Covid's Coming Home

I missed the match in its entirety - fell asleep on the settee just prior to kick-off, awoke at half time and, on the basis of England's 1-0 lead and the fact I felt knackered, went to bed at 9pm, buoyed by the thought that England could feasibly win. 

I woke up again at 23:30 to discover we lost on penalties, which is a great shame after such good performances leading to the final and the result was more a matter of luck. I also discovered groups of England fans had marred the match with violence outside Wembley and in Leicester Square.

News scenes from pubs up and down the country added to my disappointment with hordes of maskless fans cavorting with each other in a manner that's guaranteed to further fuel the current exponential rise in the Delta variant of Covid and potentially spawn yet another variant - possibly a vaccine-resistant one that could feasibly take us back to square one.

The government exhorts us to use personal responsibility now in the battle against Covid. There are sections of the public, however, where personal responsibility is totally absent, as was displayed for all to see last night. To proceed with the so-called Freedom Day, in the face of incontrovertible evidence that it is a massive folly that will come to bite Boris on the bum and lead to needless deaths, is stupidity on a grand scale and a total abdication of responsibility.

The number of people in the UK who believe masks are for their own protection, rather than the protection of others, is simply staggering, despite all the efforts of the scientific and medical community to educate them. Heaven protect us from these idiots, because our government refuses to - and protecting us is the prime directive of any government, first and foremost.

One positive to take away from this year's Euro competition is that our current crop of footballers seem to be such nice people. When you hear of them in the news it's invariably something positive, rather than lurid tales of extravagance or misdemeanours, as was the case in the past.