- The Choice
Turkeys ruining the country vote for Christmas as Astrazeneca announces its vaccine
Mainstream media announce that the Turkeys who run our country have agreed that Christmas should proceed, probably meaning that we can all celebrate the New Year with another devastating lockdown. One would have to question after all the shit we've been through so far, why they'd want to start the new year off in similar fashion, although, the decisions of all involved have been questionable throughout this, where is the opposition and a decent media when you need them.
The chancellor has said that the UK will not enter another phase of austerity, the plan is to try and spend their way out of this economic downturn, which begs the question, why didn't they do this in 2010? Announcing that the UK would enter another phase of austerity would almost certainly signal an end to the Tory reign which has ruled Britannia for the past decade, leaving the chancellor to come up with new ideas. Government spending may provide some small security to the the UK, however, the pandemic has affected the economy on a global scale and without global cooperation, the spending may not be enough to stop the impending economic crises which will follow the pandemic.
Meanwhilst, Astrazeneca have announced that their vaccine offers a 70% success rate and may be improved to 90% with some tweaking, the goverments and news outlets have been quick to celebrate the success, the BBC news health correspondant Kathrine Burns even saying that none of the 10'000 volunteers who trialed the vaccine had any serious issues. It is well known that one of the volunteers in Brazil died after taking part in the trial and another in the UK suffered serious spinal issues. I am not an anti vaxxer, I require them for my profession which involves a lot of travel and always take them up. My concern with this political trumpetting from the media is that they do nothing to silence the doubters and calm any nerves which those who may have concerns... Astrazeneca were quick to state that the volunteer in Brazil had taken a placebo, but went silent on the UK volunteer who suffered spinal issues. Why the silence. Recently Labour said that laws should be introduced to punish social media firms which fail to remove any anti-vaxers..... This lot just don't get it do they? Let's stop the anti-vaxers by punishing their platform.... Or howabout, let's build confidence in the population by showing and explaining why this vaccine is safe, silence the antivaxxers with some education and some transparency.
Airline Quantas have recently said that they will not let anyone fly without having the vaccine, I say let's remind Quantas that the customer is always right, airlines have been one of the worst offenders of using COVID as an excuse to offer a poor service, when the reality is their just saving costs. I recently had the experience of a long haul flight with Turkish, I was given what could only be described as the worlds smallest sandwich and a bottle of water, I complained to Turkish that I was not impressed with the level of service dispite the ticked not being any cheaper. Their response was that they, inline with all other airlines were offering a cold treat to limit exposure to crew and passengers.... Now... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure that offering a hot meal exposes a crew and passengers more to COVID than a cold meal? So as far as Quantas can go... How about giving the freedom to passengers to build their own trust in the system.
A scientist was questioned on Channel 4 whether he was worried about takeup of the vaccine from the population... His answer, was a breath of fresh air, the vaccine will be given to the most vulnerable first, when people see its success, the population will be more inclined to taking it, thus building the trust needed to get the required uptake to defeat this virus.