worst if you ignore countries that are worse”).

Major newspapers in Germany have reported that the Oxford vaccine has an efficacy of only 8% for the elderly – and Bild suggested the Oxford vaccine would not be approved for the elderly in Europe. The Guardian have linked this to an interview of AstraZeneca’s CEO, Pascal Soriot by la Repubblica

Now, why do people come up with this? I don’t know. Again, the emotions are raw. I would really like to call on people to really focus on the details and focus on the regulators. There is a lot of silly talk going on right now about all sorts of things. Some people making up stories, for what reason? I’m not sure. There may also be local political considerations sometimes? I can’t say.

we have strong data showing very strong antibody production against the virus in the elderly, similar to what we see in younger people

What about this new South African variant. Moderna have said their vaccine works on it. What does “works” mean? Apparently this variant tis six times harder to neutralise, but can still be neutralised.

There have been reports of excess vaccine being bought up by rich countries. Are they suggesting people will be vaccinated twice? And you cant hoard excess doses like toilet paper.

Most of this is fake news, some are underplayed and some are overplayed. Okay, I can understand that the Nostradamus style stuff like the return of Trump can be hard to prove or disprove. But some of these things are really easy to check and there is no reason for good quality media to get them so wrong.

I thought this would be a good introduction to my vaccine wars thoughts.

The EU is getting annoyed because the number of doses of the Oxford vaccine (that they have not approved) may be as low as 30 Million instead of the 80 Million they expected. So they are suggesting putting up barriers to export from the EU to stop “third countries” like the UK getting the Pfizer vaccine if they can’t get the Oxford vaccine.

I mean it sort of sounds right – we stop sending to them and they stop sending to us. But not if you read the back story. The missing doses of the Oxford vaccine were due to be produced in places like Germany and the Netherlands, and this is linked to limited production of an associated plant in Belgium. So this is purely an issue within the EU. Quite simply – without the Oxford vaccine the EU will be unable to vaccinate enough of their population. Are they looking for scapegoats?

On the Bards day I thought I would add another of his works.

For the English it is about sitting in a church behind a woman dressed up posh and watching a louse crawling around her hat.

The last verse reads something like

Would some power have given us the gift

To see ourselves as others see us

It would free us from many a blunder

And foolish notion

Parenting during lockdown must be hard. I’ve tried to help out some friends where I can to try to share the load.

Last week I was told about a resource to help mums cope with having kids at home. That is mums – not parents. Obviously it is the job of the mum to take care of the children. But maybe think of the poor dad – his normal place is out there being the breadwinner – he isn’t used to having children near him during the day.

It struck me that our world has become a bit lop sided. It is odd how we find fewer and fewer young maids living at home awaiting a gent to choose them.

Remember – blue text is for humour.

But there have been some interesting programmes recently, some period films or older TV series and even some up to date fly on the wall series. And they have all hinted at what looks like a strengthening of gender roles.

The woman’s place seems to be alive and thriving. I’ve been surprised at how many boys are taught “man stuff” and girls are taught “woman stuff”, not deliberately, but just that is how it is assumed to be.

Today on a zoom call I was asked what I was knitting – as if it would be strange for a man to knit. I learned to knit, crochet, sew and bake when I was young (I wasn’t an expert, but I still can do better than many). I had good examples in my family (both men and women).

I also learned to do things like fix cars (and other engineering that might not be considered too safe these days).

I was partly serious about men parenting during a pandemic – there are a lot more men picking up parenting responsibilities these days than this time last year. For some this will be a really tough change (I would say for the better). But we probably need support for dads more than mums at this point in time. Or maybe we can just support parents.

But more than that maybe we can support kids to become whole people.

I saw another few posts about toilet paper recently. It go me thinking about the great toilet paper rush, so I did a few sums. For a 50 year old sing super long rolls and scrimping on use they have a typical lifespan of 150 toilet rolls. Of course, a full lifetime of luxury profligate use could easily be 1500 rolls. I remember seeing pictures of trolleys loaded with 200 rolls.

Then I was doing my washing today and got to wondering about converting the amount of washing powder to washes to weeks.

I started to wonder about measuring our lives in units other than time.

How often do you have to replace a cup? I think I have more than enough cap to last me the rest of my life. But I still find myself buying them. Okay, my last one was Victorian for display, but I have bought two cups for use in the last year.

So how many coffees have you left to live? Does it make you appreciate every one that little but more?

How often do you make a new friend? How long do you hope to live measured in new friends? Does that make you appreciate your current friends that little but more?

6th March 2020. Calle La Calzada, Granada, Nicaragua.

That was my last big night out at a restaurant with a big group of people. I can remember thinking “I wonder if we will ever meet again”. Not because of some vague concerns about a virus, but because of the logistical problems. Sadly that ended up being true – some of us will not meet again.

But if we had an inkling of what was to come how that night would have been different. What other things would I have done different if I knew what was coming?

It reminded me of a poem.

The line most people remember is “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men”. But when I read it again I was struck by the last verse.

But Och! I backward cast my e’e,

On prospects drear!

An’ forward. tho’ I canna see.

I guess an’ fear!

And it gives me a feeling of peace. Amazing how something written over 200 years ago can still be so relevant to life today.

Maybe I’ll post a few more poems in the coming weeks.