The Bell Tolls For Covid-19
I have just watched Sir John Bell; the Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford talking about the Pfizer vaccine and his emotional response to it, where he shouted “Yes, yes yes!” and threw his arms in the air on BBC Radio 4. Sir John and another Oxford academic; Melinda Mills are talking about multiple vaccines.
They certainly felt that we’re on our way back to normality.
The End Of The Beginning
At 16:08 on the 9th of November 2020, I sent this text message to the BBC.
Churchill would have dubbed Pfizer’s news the End of the Beginning in the War against the Covids!
Then at 17:00 Boris used the same phrase in his Press Conference.
Wikipedia says this about Churchill’s use of the phrase.
A quotation from a 1942 speech by Winston Churchill concerning the Second Battle of El Alamein.
The Second Battle of El Alamein was fought between the 23rd of October and the 11th of November 1942. So exactly, seventy-eight years ago, the battle was coming to a close.
As a biographer of Churchill, did Boris spot the historical link?
Let’s hope Boris, Macron, Biden, Merkel, Trudeau et al, get the chance to paraphrase another of Churchill’s quotes about the very different battle.
It may almost be said, “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat”
Let’s hope Pfizer’s vaccine is our generation’s Alamein and marks the turning point in the War against the Covids.
Certainly, the news has been well-received by experts, including Jeremy Farrar of the Welcome Trust, who was being interviewed by the BBC, when the news broke.
I am 73 and my parents told me how Alamein and other news like it, stiffened the sinews and summoned up the blood in the dark days of World War II!
The Anonymous Widower 