This Covid-19 Saturday In Beetley

~ beetleypete

The New Normal.

Many people are not comfortable with that phrase, including me. But like it or not, we are going to have to embrace it, or suffer the consequences.

I have already adapted to wearing a mask when entering shops. It really isn’t a problem, and took less than an hour to get used to it.

Next week will see some relaxations in the rules, and new restrictions. Bowling Alleys, Beauticians, Live Theatre, and Concerts will be allowed to go ahead. Also soft play for children, all with the corresponding saftey measures adhered to. The restrictions come in the form of an extension to quarantine after travelling to certain countries, now including France.

This is a pointless and toothless ‘quarantine’, as there is nobody to police it. Does anyone else agree that we should have just stopped all foreign travel until 2021 at the earliest? Is a week’s holiday on a Spanish or French beach worth the risk of bringing home Coronavirus? You can guess my answer.

The French have said they will retaliate, enforcing similar conditions on their citizens returning from Britain. Good! There was no real need for anyone to have to go on holiday outside of their own country anyway. If this was The Black Death, and sufferers could be seen with pustules and buboids on their bodies, vomiting blood and dying in agony, do you think people would have chanced travelling to catch it, and bring it home?

But it is no less lethal, just because you cannot see it.

Is a week next to a swimming pool scoffing some all-you-can-eat buffet and drinking your ‘all-inclusive’ watered-down drinks worth the life of your parents or relatives? If you answer yes, there is no hope for you anyway.

So I am embracing that ‘New Normal’. I wear my mask in the shops, continue to wash my hands, and be careful who I meet. And my five-day holiday in September has been booked in Britain, just over two hours drive away from Beetley.

For those of you had just had to ‘get away’, I hope you live long enough before your tan fades.

And in case you were wondering.
No sympathy from me.

64 thoughts on “This Covid-19 Saturday In Beetley”

  1. Well said, Pete… we are fine here…you are welcome to leave and visit another country if you like HOWEVER as some have discovered we don’t want you back unless you jump through a plethora of hoops and tests plus quarantine which you pay for at the designated hotels and then as flights are very very limited you are unlikely to get back in until 2020..Welcome to Thailand 🙂

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  2. Excellent post, Pete. Your point about not seeing it (unlike the Black Death or Small Pox, etc) and therefore people being far too cavalier is important. Black and white rules (no travel) are okay when it comes to a pandemic.

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  3. Totally agree, Pete… “This is a pointless and toothless ‘quarantine’, as there is nobody to police it. Does anyone else agree that we should have just stopped all foreign travel until 2021 at the earliest?” Yep, I’m with you

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  4. I agree there be no holidaying abroad until 2021 until the earliest. Want to go somewhere, go to domestic tour operators. Scotland is right there. Go to the gothic North of England, check out Portsmouth, Warwick Castle, Cardiff Castle, Eileen Donan castle, any fucking castle. The palace of Versailles can wait another year. There a lot of bloody people in this world who never get to travel abroad.

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    1. Very true, Lloyd. Holidaying in Britain has come to be seen as ‘boring’ by so many here. It is also relatively expensive, compared to package holiday deals. But going somewhere hot and sunny then risking dying because of it is just crazy.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  5. The “new normal” has far too many people still not taking this thing seriously. If 160,000 people in your country doesn’t move you, then I guess there is nothing that will. My son is a football coach, (just got out of quarantine, thankfully healthy) and they just postponed their season until the spring.

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  6. A daughter of an acquaintance went with five friends to Southern California and they all came back with the virus. Of course they did. It is raging in Southern California. Even Disneyland is closed.

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    1. Young people everywhere have an incredibly insensitive attitude to all this, bordering on the reckless. I once blamed the early reports that said only the over sixties would die. But those youngsters also have a worrying sense of ‘entitlement’ to do as they please.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  7. You know, Pete, as time passes, I am finding this whole Covid thing to be very increasingly annoying! I’m not talking about wearing masks and gloves; I don’t have ANY problem doing that. It’s little enough to do to prevent contracting a killer disease. I’m talking about the idiots: who said it would go away — POOF! — in a few days; who are out protesting about their right to NOT wear a mask; who say they can’t breathe; who say it’s OK for children to go to school because they won’t catch/spread the virus; who say if we don’t open everything up (bars, restaurants, etc), the country will “go under.”

    Has anyone ever seen what happens when one snotty-nosed child goes to school? It spreads to the teacher, the other kids and the parents! If we open everything up, how many dead people will be buying drinks and playing golf and getting their nails done? Un-frickin’-believable!

    I don’t understand why counties have to enact laws to help stupid people not kill themselves and everyone around them!

    OK. I’m climbing down off the “rant box,” but I just don’t understand. Over 150,00 people are dead and Dr. Fauci and his family are getting threats on their life! Because what??

    Be well, everyone. May we just use the wonderful mind that God gave us!

