Just under a year ago we were being told to wash our hands to the length of time it took to sing Happy Birthday.

Yesterday's BBC website https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52040138 says:

There is little direct evidence of people catching the virus from droplets that have ended up on objects (such as food or food packaging) - although it's difficult to gather this evidence so we can't rule it out as a route of transmission.
I recall being around the Market Square at the end of Feb and all the Asians (Chinese) were wearing masks and in the pub (remember those) I argued that this virus could not have spread from Wuhan to Europe and other parts of the world by touching. It didn't make sense despite soon afterwards animations were shown of painting something on someone's hand and watching how it spread.

In March we got the Happy Birthday message despite there being articles about aerosol transmission, and again I recall discussion (don't be eating your lunch whilst you read this) that anal spray due to the squat toilets used in China were responsible for the rapid rate of transmission. This article is from last February: https://fortune.com/2020/02/20/coron...-transmission/

Our scientists then got into a tizz because they did not differentiate between face coverings and medical masks. So we had an unnecessary delay in keeping the aerosol transmission down. At that time both my wife and I started to wear some dust masks that were in my d-i-y box.

At every point our government was slow to take action "guided by the science" and that has continued at every stage of this epidemic.

We now thankfully have vaccines which, provide the distribution is not messed up, and someone takes a note of recipient details (unlike what has happened with mass testing) then there is an end in sight. But a last minute swerve says delay the second dose. In the case of the Pfizer vaccine - where trials show 90% efficacy, neither Pfizer nor the WHO support this approach. The situation is worse with the AZ/Oxford vaccine which only shows 70% efficacy after the first jab.

The doctors are in somewhat of a dilemma because they would normally follow the guidelines provided with the medication.

If I have a jab and know in 3 weeks I'll get another I'll be very careful in those 3 weeks, but if that 3 weeks is going to be 3 months I'm going to struggle. It feels to me like another algorithm exercise such as happened with exams last year. Punch the numbers through a computer but ignore the behaviour of the subjects.

Happy Birthday covid - we've let you score more than you should have.