Bubbles burst

Egypt will be desolate (Joel 3:19) 

Well, some people's desolation has gone away. Our government seem to have come to the obviously sensible conclusion (a) that subjecting people to solitary confinement for months at a time is a bad idea (surprise, surprise) and (b) if you stick to a 'bubble' of one isolated adult to one household the risks are not greatly increased. Hooray. It goes on my shelf, next to Test and Trace, as our government's second genuinely good idea. It's a thin selection but credit where credit is due. 

I hope I will not be looked down on though for pointing out that the restriction to stay at home if anyone in your household has symptoms remains in place. I think we need to rename this Cummings Law as a reminder of his singular failure to keep it. We could of course have named the travel ban after him, but that was always going to be temporary while the Stay at Home rule is likely to be pretty permanent. I'd like to note also that both these rules would have made it to my shelf of Sensible Ideas except that it was clear the government didn't mean us to keep them after they described breaking them as a 'right and honourable' thing to do, at least in the case of Mr Cummings.

So little steps. But am I alone in wondering if these are the things that a competent government would have thought about in advance of a pandemic. Surely a planned and tested scenario could have been ready to go, in place as it were. We'd had warning with SARS and H5N1. We'd done a test run but two years ago. It all smacks of getting into some major event without having any kind of plan. And I cannot think what that reminds me of. 

Our desolation may be abating a little but it certainly hasn't gone away, and I, for one, am, metaphorically, and, occasionally actually, holding my breath in the hope that we will find a safe way ahead. Aren't we all.

Roses in the rain - a sign of summer