Christmas is Saved!

It's not that far off Advent so thoughts had been very much around just what would Christmas in this topsy turvey year going to be like.

One thing it can include to the delight of boys and girls everywhere is a virtual Grotto where you can meet Mr. Claus safely on his sleigh, wave and talk to him about what you'd like for Christmas. 

Amazingly the leaders of all Four Nations within the UK didn't just get together for virtual mince pies but agreed a common set of agreed exemptions from each countries rules for five days starting December 23rd to enable people if they wish to meet up over Christmas.

Because you are being allowed to do this doesn't mean you should go overboard and have everyone over during that period - you should try to keep that contact as brief as is necessary and avoid having people sharing things you may dip into such as festive candy and savoury snacks - but does mean people can see children and people who aren't at the highest risk of catching anything who might of had little face to face contact with family can be reunited.

No, it's not everyday you get festive decorations from the Government  but this Bubble was nearly universally welcomed for allowing Christmas of sorts to happen and setting some rules as people would only of met up anyhow in less safe ways.

Christmas was saved but what about the Turkey?

Next Wednesday in England, we're out of our National Lockdown V 2.0 so amongst other things no matter what Tier we end up in where we live we can have our hair cut.

When this was written the decision of what areas went into which tiers had not been announced - I suspect it was made with Council leaders knowing - but under an embargo unto the Minister makes his announcement on Thursday.

This is a summary of what applies to each Tier from December 2nd.

To me it looks a bit more balanced with a good number of less risky things that people can do including non essential shops reopening and grassroots sports resuming but with stricter rules that are more targeted at things that pose the greatest risk increasing for areas with the highest levels of infection, stretched NHS capacity and so on.

Forced changes

 Last week was rather trying, more than bloggers new system is which can be when you just go to load an image and - pow! - your text just goes in a flash and for a connected reason -images.

Let's face it we may have images from sources that don't look right or perhaps as careful as you be with digital photography, it needs a bit of tweaking here, a cropping there and so on so we have various Photo processing suites on our desktop and laptop computers.

It's different with Chromebooks cos you can't install programs only use web based apps such as Pixlr which you upload the image to and download the tweaked version.

Ever since I had this Windows 10 laptop and finding my preferred photosuite just wouldn't work with it, I had used NCH's Photopad which did but while working on some stuff for a post, it suddenly stopped working.

Seemingly they wanted me to upgrade the program I'd paid for so I did with reluctance only to find while the program would load, it would not open the image I selected and after reporting this bug, they suggested I load a test version, a "Beta" which I did having had pay for license before that.

That which the moment I throw the towel in because while that did load and open up the image, the minute you went to save, it opened a save .jpg size dialogue box with with a slider with no means for saving the setting and escaping the program.

Indeed it wouldn't let me come out of Windows and switch off!

Now that's what I call defective!

I decided enough was enough and found a program that would work.

There was a discount on this program produced by the German company behind Ashampoo and I could download it for a trial period and see how it performed before paying for it which I thought was a good idea as relearning how do with different programs takes time.

So far in it seems to be working out fine for doing things beyond Microsoft's Photo application Edit mode.

A Cure for Covid?

This week we are looking a bit at current affairs hopefully free from negativity of political discourse that does nothing for me but looks at actual issues which is a reason this blog like exists from when in 2016 I reviewed having it.

It was announced on Monday Pfizer/BioNTech pharmaceutical teams had come up with a vaccine for Covid-19 which had no ill effects on the test subjects who had been infected with it and a 90% success at preventing it had been reported.

The new treatment goes into accelerated testing for formal approval by various health regulators around the  world before treatment programs are established.

Not unsurprisingly mainstream  reaction has been overwhelming positive because so many of us are being affected in our most basic elements of our everyday lives, being unable to share affection with close family, under major restrictions on transportation, how we and what we can shop and eat and so on.

Is their any of us who doesn't want this to end soon?

No I doubt it so that is why there is much discussion about how here in the UK, the NHS, the leading state medical provider can roll out a vaccination program starting with people in health sector, then care homes and residents before moving in scale of vulnerability downwards to the whole population.

This may involve a call to bring many retired but otherwise capable former health workers back in to do the inoculations both in hospitals and the doctors surgeries and if here may be a role for chemists (the UK catch all term for Drug Stores) as there is with delivering the Flu vaccination annually.

The bigger thing may be getting the biggest very cold storage facilities for the vaccine where they are needed as it likes a temperature of minus 85 Celsius. 

We are looking at something like at least 1,200,000 inoculations a week probably scaling upwards at over 1,200 centres to try get the highest level of inoculation possible although it must be stressed other similar vaccines are due to report readiness for deployment too by December time.

In the UK it is not compulsory to take nationally prescribed vaccinations, an area of controversy given the drop in Polio and MMR vaccinations in recent years and associated rises in childhood infection.

It was stressed no one would be made to be vaccinated against Covid-19 but in terms of effectiveness in being able to gradually drop the restrictions we all are tired of, it's essential nearly all of us do.

It is possible that those who do not may face potential restrictions where say working in very close proximity may come into play although no one has actually said this.

In what has been at times a very downbeat time, the possibility of being able to move out the restrictions we are presently in in the knowledge we are highly unlikely to catch Covid and by extension reduce it transmission potential has given hope to hundreds of millions world-wide.

I'd take an inoculation if offered.

Going back in the now

There's been so much noise in my Tumblr feed I struggled to filter it out with highly polarized political posts and that so I have been spending more time away from it, wrapped up walking through woodlands and that enjoying the company of birds, insects and mammals (and the odd Mamil crossing paths on two wheels).

As you may of gathered in England we are going back of sorts to staying mainly indoors to keep this Covid-19 under control and reduce the transmission rate that went a bit high last month so people where they can are being ask to work from home and to cut the number of contacts down to the bare minimum.

Schools, colleges and universities will be open for business and unlike last time most treatments will (in theory) be available from doctors and hospitals so it won't be as severe in some ways to what we had in March and April.

Another important difference is that the playgrounds and areas will be open with people requested not to play team games in them unlike last time so actually I can not only go through the park I can use the swings for instance which really matters for children.

It's hard enough to cope with this for adults and sometimes I think they ignore children's developmental and emotional needs in all this so being able to maintain routines that are fun, letting off steam matter hugely.

I'll be off now exploring nature, surround by leaves and acorns having fun in all this.