UK prime minister orders new national coronavirus lockdown

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday a new national lockdown for England until at least mid-February to combat a fast-spreading new variant of the coronavirus, even as Britain ramped up its vaccination program by becoming the first nation to start using the shot developed by Oxford University and drugmaker AstraZeneca.

Johnson said people must stay at home again, as they were ordered to do so in the first wave of the pandemic in March, this time because the new virus variant was spreading in a “frustrating and alarming” way. “As I speak to you tonight, our hospitals are under more pressure from COVID than at any time since the start of the pandemic,” he said. Under the new rules, which are set to come into effect as soon as possible, primary and secondary schools and colleges will be closed for face to face learning except for the children of key workers. University students will not be returning until at least mid-February.

I wonder what this fat fool would have done back in 1665:

“Great Plague of London, epidemic of plague that ravaged London, England, from 1665 to 1666. City records indicate that some 68,596 people died during the epidemic, though the actual number of deaths is suspected to have exceeded 100,000 out of a total population estimated at 460,000. The outbreak was caused by Yersinia pestis, the bacterium associated with other plague outbreaks before and since the Great Plague of London.

The Great Plague was not an isolated event—40,000 Londoners had died of the plague in 1625—but it was the last and worst of the epidemics. It began in London's suburb of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and the greatest devastation remained in the city's outskirts, at Stepney, Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, Cripplegate, and Westminster, quarters where the poor were densely crowded. An outbreak was suspected in the winter of 1664, but it did not spread intensely until the spring of 1665. King Charles II and his court fled from London in the early summer and did not return until the following February; Parliament kept a short session at Oxford.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Plague-of-London

A little humor:

What did our parents do to kill the boredom before the internet?

I asked my 26 brothers and sisters and they didn’t know either.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.