1/10 My sisters, my nieces and their friends with kids have spent last week in Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains, skiing, mingling, and having all sorts of fun.
facebook.com/10000343646269…
facebook.com/10000343646269…
2/10 My Ukrainian uncle has celebrated his 71st birthday. He coached hundreds of kids in competitive sailing, some then went on to become national champions. They wanted to drop in and give him a hug! He also held a party at the local restaurant. 
3/10 My former University of Glasgow colleague, who is now a Director of the Doctoral School at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (a Uni in Kyiv) posted photos of his birthday bash at work last week.
4/10 My relatives and friends are no black sheep – check out this news clip from 27th of December. A former president and a highly respected politician, Petro Poroshenko, visiting a rink at a funfair.
5/10 Same as many Eastern European countries, Ukraine had no spring wave, coronavirus came later in the year. Schools stayed open; haircut was in order too. Post-Christmas two-weeks of lockdown were announced weeks in advance (for everyone to prepare).
6/10 By the time LD kicked in cases were falling for several weeks and Ukrainians quickly dubbed it “lokh-down” (loose translation “fool-me-down”) and said that it helped them to recover after excessive partying. As promised, two weeks later lockdown was over.
7/10 I find OxCGRT not too accurate (yet before they doctored data on Sweden, see @TTBikeFit ). Half of my extended family is in Latvia, another half is in Ukraine. No way these two countries have the same stringency index. Anyway, works as comparison to the UK.
8/10 UK and Ukraine are inhabited by same species (Homo sapience) which is now battling same zoonotic pathogen (SARS-CoV2). Ukrainian govt is still negotiating what vaccine to buy, not a single shot so far. Cases keep going down.
9/10 The £22 billion track&trace, the draconian restrictions, the vaccine, the first world country healthcare. If you read your news in several languages, you would see that there is very little to show for it.
10/10 I am forever grateful for the opportunities afforded to me here, and my children are British. If we continue with this self-destructing psychosis, I doubt there would be fewer COVID death. But there will be fewer opportunities for our children, and virus is not to blame.
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