Misty and dull this morning, still, and temperature not very different from freezing. There’s quite a lot of ice about, so I decided my only walk this morning was going to be to the shop, as slipping and turning up at hospital with an injury would be antisocial. Maybe next year I’ll take a chance. Anyway, I accomplished the shopping mission with full verticality.
Our fairy lights are still on and will be for another week. Some people have had enough already – on the way to the shops I was forced into the road by a discarded Christmas tree.
Just had a quick look at Psalm 148 in Sunday’s Lectionary... brilliant picture of the whole creation praising its Creator, both the unpleasant stuff and the stuff helpful to humanity. The whole created world in harmony… hard to take in a time of gloom, ice, earthquakes and COVID-19, but creation is a whole and wonderful, and it’s great to study, and it deserves to be treated with respect. And we can handle the bad stuff if we understand it and prepare – so where are all the scientists in government? – an understanding of the exponential function would surely be more useful than a degree in PPE or even a second-rate degree in classics.
Please pray for the people of Croatia, and Essex…
Good news that the Astra Zeneca vaccine has been passed for use here – I was hoping that by now we’d have more light shed on those weird test results. Just a quick sum … left to itself the ‘original’ COVID spread with an R number of 3-4 ISTR. If the new strain is 50% more spreadable, then we’re looking at an R of 5-ish. If the vaccine is 60% effective , then would it cut transmission by about that percentage, a factor of 2.5 – so an R of about 2 once everyone’s been done (i.e. later this year given a following wind)? So still a need for controls on behaviour? OTOH if 90% is possible consistently, then R goes below one and we’re sorted provided enough people join in? Maybe this is a naive way to do the sums. Anyway…
…Please give thanks for the work of scientists and many others involved in producing the vaccine...