“I am stuck in a very small place, in a built up area with no way of getting out for a long time and I’m scared and I’m frustrated and I’m angry, and yet I’m so happy to see people doing good things.”
Tom Miller is a musician and lives in Salford, Manchester, in the UK. He sent his postcard on 6 May. Tom is used to the rhythm of playing regular gigs, spending time with friends and going to his day job at a music shop.
Tom provides bass, synths and programming for Lindsay Munroe. Footage of the band playing in March at FortyFive Vinyl Cafe in York is below. He also plays occasional guitar and bass for Patchwork Guilt – Phoenix and Tom are seen here playing on BBC Music Introducing in Manchester.
In January he was gifted Trikafta, an experimental drug to treat Cystic Fibrosis, and it changed his life. Finally able to think longer term means the sudden shift to shielding from the Coronavirus pandemic has been particularly challenging. Shielding is vital for the 1.3m most clinically vulnerable people in the UK.
In this postcard he describes life in complete isolation and why he’s angry, but also grateful. And why repeated hospital admissions means he’s better able to cope with it all.
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The UK situation
The UK has been one of the worst affected countries for COVID-19 due to various factors – late Government response, a confused approach, poor testing and contact tracing, and a fairly relaxed lockdown.
As of 8 May there are 207,977 confirmed cases and at least 30,689 deaths related to the virus. In particular, COVID-19 has ravaged care settings with the Office for National Statistics now including these figures in the reporting totals. As the numbers relate only to confirmed cases, the picture in the UK is likely to be even more bleak.
The FT Visual Data and Journalism Team provide in depth visual analysis of the current situation whilst the Guardian Today in Focus podcast shares daily UK and worldwide analysis on the pandemic.
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