Give Us A Clue

I have absolutely no clue.

This statement is applicable to me on a regular basis, but right now, it has seldom been more true. It is both horrific and hilarious that we are sat here approaching 18 months into the pandemic and we still have no clue on whether we will ever be able to travel for fun again.

Why am I so befuddled? Well, I do try and look at the facts and what is going on and draw some sort of sense out of it. You will know from reading this drivel each week that I have been spectacularly wrong on a spectacularly consistent basis so I think it best I give up. Here are the current states of play that are causing me so much confusion…

1. The UK government have declared the pandemic over and announced we no longer need to modify our behaviour in any way (in England anyway) in a couple of weeks.
2. COVID cases are rising at a ridiculous rate and the R number seems to be somewhere around 14.
3. The FCDO have changed their guidance and said it is fine to travel to the US for non-essential purposes pretty much on the same day that…
4. Virgin and BA seemingly cancelled all flights until late August/early September.
5. Hospitalisations and deaths are rising again but obviously at much reduced rates than before due to the vaccines.

Some of those things don’t seem compatible with each other. The government policy of herd immunity laid bare now worries me for non-holiday reasons, but in the context of going to some theme parks, I do very much worry that a country with potentially 100,000 cases a day in a few weeks won’t be the one the US really want to invite into their country.

I’m all for lifting restrictions and trusting the vaccines, don’t get me wrong. We have to get back to some sort of normal asap, but I’d just appreciate the feeling that those we have making the decisions could tie their own shoe laces. It would at least be helpful if both the UK and US governments would treat us as adults and share their thinking with us, so folks could make some sensible plans rather than the endless moving of dates and uncertainty we have now.

I have long stated that I think our government have little appetite for getting foreign holidays back up and running and would much rather we spent our cash here this summer. Or maybe they are terrified of letting Brits holiday in Europe as that would expose the joy of standing in a non-EU member passport queue for 12 hours whilst we marvel at our sovereignty.

The government here must know what they are doing….right? I mean, on the face it, letting the disease rip through the under 18’s and unvaccinated with no regard for long COVID or facilitating vaccine escaping mutations might seem like a stupid idea. I mean it would be like….

1. Allowing the pandemic stockpile to dwindle to nothing so that when one happened nurses had to wear bin bags…..oh
2. Sending schools back for one day in the middle of the pandemic so that the pupils could nicely infect each other before schools were shut again, taking their newly acquired COVID home to their older relatives….oh
3. Telling the country that the PM thinks it’s fine to still be shaking hands with COVID patients in hospital at the start of a global pandemic…..oh
4. Telling the country they could mix freely for 5 days over Christmas before then changing that to 1 day at the last minute when everyone had made plans…oh
5. Deciding to send untested elderly people back into care homes to facilitate the death of thousand of grannies….oh
6. Knowing that a more contagious variant was running riot in India and not restricting visitors from that country as the PM didn’t want to upset the chances of a trade deal, despite putting two neighbouring countries on the red list three weeks earlier than India…oh
7. Spending £37bn on a test and trace system that at its peak was contacting 60% of exposed contacts….oh
8. The bloke in charge of the nation’s health swapping spit with his mistress after being on telly every day telling us we couldn’t hug our families….oh
9. Launching Eat Out to Help Out last summer which a University study claimed drove new infections up by between 8 and 17%….oh
10. The PM’s main advisor blatantly taking the piss by having a trip out for his wife’s birthday undermining the adherence to lockdown rules for millions of people…..oh

Sadly, that list is not exhaustive and I could go on, and if you follow me on Twitter, I often do, but I list those things to demonstrate that those running the show have absolutely no clue what they are doing and are setting out plans based on popularity polls and pressure from newspapers and MPs they cannot afford to upset.

So on a daily if not hourly basis, my belief that we’ll be in WDW in October changes like the wind. I tell myself that there is no way the US will be letting our Delta riddled asses anywhere near their border anytime soon, but then reconcile that with the fact that they would insist on a negative test before entry and most folks would be double jabbed so maybe they would?

In an ideal world it would be great if the US said that double jabbed folks were welcome, and anyone not able to be so could provide a negative test very shortly before arriving. That would seem to be the most sustainable solution but I suspect it may not be that simple.

So where do I think we are with all that being said? Truly, I have no clue. However if Virgin and BA are now cancelling nearly all of August then it seems the US will not be an option until our kids are back in school. That still fits with our dates of course but we’ve been here before and who knows if I will be sat here moaning still in September as our October flights get cancelled too.

To make matters worse I now have to go and do some mowing. Insult on top of injury when all I want to be doing is planning with any degree of certainty which meals I will be eating in a few months time. Is that too much to ask?

The longer all this goes on the more weary I become and I may continue to lash out at those I perceive to be the root of the continued pandemic, as evidenced by the above. I am sure Johnson is terrified! I appreciate that not everyone will share my vitriol and blame assigning, but hey, it’s my blog and I can be emotional and potentially wrong (I’m not wrong) if I want to.

Till the next time…..