BajanThings seven years on…

We hope you had a Happy Christmas even if you or family members had to self-isolate away from the festivities.

Last Christmas we were in lock-down and it was pretty miserable. This year we have various Covid-19 vaccinations and the medical profession have learnt by trial and error and by massive sharing of learnings, new protocols on how to manage patients with Covid-19. There is hope on the horizon as we head into 2022.

This Christmas we had a small family gathering – but were missing some family members who had to self-isolate even after having had two vaccinations and booster jab. The good news is, as a result of being vaccinated they only had mild Covid-19 symptoms with a fever for a few days and by day ten they had clear lateral flow results and were allowed out of isolation.

The wonders of the Covid-19 vaccinations mean if we do get Covid-19, we are unlikely to end up in hospital / die. Anecdotal evidence from friends who are front-line NHS ICU workers here in the UK, suggest that the majority of Covid-19 patients in ICU are not vaccinated!

The evidence is pretty clear – vaccinations work. They don’t stop us getting Covid-19 but they do stop us ending up in hospital / dying – which allows some normality to be re-introduced. A recent report by the UK Office for National Statistics using data from 1^st January to 31^st October 2021 suggests unvaccinated people are 32 times more likely to die from coronavirus than those who have been doubled-jabbed. Here in the UK with Omicron the now dominant variation there has been a huge push to get the population triple jabbed.

In the UK:
– 51 million people – 90% of over-12s have had a first vaccine dose
– 47 million people – 82% of over-12s have had both doses
– 32 million people have now had boosters or third doses. The seven day average being 886,797 booster jabs being given per day. The focus has now shifted to boosters, which show promising signs of protecting against illness and death from Omicron.

BBC News – 23^rd December 2021

William and I are both blessed and happy to be double jabbed and boosted. We encourage you, if you are not vaccinated, to get vaccinated. The aim now, is to get the WORLD vaccinated – especially Africa. It’s very likely we will all end up having annual Covid booster vaccinations like the flu jabs!

As 2021 draws to a close it’s time to reflect on BajanThings seven years on since launch. Seven years on the BajanThings vision remains the same, to:

• preserve handed down Bajan history – recording events that we have witnessed, or were told by those who did and the life of some of the people who were born in, or had connections to, Barbados and made their mark on the world stage
• promote hiking in Barbados
• promote overseas travel – generally to remote places off-the-beaten-track.  Not everyone will want to put on a backpack and travel off-the-beaten-track but everyone should take time to live outside of their comfort zone and explore the world before it is lost.

BajanThings remains a hobby-site.  To date we have now published nearly 150 posts – some of which have become reference documents.  That’s quite a feat for a hobby-site started by two cousin’s after a family island tour back in 2014!

The Covid-19 pandemic put a spanner in the works. William who is Barbados based retired in February 2020, after working for 50 years, with plans to travel. This was not to be.  In early July 2021 Barbados moved onto the “green” list of countries that would have a short quarantine on arrival in the UK. He immediately booked a trip and left Barbados within 5 days. No one knew when the light would change and he headed for another coast-to-coast walk.

Peter who is UK based has been busy too: launching a new online tool SOLV to help find missing people and children which has been developed for Law Enforcement Agencies, Emergency Response Agencies and Missing Persons Charities/NGOs. In September with the relaxation of Covid rules he had three weeks in Barbados to attend his father’s funeral who passed away peacefully in his sleep aged 98.

In previous years we have ranked all the post – this year with 150 posts under our belt we are opting for a slightly different approach.

If you want to see a listing of all the posts to date, please click here or on the Post Index link on the top task bar.

Based on the 2021 web stats, listed below, in ranked order are the 30 most read posts:

We wish to thank all those who continue to encouraged BajanThings, those who gave us information, those who have shared old photographs with us, our guest contributors that have provided additional content, our growing list of subscribers and those who write to us when we miss a comma or make a spelling error.  Thank you to all of you.  Keep the suggestions coming in.

In 2022 BajanThings looks forward to continuing to provide more posts that educate, enlighten and inform.

Thank you for subscribing to BajanThings.

We wish you a Happy and a Healthy Covid free 2022.

The BajanThings crew – Peter Burton and William Burton
BajanThings – All things Barbadian. Bajan history. Bajan folklore. Interesting Bajan people. Hiking in Barbados and overseas…

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