In and around a London lockdown. A Cartoon Diary by Pidge.

 The much respected Jonathan Van-Tam ( Chief Medical Officer for England ) declared that the more dangerous potentially vaccine evading South African variant may not be too much of a problem as it’s  prevalence was likely to be constrained  by the much faster spread of our very transmissible Kent variant.

In an effort to deflect domestic criticism  Ursula von der Leyden scored a spectacular own goal by invoking Article 16 to prevent the export of vaccine out of the EU to the UK thereby jeopardising the Irish peace process for which the EU had claimed prime importance in the years of Brexit negotiations. She was forced to backtrack in the face of universal criticism but the affair had exposed bureaucratic flaws in the EU project which many were happy to see.

 The news that the EU would suffer a shortage of vaccine while the UK would be well supplied partly from production in the EU prompted the the President of the European Commission to propose banning exports to the UK even though the UK had secured supplies by moving fast and committing early while the EU had hardly got started.

 To deflect criticism from their people for vaccine shortages the EU began to lash out elsewhere and particularly at the UK who for once in the pandemic had been conspicuously successful. President Macron defended the EU approach by saying that going slower was safer and amazingly  insinuated that the Pfizer vaccine was not safe for the over 65’s who at that very moment were receiving  jabs in the UK. 

 The price of Christmas was inflated by the arrival of a more transmissible virus found in Kent which seriously exacerbated the number of infections. Even stricter measures were imposed. As seen in The Spectator 

 But really good news had arrived…

 The government had promised the country a Christmas where families could get together and so the price of a lockdown of December (and probably the same again in January) was paid for the privilege of three households being able to exchange bugs for five days at Christmas. But as the data deteriorated this began to look increasingly dangerous.