I feel smug now because I literally switched to DDG about a year ago for this exact reason! This is so spot on The Google/Youtube algorithms have a really hard time with me now, because I genuinely do my best to behave like an Enlightened Centrist online, so my Youtube feed is now this bizarre ice-cream-and-pizza mess of partisan shouty videos from both sides. The algorithm has a hard time doing its job when you just watch everything.
Tweet— Twitter API (@user) date In other news, my eldest has developed symptoms so we now have to isolate for two weeks and I'm going to have to do a nasal swab on an eight-year-old - which I'd imagine isn't going to be pleasant for either of us.
Youngest has a cough now too - but we can't order a home test for her, because we already ordered one for her sister. Bear in mind the system specifically told us *not* to order a test for other household members at the same time unless they had symptoms, which my youngest didn't at the time. I can still book a drive-through appointment, but that's a lot of hassle and stress for a four-year-old compared to just doing a swab at home!
They're falling like dominoes round here to the point where school has apparently become unofficially optional. As in the parents have decided they know better. Secondaries are pretty much all shut, primaries are rolling the dice. We were thankfully some way out of the danger zone (somehow?) until a couple of weeks ago but something has changed. On the basis that we know about half a dozen teachers and are on the school board, the clear message is that the kids are spreading this thing round. And yet schools remain illogically open. You definitely have my sense of humour... We watched a thing on Netflix the other night called "/the social dilemma" or similar - it was quite astounding the level to which these guys have gone to engage you and retain your attention. Even though I thought I was pretty clued up, there's a whole other layer of psycho-skill that I wasn't aware of.
Doing the home test on an eight year old sucked. Doing the test on a four year old, in the back of a car, in the dark *really* sucked. No idea if the samples will be in any way valid, 'cos "10-15 seconds" was never going to happen.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55362697 Can't wait to see how the anti vaxxers spin that one.
Boris has just dumped a nuke on the last possible shoot of hope that may have existed that anyone will and should follow his rules. All bets are off. Now even the most hardened are going to go "hang on a minute, you're taking the piss now" and ain't no one reporting their neighbours for having the kids round for Christmas. Or will police be expected to stop all vehicles and search for presents? Police haven't even been enforcing the rules before now really.
They should never have created the 5 day exception in the first place, but if people are stupid enough to just ignore the rules then hell mend them.
Are the people following the rules and going outside not stupid because in reality we should've been in full lockdown for most of December? Or will they only be stupid if Boris u-turns yet more in a few days (where nothing has changed during) and now it's stupidly against the rules? Are people in Oxfordshire sane for following the Christmas rules and seeing families on Christmas, and across the border 5 miles away in Bucks they'd be stupid if they do the same?
I dream of a utopia where we use these strange foreign things called internet and phones to remove inefficient physical meetings, but for me I meant 'stay at home, don't go to work, don't go to school, but I guess you have to go to the shops, oh bugger that means we need workers in shops etc. ok most of you don't go to work'.
