Still a Busy Bee

Just a couple of hours this morning on the garden before it got too hot and sunny. I'm making slow but steady progress in changing part of the garden to a wild area - all the old gravel has been sifted and shifted and I've removed all the old block paver edging. Digging it over will take a while due to all the big stones / flint, but I've got the time and wanted a big project. The bees are still busy - I love how they behave on these geraniums, turning on their side and pulling themselves round in a circle to get the nectar. I had my first Arts Society lecture on Zoom, a good talk about the moving of the Nation's paintings, precious books and manuscripts and museum pieces for the duration of WWII. I knew about the danger of bombing, but hadn't thought about the risk of them being 'stolen', used for propaganda or deliberately destroyed if we'd been invaded. 

'The busy bee has no time for sorrow.'  William Blake

Day 184 / Full Day 176 of Lockdown / Day 2 of Rule of Six (for my record only)
UK deaths up 27 to 41,664 (revised basis), with new daily cases up by 3,105 (plus those positive who can't get tested!) and 972 patients in hospital. The daily positive cases is probably time lagged given the days of delay in getting test results now. In England those in a mechanical ventilator bed has doubled from 50 to 101 in only 10 days. The ONS reports total Covid deaths per death certificates in the UK as over 57,500. Total cases to date in India pass 5m and deaths in Spain pass 30k. 

Matt Hancock says testing issues could take weeks to resolve and that prioritising groups for testing might be needed. How come India can identify 91k new cases today and yet we haven't got the capacity to test for c3k new cases a day? Having blamed people for getting tested when they're not eligible, today MH seemed to imply this was inevitable given the test is free. Some care homes are reporting that they haven't got test results for over a week and not before being re-tested. The UK is very densely populated so surely we need lots more testing capacity than say France or Spain as the virus will spread more quickly. 

The FCA has won court action against insurance companies who didn't pay out to small business on business interruption insurance due to Covid-19 disruption, but the ruling is complicated. I listened to The Life Scientific on R4 this morning which talked to Professor Sarah Gilbert who leads the team developing the Oxford Vaccine - fascinating and very positive sounding.