Category Archives: Science

From time to time it’s important to draw attention to the kind of stats I was reviewing regularly during COVID. That’s because, with the “emergency” ostensibly over, the studied blindness towards the damaging effects of the COVID response by all our “institutions” becomes more of a running sore. But like a real running sore, or an ongoing war of attrition, it becomes a lot easier for those institutions to bury the bad news as non-news.

I’ve not written much on pandemic-related issues recently, though being aware of the risk of “putting the bad times behind” that is now so obvious in daily life. It’s so tempting to try to forget the whole thing, but so dangerous… a bit like the Vietnam War or Iraq really.

*An allusion to Who can Replace a Man? by Brian Aldiss. There are encouraging local signs that, after three irrational years, the COVID scare is ending. First, I saw that our local hardware-cum-everything-else store had removed its useless Perspex barriers and queuing separation system; although Tesco still has their screens it gave up on social distancing months ago. Then my wife tells me our dentist’s waiting room is now open, so you no longer have to bang on the door for admission and pass a gauntlet of hand-detoxification before being treated by a dentist in a diving-suit. Lastly I notice that our church no longer opens the windows in freezing … Continue reading →

One old trope of horror movies is that the witness to implacable evil is never believed. The sweet old lady you notice speaking to your friend in the lane suddenly morphs to reveal its true nature: “I saw it – it had huge eyes and green skin, and dragged Thelma down a hole.” “It’s just your imagination – she’s only gone to buy some bread, and will be back soon.” Since the Great Gloom, many of us (usually isolated from each other) have felt the same way, as our friends and relatives either humour or mock us for what, in fact, we know and they don’t. Very often they seem, … Continue reading →