    Mona

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  9. We haven’t been anywhere, Pete. I am anxious to keep my mom and Michael safe. The rest of us too, but they are both high risk. We cancelled our trip to London, Glastonbury and Wales this year. I am still hoping for next year. Fingers crossed this does end.

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  10. Here Trump has ‘closed’ borders but leaves it up to the individual states to enforce their own rules; but if they don’t do things to his anti science thinking he makes threats. Right now he is trying to destroy the postal system so we can’t vote by mail.

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    2. He out and out admitted that if the USPS doesn’t have the money needed to run it, that will impair the vote-by-mail effort, and that he is doing what he can to see that it doesn’t get the money.

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  11. We both wear our masks entering any store and we even wear them at the open air farmers market. Today we planned to visit friends and sit outside on their deck six feet apart and wearing masks. We were rained out. We rescheduled for the next hopefully nice day when we can exercise precautions. This would have been our first visit with anyone in five months.

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    1. We have only seen family in the same room, and spoken to neighbours at a respectable distance. Other than that, two trips to a restaurant with the tables are separated by screens. Those people holidaying abroad and then complaining about the restrictions are just fools in my eyes. And selfish fools too.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  12. Q. “Is a week’s holiday on a Spanish or French beach worth the risk of bringing home Coronavirus? You can guess my answer.”
    A. For Spain and France, the answer is NO. But for the beaches in Antarctica, the answer is a resounding YES!

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    1. I have no sympathy for them becuase they obviously don’t care about bringing the virus back to infect others. The same sort of people who say things like “Only old people get it, and they will die anyway”. When one of their own family dies, they might realise. But then it will be too late.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  14. I have had to laugh at all the winging brits as they had to rush back home to avoid the latest travel ban. What were they thinking about going away in the first place? How was it a surprise to them?
    If you are quarantined here in Poland you get called everyday at a random time and your mobile provides your location. I still maintain the numbers in Poland stayed low at the start as they closed the borders quickly, only now as things are opening up have the numbers started to rise. I can see the borders shutting again soon.

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    2. Totally agree, Pete… “This is a pointless and toothless ‘quarantine’, as there is nobody to police it. Does anyone else agree that we should have just stopped all foreign travel until 2021 at the earliest?” Yep, I’m with you

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  15. Hey Pete! You said it. My manager holds virtual meetings twice a week tok remind us that we don’t need to travel–to the office or otherwise. He reminds us to avoid ordering food and sends us recipes to cook at home. We have a whatsapp group now and video calls are happen all the time to remind us we are not alone. We have discovered how to get comfortable in front of a camera. And I think returning to social gatherings will be rather awkward. But it’s okay. Because it is necessary to stay alive.

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  16. I think the next time its possible leaving Germany, i will call this “escape”, and i will be prepared not coming back for a longer period.;-) I had read in China the next virus was detected.This virus is transmitted by ticks. We have the most tick-contaminated area here. After the ticks – due to the great heat – probably the mosquito nets with hemorrhagic (Dengue, Lassa and all the others) fever. Michael

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      1. There are ticks over on Hoe Rough nearby that come from sheep grazed there. We have to get them off Ollie with a special tick-removal device. He has a reular tablet that kills them when they bite him, but the bodies stay stuck on him.

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  19. I wear my mask from the moment I leave my house to go to the shops until I’m back. There are too many visitors in town who show such glee when they rip off their masks as they leave a shop, don’t abide by the two-metre social distancing rule (despite posters on every lamp post explaining the importance of being kind and considerate) and who walk down the pavement three and four abreast. A friend of mine in the town got Covid early on, just before lockdown and she is still very ill and it looks like she may never regain her previous health status, but we’ve not had one case since until last week and now it seems there are two cases, or even three, though I suspect the third is a case of a story getting bigger as it goes around. And I’m getting quite a nice tan in the garden now we’re getting some sunshine.

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    1. Glad to hear you are doing everything to stay safe, Mary. I don’t wear my mask in th car, but also don’t remove it the second I walk out of a shop. I wait until I am back at the car on my own.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  20. Agree with you Pete, issue here now is breaches of quarantine, 2 weeks in a hotel at govt expense is not too much to ask but for some they just have to climb the wall and go walk about.
    Keep safe

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  21. I am with you….I am a hermit anyway…as long as Sue and the pups are here I do not need to see or speak to anyone. The quarantine thing….you are right it should have been enforced for one year to be sure. chuq

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    1. The government could have done more to support the travel industry, and then banned non-essential travel to other countries from the outset. Someone geting a suntan by a pool in Spain is no reason to allow the virus into the country.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  22. I could not agree more with everything that you wrote here Pete. The way some people just simply seem to underestimate the effects of this disease is at times totally bewildering to me😔 I’d rather have the “New Normal” than risk people close to me getting infected or even worse dying because of Covic. So yeah…I’m definitely embracing the new normal myself.

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