Even if you’ve had the vaccine, take care for other people; sustain  the necessary precautions

We are now in completely uncharted territory. While countries like Australia and New Zealand have more or less established control, the USA seems to be in total chaos, until the new administration is able to (if it can) create some kind of order. Meanwhile in Europe the hope engendered by the amazingly rapid development of several vaccines is counter-balanced by problems of roll-out, including supply and distribution and hampered by uncertainty about a number of issues, such as capacity of vaccinated people to infect others, because we don’t have the scientific information normally available about key issues such as this due to the unusually short time between development and large scale use.

The situation is complicated by a whole host of social factors mainly (differing between countries inevitably) a lack of national consensus about priorities (health versus economics, individual freedom versus social responsibility, trust or otherwise in government and their messages) and challenges to public morale: things have gone on so long and the suffering and discomfort many continue to experience. Now is not the time to relax our individual vigilance and awareness that we are still in the grips of a pandemic, with the implications that has for personal behaviour.