COLUMN: Winter is Coming!

AS I wrote recently in a news story, regional president Francina Armengol said that the Balearic Islands are recovering and will achieve a full economic and employment recovery during 2022. And that now is time to look forward to a prolonged return to social and economic normality. Woo hoo! It’s the news we’ve all been waiting for.

Now jump over to the UK and what you’ll find is Boris, the ghost of Christmas past, with looming threats of winter lockdowns, whilst pulling the plug on vaccine passports so no one can escape easily! And shrouding the country in ever more Covid doom and gloom mongering. People are being put under more pressure to get vaccinated, is/was there really a choice? And there’s much debate about whether children should be vaccinated, or not, and from what age? If they could have put the vaccine in our water I’m sure they would have by now!

So here is the masterplan delivered by Health Secretary Sajid Javid. Ministers want to encourage the unvaccinated to be jabbed, offer vaccines to 12 to 15-year-olds and begin a booster jab programme for millions. The plan will also include continuing testing, tracing of cases and self-isolation for those who catch the virus. Businesses will also be encouraged to consider using the NHS Covid Pass to check the vaccination or test status of customers.

Like Jon Snow in the Game of Thrones, Prof Chris Whitty, harks that “winter is coming” and that respiratory viruses such as flu and others would be “hugely advantaged”. Haven’t colds and flu always posed a concern for the old and vulnerable? From all of this it would seem that the UK are wanting to hold on to the power to enforce whatever restrictions they deem fit. But if the vaccine roll-out has been such a success, as they boast, why are we not doing away with the restrictions everywhere? Most people with any shred of common sense will tell you, ‘let us just get on with it’.

I don’t say this frivolously, but with the help of the media, it’s all gone on far too long and the only chance of a real recovery is to instil some much-needed positivity and confidence. We cannot continue to live in the state of fear which was thrust upon us at the start of Covid. As we saw then, that just created more panic which manifested into so many other problems. Not only the shortage of loo roll, but people retreating into the safe shell of their homes with the knock-on effect that had on business, peoples’ finances and the toll it’s taken on everyone’s mental health!

Only recently a friend told me a true story about a man who’d gone to visit family and had to self-isolate for ten days before being free to see them. Already suffering mental health issues as a result of Covid, he took an overdose on day three of his self-isolation and died! These stories tend not to make the news, but any health expert will say that this is not an isolated case and the longer we give in to Covid, the more common they’ll become.

On a cheery note, I’m glad Armengol has come out with such positive comments and I’m happy to be living out this, now, very boring situation in Spain. England is bleak at the best of times in winter and with their politician’s predictions it’s going to be a very long one!

You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @tereniataras

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