Often with injuries and illnesses, there are “predictable delays” before the pain is felt.
Over 10 days ago I went to a lovely trattoria for lunch, where a heavy piece of artwork fell off the wall and bounced off the top of my head. Though a glancing blow, I could feel it had jolted a weak mid-back joint (from a very old injury) out of alignment. However, despite knowing in that moment that this would need chiropractic alignment, as it wasn’t immediately painful, I just forgot about it until, over a week later, the pain has started to emanate from that mid-back vertebra up to my neck and shoulders, to the point where I’m popping painkillers just to take the edge off the pain.
In short, this happens with spinal alignment, when you get a subluxation (alignment) jolt to your spine, there can be predictable delays to when you feel the impact in terms of muscle pain and inflammation.
Of course, now I can’t get an appointment for a chiropractic adjustment for another few days, by which time the muscle knots and other inflammation will mean it will take several adjustments over a least a week in order to correct the issue.
If I’d booked an appointment right away, one quick adjustment would have corrected it, but despite knowing what was coming, with that “predictable delay”, I first ignored then forgot about it.
Yes, the parallel I draw is to the UK Government’s (mis)handling of the pandemic. They knew from their scientific advisors as far back as February that a) suppression via lockdown would be needed, repeatedly, until the spread could be controlled, and b) that in order to control the spread after a lockdown they would need a fully functioning TTI (Test, Trace, Isolate) system in place.
As I publish this, London (where I live) is now in “Tier 2” lockdown, but this won’t be enough to address the “predictable delay” spread, so I forecast that, within 1-3 weeks, all of the UK will be back into full lockdown (the current Tier 3, or even more strict).
More devastating to consider is that there is no clear path out of this. The UK has not got anywhere close to a fully functioning TTI system, even given the predictability of this and now 8+ months to set it up.
I take no pleasure in predicting that the UK will be in Tier 3 for well beyond any 2-3 week circuit breaker. This could have been avoided, but at this stage I simply share my prediction to help us prepare ourselves.