And again, the week has been dominated by covid...

Sunday 23 saw us battling the registration website to sign up for the voluntary AstraZeneca vaccine offering that I talked about last week. The interface wasn't working to start with, which was a bit nerve-wracking, especially as the help system had also crashed (presumably because of the weight of queries). But after 30 minutes or so they got their act together, and barring any unforeseen obstacles we now have first-vaccine appointments for 7 June. Fingers crossed...

Voluntary registration for this lot of AZ vaccine was opened to the general public (as opposed to the over-60s) on Wednesday 26. There were more sign-up problems; and it was "sold out" in 90 minutes. I have friends on Facebook rejoicing to have got in, and others hugely disappointed. This can't be right...

Any which way, given the obvious public enthusiasm, AZ is now going to be reincorporated into the mainstream vaccine programme.

Vaccination really can't come soon enough. Between the Lines reported on Monday 24: "We're closing in on India in terms of daily infections per capita... According to data from Johns Hopkins Uni..., Malaysia's reporting close to as many cases per million people as India -- 171 compared to the South Asian nation's 191." (POSTSCRIPT 29 May: As of 27 May, we'd way surpassed India...)

On Tuesday 25, the Malaysian health director-general warned that the following two weeks would be critical, and the public must "prepare for the worst".

Yesterday (Thursday 27), Malaysia registered 7,857 new infections. Today, in a fourth straight day of record numbers, we hit 8,290 (698 of them from Sarawak). Yesterday we were tallying 2,491 deaths in total. Today it's 2,552.

Remember last week, when I was talking about record daily numbers having hit 6,000, and the death toll going beyond 2,000? This is a really, really alarming increase.

Tomorrow, Sarawak is joining West Malaysia in a full-on MCO (initially until 11 June, but for sure it will be extended). Quite what this will mean we don't yet know. SOPs always follow along later...

Of course, we're not ecstatic about additional restrictions, but we've felt for a long while that the CMCO has just not been cutting it, and something more dramatic has to happen to make a dent in our numbers, especially as there's now worrying talk about "variants of concern".

Unless they're truly draconian, the measures are unlikely to affect us much. As it is, we basically go out once a day, for exercise and/or shopping. As far as possible we avoid spaces we deem risky. If we can't avoid them, we've taken to double-masking.

(POSTSCRIPT 29 May: Well, the new measures, which came out late yesterday evening, are pretty draconian, as exercise is NOT one of the few things you're allowed out for... I always wonder about the wisdom of rules that ban outdoor exercise, but then we are in desperate times.)

It's scary, I have to say. At several points during this whole pandemic fiasco, I have found myself confronting the thought that this is something so big that I might not make it through to the other end: at the very beginning, for example, when we were still in the UK, and it was all terribly unknown and seemingly unstoppable; then again after we'd tested positive on returning to Malaysia -- and now.

What can you do? Just your best. You try to keep healthy. You try to be careful. And then you try not to worry, which is easier some days than others.

Moving on...

On Sunday 22, on one of the early-morning walks that I really hope the MCO doesn't put paid to (POSTSCRIPT 29 May: it has...), we headed for the Satok pedestrian bridge. This has featured in several PT posts. We snapped it in the gloom of 2019; and in the throes of being dismantled and shipped away because of a tilting cable anchor block.


Well, it has now been reinstalled, as you can see from the picture at the top. But you still can't use it... Nice views, though:




Wednesday 26 was Wesak Day, so the Big Padungan Cat had added some Buddhist symbols to his little enclave, to accompany his Gawai outfit and his Hari Raya ketupat decorations:


It was also lunar eclipse day:




Don't forget to check today's earlier post, another in the heritage series. It has a wonderful cat picture, so you won't want to miss it.