I have long since given up on our government giving us the right information, I no longer trust them, and I’m certainly not alone on that. Yesterday more conservative MPs (the party that is in power here) submitted letters calling for a vote of no confidence in their prime minister Boris Johnson, there has to be 54 letters for the vote to be triggered. The Gray report into allegations of lockdown social parties attended by Boris Johnson was partially published this week. It was partially published because the police are investigating some of the parties, and they don’t want an investigation prejudiced! Of course many people are angry about this, there definitely were parties, at least one of them were even held in the prime ministers flat - all at a time when we were legally forbidden from seeing people, never mind partying. It’s all very Marie Antoinette! Boris Johnson has apologised but it was a fudged apology IMO and he quite obviously intends to draw a line under it and roll on. Personally I think it’s incredible.

Anyhow the whole thing has undermined the credibility of any new information or guidance - I don’t think they could order anything of the public in future, people wouldn’t take it, we’ve just got to hope no more public emergencies happen during this time because I think we’d be well and truly stuffed, not many people would comply with instructions from this government.

Anyhow throughout all this my main source of information has been a study from Kings College London lead by professor Tim Spector, he’s a genetic epidemiologist. Most recently he’s been saying at this point omicron has meant less serious repercussions and the death rate although sad is often people who were already in hospital anyway, he thinks the data should be changed in how it’s shown to reflect that. This man is not an out there conspiracy theorist so I put weight on what he says. In particular he feels it’s right for care homes to open up after 2 years of heavy restrictions.

A dear friend lost her dad (who was in a care home) a year ago, not to covid (he actually had that earlier without symptoms) she hadn’t seen him except at the window, and once in summer 2020 in the garden and they had to wear masks, she’s not sure if he even knew it was them. She’s actually pretty calm about the whole thing but how many families suffered like this? And all the while the wine and cheese was flowing at these government parties.