Oh well, here we go. On the news that "our" new variant virus seems now to be taking on some of the South African/South American variant characteristics. Also, on BBC 4, whilst I was making the afternoon tea, They now think that over 80 year olds, vaccinated with "our" Astra Zeneca stuff have very little acquired immunity against these new variants. Apparently they've been analyzing samples taken.
There's a guy does a daily update, collating data from the UK, US, Canada, and others, only reporting known good data, said some time ago, when the UK variant was first discovered, that the vaccine manufacturers were confident they could tweak vaccines for new variants if required.
Might have to look forward to more frequent jabs until herd immunity takes over.
One important report, was that even after just the first dose of the AZ vaccine, anyone who caught the bug became signifcantly less sick, and no-one has been hospitalised. So it looks like there is some good protection, even if not absolute.
Further to my post above. 5 minutes ago, two vehicles arrived, loudly, just down the road. Lad who lives there, always arrives and departs loudly, arrived at same time as his 'ex' neighbour arrived to visit his parents. So there they are, the lad who lives there, his wife, and the 'next door visitor' chatting happily, no further than a metre between them, no masks.
My fault, I chose to buy at the 'cheap' end of the town, unwilling to take on a bigger than manageable mortgage. Generally, 'more wheels than brain cells'.
