SO – when’s it going to end, this continual hibernation of ours?
When will life start moving back towards something approaching normality?
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Ask the Government and it will say it doesn’t know, sorry.
But I wonder if that is because they really don’t know — or are simply in disagreement with each other. I suspect it’s the latter.
A couple of weeks ago, things were looking up. Ministers were giving cheerful and upbeat statements.
Schools to open in March, a kind of normality by April, maybe May.
Since then the infection rate has dropped hugely and nearly 1,000 vaccinations are now being done every minute.
But the mood is very different now. The Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, has warned people against booking holidays — even in this country!
DISPUTE IN CABINET
One scientist recently said normality was “years” away, no sporting fixtures with fans for a very long time.
Those who do go abroad face prison conditions under quarantine and a ten-year stretch if they tell fibs. That optimism has evaporated.
And worst of all the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, has warned us that the lifting of restrictions depends on how vaccines perform against new variants.
But there have been an estimated 4,000 variants of Covid already. That’s what viruses do: They mutate, all the time.
All variants are worrying, some obviously more so than others. There’s a new one that has been identified called the Bristol variant.
Next week it will be the Walsall Variant. Then the Grimsby Variant, which smells ever so slightly of haddock.
There will never be no variants. Does Hancock mean that we must remain socially distanced, cocooned, masked-up and the pubs all shut until the end of time?
This is where I think there is dispute in Cabinet.
Right now people are queueing up for their vaccines in a procedure that has been very well marshalled indeed.
But if the scientists and Hancock are to be believed, being vaccinated will scarcely affect our living conditions at all.
And that will be a problem when it comes to persuading younger people to have the vaccine.
What is the point, they may well ask themselves. The virus poses little risk to them, anyway.
SQUEALING BRATS
The wrangle, I think, is between the realists and the Utopians.
The Utopians think nobody should ever die of anything and will not be content until Covid is eradicated entirely. Which it will never be.
The realists grasp that while more than 100,000 people have died “with Covid” in the UK, some 20,000 people die of flu here every year anyway.
They will be thinking: “Well, how many deaths per year from Covid would we consider ‘acceptable’? Surely not zero? Because that is unattainable.”
The Government needs to be frank with us and stop changing its message.
Treat us like adults, instead of squealing brats.
Explain what the risks are and what the politicians — not the scientists — think is an acceptable death rate from this wretched virus.
And what is an acceptable death rate from lockdown — something we will find out in the not too distant future, when the people who have been denied cancer operations pass away?
It is a grim and difficult job, sure. I don’t envy Boris and Hancock. But it’s time to level with the public.
To let us know quite clearly that Covid cannot be totally “defeated”, but must be managed.
And that means accepting that some will die, just as some die from flu every year. And let life return to normal.
Not the “new normal”, but normal.
Lovely tie, old chap
DO you wear a tie? You do? Fascist.
A woman writing for The Guardian – of course – reckons ties are a symbol of male oppression.
Here’s what the madwoman said: “The necktie is one of the most politically charged items of body adornment.
“The necktie echoes the shape of the codpiece, a fabric flap or pouch designed 500 years ago to emphasise a European nobleman’s importance through his large phallic size.
“It is arrow shaped and directs the eye of an onlooker down towards a man’s groin.”
You never knew you’d been wearing a penis knotted around your neck, did you?
Flying high
THE Eagle is the favoured position for English couples while having sex. According to a new survey.
That’s the one where the lass has her legs in the air, I think.
My own particular favourite is the Heron.
You and your partner stand entirely motionless by the side of a lake for six hours, keeping an eye out for fish.
It’s very tantric. And I bet Sting does it that way.
Missed opportunity
DRAT, just missed out.
Someone else beat me to the purchase of a great historical artefact.
Adolf Hitler’s toilet seat was sold for a little under £14,000 at an auction in the US.
It would have looked great in my museum of Lavatory Installations Once Owned By Genocidal Dictators.
Alongside Chairman Mao’s bidet and Pol Pot’s bog brush.
More mumbo jumbo
THE descent into madness continues. Especially in right-on Brighton.
Midwives there have been advised they should not use the term “breast-feeding”. Instead they should say “chest-feeding”.
Also, they are steered away from using the word “breast milk”. It’s been replaced with “human milk”.
According to the lunatics who run the local health trust, this is a blow against “mainstream transphobia”.
It’s a blow against reality, more like.
The reason it’s called breast feeding and breast milk is that the milk comes from a woman’s breast, not a bloke’s chest.
You can tweak my nipples as much as you like, but you won’t get so much as a squirt out of them.
Anyway, good luck Brighton, in your attempt to abolish women.
Straight-talker Salma gets it off her chest
ACTRESS Salma Hayek is to star in a comedy about talking breasts.
It’s called A Boob’s Life.
According to Hayek, it’s dealing with “the constant judgment women are subjected to”. Sounds a right laugh.
Anyway, the mammaries start jabbering to her.
Good job it’s not Katie Price taking the part. I suspect hers would sound like a foghorn.
And you wouldn’t get a word in edgeways.
Telly’s hit and myths
PRESENTER Richard Bacon has denied that he snorted cocaine off the backs of the Blue Peter tortoises.
He was fired from the show for his drug taking.
And it has become an urban legend that he involved the laggardly reptiles in his funny business.
Fine, OK, that’s all sorted then. But what about the other urban legends regarding kids’ TV shows?
Despite the classic myth, there were never smutty-named characters on board with Captain Pugwash.
But was Hector, the dog from Hector’s House, getting up to no good with that cat?
And what kind of drugs were the people on who made The Clangers?
Who you trying to kid?
THE World Health Organisation has “exonerated” China.
It has said it is “extremely unlikely” the Covid virus came from a government lab in Wuhan.
It’s even said that it probably didn’t come from a Chinese wet market.
Just as Douglas Murray wrote in The Sun yesterday, the WHO is not to be trusted.
It is terrified of China – and loathes the US.
We will never discover the real truth, because the communist Chinese government won’t allow that to happen.
The only reason the WHO inspectors were allowed was because they knew the report would be a whitewash.
No yolk
A NEW study from China says we shouldn’t eat eggs, because they’ll kill us.
Dunno about you, but I’d rather risk an egg than munch my way through a bat’s spleen. No offence, China.
If you do eat eggs you should only eat the whites, because the yolks contain too much cholesterol.
Next week, or the week after, there will be another study telling you that an egg a day will stop you from dying.
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