The Quarantine Diaries

I've had a great night's sleep and wake naturally at around 9. Checking my phone I see that the daily death rate announcement has been dropped - apparently due to miscounting errors which make them misleading, although it feels very much as if the government feels it has got Covid done and now intends to spend all its time getting Brexit done instead.  There's also news of the police in riot gear closing down an illegal rave in Finsbury park - the British seem to go a bit mad whenever the sun comes out, as it did yesterday, and councils have been granted new powers to cancel events, close shops and shut public spaces to deal with local outbreaks. Meanwhile Reuters reports that, for the first time, 1M new cases have been reported in 100 hours taking us to 14M in total and Barcelona has asked people to stay home after a spike in cases. An epidemiologist from SAGE has challenged the PM's desire for the UK to return to normal by Christmas. Although it's clear some peopl

 Covid really is a sneaky and persistent nuisance. My friend has been in hospital since Tuesday; she has multiple blood clots in all lobes of both her lungs. Apparently, it's a fairly common post-covid complication. We had been in touch regularly since she couldn't come over last saturday, and she's been getting increasingly breathless and anxious. Of course, those things can be connected, but something wasn't right. Her oxygen saturation has been wavering between the high 80s and low 90s. She called her GP, but when she told him she'd stayed in the house while it was being dehumidified after the flood he was dismissive and accused her of not taking her health seriously. Of course, this just made her upset and did nothing to solve the problem. It came to a head on Tuesday; she called me about 9pm to say she had just nearly passed out and could I come over. I told her that I would, but that she was to call an ambulance. She said she couldn't get down the stairs t