Not the news that any of us wanted to hear, but it’s just been announced that lockdown has officially been extended until March 8th.

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The news came courtesy of Boris Johnson, who announced that all non essential businesses and schools would be closed until at least that date. Schools had been set to open up following the February half term.

However, those of us who are despairing about this should take heart that Johnson has promised that he will set out plans for the gradual and phased route out of lockdown on the week beginning February 22nd. Given how everything that he’s said so far during the pandemic has been adhered to and worked out successfully, we should all look forward to hearing those as they will no doubt be the final piece of the puzzle to getting out of this mess. Sure.

Here’s what Boris had to say about the decision:

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It was the emergence of a new variant that forced England back into lockdown and I know everyone yearns to know how much longer we must endure these restrictions.

We will not persist for a day longer than is necessary but nor can we relax too soon, because if we do we run the risk of our NHS coming under still greater pressure, compelling us to reimpose every restriction and sustain those restricitons for longer.

What we do know is that we remain in a perilous situation with more than 37,000 patients now in hospital with Covid, almost double the peak of the first wave.

But the overall picture should be clearer by mid-February. By then, we will know much more about the effect of vaccines in prevent hospitalisations and deaths using data from the UK but also other nations like Israel.

We will know how successful the current restrictions have been in driving down infections. We will also know how many people are still in hospital with Covid which we simply can’t predict with certainty today.

So we will then be in a better position to chart a course out of lockdown without risking a further surge that would overwhelm the NHS.

Almost sounds sensible doesn’t it? Definitely won’t work out like this though because you just know something else is going to fuck up. It has to doesn’t it?

I’m sure this will probably send people off into mental health breakdowns, but to be honest I was fairly convinced that this lockdown was going to last even longer than that and probably not really even be over until the start of the summer (May/June) when everyone is actually vaccinated (very conservative estimate) and the virus will lay off again because it’s a bit warmer. Sorry if that upsets you but I just think that’s the way it’s going to go. Always better to think the worst, then if it actually works out better it’s a nice surprise, rather than the pits of despair in the other direction. Long way to go yet.

For more of the same, check out this woman having an all time meltdown after getting kicked off a bus for not wearing a mask. Worldy.