Rose - Harry Edland

I always have just one rose bush in my garden and it's always the same variety, a Harry Edland as not only does it have a nice colour, it also has a gorgeous scent. 

I started a job this morning to sort out some old family photos, but got distracted by a puzzle. I had a series of 4 photos which were taken of a group outside a large mansion which included my dad in uniform. As one of the photos was the outside of the mansion with no people, I asked my friend to search the image via her favourite app - google lens (not available via apple). In no time she came back with the suggestion of Ashridge House and looking at images online it clearly was. So a bit of googling and I now how it was a military HQ, training centre and hospital in WWII. Amazing what you can find out from a few photos these days. 

Day 451 / Day 25 of Step 3 of Roadmap Easing (for my record only)
In evidence to MPs today, the Health Secretary said a reasonable worst-case scenario was given to COBRA on 31st Jan 2020 of 820,000 deaths. He said experts believed people would only put up with lockdown measures for a limited period. The first lockdown started on 23rd Mar, over 7 weeks later and by 9th Mar the data started to follow the modelling. However, he said that to lockdown earlier would have meant going against scientific advice - I find it hard to believe that scientific advice was against lockdown as even I put in blip on 10th Mar that given what was happening in Italy, I thought the Govt should act sooner rather than later. I hope he was asked to provide evidence of this and of hospital discharges into care homes and of PPE adequacy. He claimed the 'strongest route' of the virus into care homes was through community transmission and that the estimate was that only 1.6% of it was from hospital discharges. He 'bitterly' regrets not ignoring advice from the WHO that asymptomatic transmission was unlikely, but it's already been pointed out that SAGE minutes from 4th Feb said 'asymptomatic transmission cannot be ruled out and transmission from mildly symptomatic individuals is likely'. He also said there were at times 'local pressures' with getting PPE, there was 'never a national shortage' despite 'huge demand' - this contradicts a lot of tv reports at the time. I've thought for a long time that he should be replaced, more so now having heard these key points. 

The Delta variant now makes up 91% of all cases in the UK per MH and PHE warns that infections are rising 'rapidly'. A record 5.1m in England are now awaiting hospital treatment - an astonishing number. Per the BBC, the US was worst hit re excess deaths in the G7 in the  first year of the pandemic with 226 deaths per 100k popn, UK and Italy had 181 and 180 respectively, France had 125, Germany and Canada 92 and Japan had only 47 excess deaths per 100k popn.