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Letter #11 Delivered 24 Oct 21

Hi Craig,

It was good to get a reply from you yesterday. I was becoming concerned about your wellbeing given the news of Covid on your corridor.

As freedumb day approached in July I searched for plausible reasoning, and found it in the case chart for India. What we now call Delta had torn through the country and burnt out. The exponential rise gave way to an exponential decline. Our complacent and negligent government high on their own vaccination programme hubris thought that there was nowhere left for the virus to go. But again they’ve tragically miscalculated. As July turned to August the case rate decline did not continue, and instead we’ve saw-toothed our way back to another peak.

I had my face rubbed in the reality of the situation this week as I went up to London for a couple of things I’d agreed to in the expectation (misplaced hope?) of improvement. People aren’t ‘exercising common sense’, they’re going along with the pretence that Covid is over when it’s clearly not.

For the longer term I’m increasingly concerned that this is the anvil the NHS will be broken on. Selling it off for parts over the Atlantic Bridge. The politicians going along with this must be idiots, as they sell themselves too cheaply to cover the healthcare costs for themselves and their own families. I once read that Obama had to bail out Biden when he was VP, as the costs for Beau’s cancer care were bankrupting him. If the VP of the USA can’t afford that system then it works for nobody, and I’ve seen first hand how grotesquely inefficient things are whilst at the same time delivering a truly awful experience for patients. The worst part is that the rich have always had access to the best healthcare, with BUPA and Harley St. etc. floating on top of the NHS.

Your comment on the 0.1% got me thinking – is it really that many people (~7M worldwide)? I suspect the actual problem stems from far fewer ultra wealthy people meddling in the politics that shapes life for the rest of us. Maybe just 7000 (or 0.0001%). That’s a couple of Davoses. Somehow a Davos seems like a good unit of measure for Oligarchs.

Dune is another big deal SciFi book that I’ve never got around to reading. I’m hearing that the recently released film is good, so maybe like with Foundation the time has come when such titles can make it from page to screen without so much disappointment.

Has there been any news of books sent to you for the library making it through?

I’m looking forward to your reply,

Chris