Covid-19 Continues

So here we are on the last day of September. Yesterday I went for a walk with my friend Ally in Pollok Park and it was beautiful; the leaves were all the autumn colours and it was such a sunny and warm afternoon that I ended up taking off my fleece because it was too hot to wear more than a t-shirt. We sat on a bench in front of Pollok House and drank tea that Ally had brought in a flask, and ate biscuits. 

Today however is rainy and grey, and James and I have been doing useful errands; the car has been serviced, Ikea has been visited (for lamps for the Ullapool cottage), various birthday presents have been purchased. 

Covid-19 continues to rumble on. I don’t suppose it will really be finished until there is a vaccine and although many vaccine trials are going on around the world, we are told that it will be many months before one is ready. As we go into autumn the infection rates of Covid are rising again. We have already had the “rule of six” for a few weeks (no more than six people from two households should meet up indoors). In the last week in Scotland we have now been instructed not to visit other people in their houses at all, although people from two households can still meet up at a restaurant. The pubs and restaurants have just had a 10 p.m. curfew introduced. The government had recently been encouraging people to return to their workplaces but they have now said that people should stay at home where possible. England and Wales have slightly different rules, and areas with particularly high infection rates (currently the north east of England) have stricter rules. These “local lockdowns” seem to be the current way forward, which I find slightly confusing. There have also been problems with students returning to universities over the last couple of weeks; they have been told to turn up to their halls of residence (even though they had no lectures) but then clusters of Covid sprang up and the students were told to lock down completely - this was especially hard for first year students, many of whom are now isolated far from home. 

Meanwhile, many people are still following all the rules but some are having house parties and thus increasing the spread of the virus. Everyone is fed up with the virus and the restrictions, but unfortunately Covid-19 is not going away any time soon.