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dolorosa_12) wrote2021-07-23 12:58 pm
dolorosa_12) wrote2021-07-23 12:58 pm
Entry tags:
Fly away
I have pretty negative feelings about the Olympics going ahead, and they're warring with my ex-gymnast feelings of absolute delight at the excellent quality of gymnastics that we're going to get, particularly from the US women's gymnastics team. I feel lucky to be alive to witness the career of Simone Biles, and I expect her to equal or better her achievements in the last Olympics.
However, when I was a gymnast, my favourite apparatus — and the one I was best at — was uneven bars. Bars is Simone Biles's weakest apparatus (obviously this is not really saying much — her 'weakest' event is still incredible, she's just better at beam, floor and vault). But the US team also has Sunisa Lee, whose bar routine is so difficult, and so (mostly) perfectly executed that it leaves me speechless and filled with joy.
(There are various technical reasons why it's so difficult: mainly the many, many 'release' moves where she releases hold of the bar to either flip/twist and catch hold of the same bar again, or releases hold of one bar to move to the other. These are particularly difficult because they're done in quick succession, and because a lot of them involve rotating and/or losing sight of the bar she's meant to catch.)
As I say, the Olympics should not be taking place, but I'm still in awe at these gymnasts.
Meanwhile, my mother has spent the past day arguing with her Australian boomer friends on Facebook, who have latched onto a single story of a woman developing blood clots in relation to the AstraZeneca vaccine and declared that they are 'waiting for Pfizer'. (For context: Australia has quite a lot of AZ, and can also manufacture it locally, but has lost its mind over the minuscule risk of side effects, with the result that many people eligible for vaccines have not booked an appointment. Australia has extremely limited supplies of Pfizer and will not get much more until later in the year. There has been a Covid outbreak in Sydney, and the result of having a mostly unvaccinated population is that the city has been in hard lockdown for weeks with no end in sight.)
(In my family, after some initial wavering from one aunt, everyone who is eligible to be vaccinated is partly/fully vaccinated, and Mum is getting her second AZ dose on Tuesday.)
Whenever I hear about these 'waiting for Pfizer' Australians I become so upset that I almost lose the ability to communicate coherently. A part of me wants to send them footage of the Spanish military having to essentially move corpses in military vehicles and bury them in mass graves due to the number of Covid deaths they had last year, or the videos of sobbing, hysterical NHS doctors and nurses that were a fixture of UK TV and social media early on in the pandemic. One of my friends was telling me last week about the experiences of her brother in Thailand. Over there, two vaccines are available — Sinovax and AZ. In practice, AZ is only available to the military, oligarchs, and those who pay bribes. Her brother was able to get AZ because his father-in-law is the chauffeur to an oligarch, who wanted his staff and their close contacts to be vaccinated with an effective vaccine. So we have a situation in Thailand where the elite, and those who pay money under the table have access to a vaccine towards which ordinary Australians are turning up their noses. The selfishness and self-centredness of 'waiting for Pfizer' when there is a perfectly good vaccine lying around, unused, is just beyond belief.
However, when I was a gymnast, my favourite apparatus — and the one I was best at — was uneven bars. Bars is Simone Biles's weakest apparatus (obviously this is not really saying much — her 'weakest' event is still incredible, she's just better at beam, floor and vault). But the US team also has Sunisa Lee, whose bar routine is so difficult, and so (mostly) perfectly executed that it leaves me speechless and filled with joy.
(There are various technical reasons why it's so difficult: mainly the many, many 'release' moves where she releases hold of the bar to either flip/twist and catch hold of the same bar again, or releases hold of one bar to move to the other. These are particularly difficult because they're done in quick succession, and because a lot of them involve rotating and/or losing sight of the bar she's meant to catch.)
As I say, the Olympics should not be taking place, but I'm still in awe at these gymnasts.
Meanwhile, my mother has spent the past day arguing with her Australian boomer friends on Facebook, who have latched onto a single story of a woman developing blood clots in relation to the AstraZeneca vaccine and declared that they are 'waiting for Pfizer'. (For context: Australia has quite a lot of AZ, and can also manufacture it locally, but has lost its mind over the minuscule risk of side effects, with the result that many people eligible for vaccines have not booked an appointment. Australia has extremely limited supplies of Pfizer and will not get much more until later in the year. There has been a Covid outbreak in Sydney, and the result of having a mostly unvaccinated population is that the city has been in hard lockdown for weeks with no end in sight.)
(In my family, after some initial wavering from one aunt, everyone who is eligible to be vaccinated is partly/fully vaccinated, and Mum is getting her second AZ dose on Tuesday.)
Whenever I hear about these 'waiting for Pfizer' Australians I become so upset that I almost lose the ability to communicate coherently. A part of me wants to send them footage of the Spanish military having to essentially move corpses in military vehicles and bury them in mass graves due to the number of Covid deaths they had last year, or the videos of sobbing, hysterical NHS doctors and nurses that were a fixture of UK TV and social media early on in the pandemic. One of my friends was telling me last week about the experiences of her brother in Thailand. Over there, two vaccines are available — Sinovax and AZ. In practice, AZ is only available to the military, oligarchs, and those who pay bribes. Her brother was able to get AZ because his father-in-law is the chauffeur to an oligarch, who wanted his staff and their close contacts to be vaccinated with an effective vaccine. So we have a situation in Thailand where the elite, and those who pay money under the table have access to a vaccine towards which ordinary Australians are turning up their noses. The selfishness and self-centredness of 'waiting for Pfizer' when there is a perfectly good vaccine lying around, unused, is just beyond belief.