End of term rituals. Covid consequences.

 This morning I accompanied my daughter as she drove round distributing end of year presents to members of her class. I went along because she wanted me to sit in the car with her two children as she popped up alleyways and hunted for specific addresses. My classes used to have to make do with a shared box of chocolates or fancy biscuits. Maybe primary school teachers have a different kind of relationship with their class from sixth form teachers. But I don’t remember my primary teachers being so thoughtful. But times change and everyone sets a lot more store by those closure ceremonies these days. I have mixed feelings about it all.  You need to mark the process of moving on to the next stage but sometimes it seems as though all these things are analysed too closely nowadays. Or maybe my bump of sentimentality is just underdeveloped.

The driving around to deliver presents was made necessary by the self isolation that my daughter and her class have had to put themselves in during the final stage of the school year. Another consequence of Covid. 

Another more worrying one is apparently a rise in the number of small children developing something called respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Parents are being encouraged to look out for symptoms of severe infection in at-risk children, including fever with a high temperature of 37.8C or above, a dry and persistent cough, difficulty feeding, and rapid or noisy breathing. The NHS  is preparing for a rise in children needing treatment. 

It is something that normally occurs in the winter time but positive RSV samples among suspected cases have increased over the past five weeks from 1.2% to 8.9%. It’s  not Covid but it’s still frightening for parents of very small children. And one of the reasons for it happening is that many small children have seen few people other than their parents for the last year and a quarter. And so they have not developed the natural immunity that would be expected to occur. Strange times we live in.

And then there’s the Olympic Games beginning today in Tokyo under very odd circumstances. Most especially is the lack of spectators. We’ll see how it goes. 

Plans are afoot to insist that people going to live concerts will have to show proof of having been vaccinated against Covid. Eric Clapton has thrown his two penn’orth into the debate by saying that he will cancel any of his planned concerts at venues demanding such proof. It seems he had a bad reaction the Astra Zeneca vaccine and now he appears to have joined ranks with the anti-vaxxers. He undoubtedly has the right to make up his own mind and I imagine he already has enough money to be able to afford to turn down gigs. 

No doubt things will calm down eventually. 

After we had finished driving around this morning, my daughter, the children and I had a bit of lunch and then went on a long walk to make up for her having been unable to do so over the last week or two.

Life goes on. Stat safe and well, everyone!