LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS PART 13
13 July 2020 0748hrs BST

WARNING: not-safe-for-snowflakes/SJW/virtue signallers/grammar natzis - Today I don't have the energy to edit - for Pathetically Correct phrasing, grammar, OR spelling. Get. Over. It.

We are having a washout summer here in NE Scotland and I'm coming to superstitiously believe I'm the cause - every single time I try to hang out washing, do some gardening, or fire up the barbecue, it bloody starts raining. And it has been so chilly as to require the heating to be kept on. This time last year we were sweltering.

Easing up of lockdown (mass quarantine to normal folk but we do love to dramatise here in Britain so we call it lockdown - more on that later) is underway with the uptick in cases making it clear perhaps 'trusting in good British common sense' was the dictionary definition of overly-optimistic. Beer gardens reopened - immediately there was a rush on and several brawls ensued. A rooftop open air bar reopened for booked events - which became a rather terrifying brawl.

Masks are 'recommended' in England and mandatory up here in Scotland.

And of course while absolutely no-one is willing to admit it, the correlation between 'BLM' protests here in the UK and the upswing in cases of the virus is unmistakeable. But we're 'not allowed' to say that.

A word about the word 'lockdown'. Schools, businesses, and military bases go into lockdown when there is an active shooter on the loose. Prisons go into lockdown when riots threaten or break out.

The word has a very negative connotation. So naturally the mass quarantine instituted (finally and a bit late but heigh ho) was deemed 'lockdown' here in the UK rather than what it was - a public health order for mass quarantine to protect the commonweal and the health care system. And frankly, the press and Government continuing to use the word lockdown to describe the mass quarantine had one effect and only that one - people resented becoming prisoners on lockdown, angry at 'being told what to do' and being threatened with prosecution for non-compliance and therefore flouted common sense at every opportunity. (Here is where I confess my dear husband has been sucked into the conspiracy vortex and refuses to go out if he has to wear a mask). Suddenly a very sensible way to contain the virus became politicised and a 'human rights' issue.

I despair, I really do. I have an opinion as to the origin of the virus (China and their comfort level at letting dangerous pathogens get loose from virology labs - perhaps as a way of testing a bio-weapon?). And I have an opinion regarding the so-called 'conspiracy theories', especially the one about the early hopes for 'herd immunity' via free-running the fecking virus through the general population being a jim-dandy way to cull 'useless eaters' (you know, those of us who are no longer in the workforce paying taxes out of our wage packets - the retired, the elderly, the disabled...).

But I do not believe the virus: doesn't really exist, the death toll is being exaggerated, it's all a plot to force martial law and cart people off to concentration camps, seize goods and property under some sort of hoarding law, or any of the other specious 'theories' making the rounds of the terminally paranoid.

There is a virus, it is a pandemic, it is killing hundreds of thousands and in an excruciatingly awful way for those whose condition puts them in ICU on ventilators. 

Had the phrase 'mass quarantine' been used (the way it was in several US areas), people would have been far less prone to resisting common sense - fewer people would be flouting the guidance and fewer people would be dead. I really believe that.

Presentation is all and had the effort to contain the virus been presented properly (credit where due, Boris did try), I do think the result and consequences would have been mitigated.

Meanwhile, Formula1 restarted last week with the 'added bonus' of useful ejit Lewis Hamilton banging on (read arrogantly and self-righteously bullying the other drivers and management) about 'taking the knee' at the start of every race (what few we PetrolHeads will enjoy this season) and how terribly racist F1 one is and how all white people have unconscious bias and the dreaded 'white privilege' syndrome and he's been so victimised by racism he just can't take it any longer.

And as a consequence his unthinking ludicrous virtue signalling is turning fans off him and Mercedes. Yesterday the one-two Merc podium angered more than pleased and the consensus across F1 fan forums was had fans been allowed in the stands, the booing would have been deafening. We like Bottas. We loathe Hamilton and by the way, is Hamilton happy to be thought perchance anti-Semitic as he never seems too interested in reminding Mercedes how they made THEIR money?

I've never had any real patience for speakers-not-doers. Hamilton especially grates as he lives in a tax-dodger paradise, is a multi-millionaire courtesy of gajillions of fans who have been putting up with his petulance for the past several years (since he broke it off with Nicole, actually) yet insists on earnestly wittering on about how hard done by he is and how he wants to see more black drivers wedged into F1 seats...forgetting he's half-white and forgetting he's all talk and no real action and completely ignoring his tax-dodger ways so he can keep hold of as much of his multi-millions as he can - that private jet doesn't maintain itself, after all, poor hard done by Lewis has to fork out his cash for upkeep so don't expect him to be donating to any 'let's give the disadvantaged blacks a helping hand' fund or setting up a real foundation that does real work to help those aforementioned disadvantaged blacks. And that million USD F1 has pledged to 'fight racism' in the F1, well, Lewis has dissed that saying that amount is 'chump change' towards the cause.

I wasn't going to say anything but his 'support' of BLM is completely unacceptable. While he was bullying his fellow drivers into 'taking a knee' at the start of the first race of the season, a young mother was being murdered by person or persons unknown for the crime of...

Saying to a group of BLM'ers that ALL lives matter.

She was white. The BLM'ers were black. They didn't like her saying all lives matter; they pretended to 'agree to disagree' then lay in wait hiding on an overpass and murdered her as she and her friends made their way home. 

Her father wants BLM declared a terrorist organisation and so do a growing number of sensible people of every race.

'You know it's real because it all happens at once.'