Today I am going to present three articles for your delectation. The weather is lovely, which certainly lifts the mood. I've enjoyed sitting in the garden reading, doing a little meditation, and some yoga (I'm so new age) in the evening. Lovely in the starlight, if it's not too cold. There's still a touch of frost in the air. Yet it's so eerily quite outside at night. I put the bins out and suddenly felt very self conscious doing so!
Anyway. I hope you's lot are coping. It's all we can do for now. I've also been following a couple of nature twitter feeds which are soul nourishing, including Chris Packham of Springwatch. He has been putting out some quality wildlife work from his home/garden. I think he should be knighted for this, personally (if he isn't already, I'm not entirely sure). There's also the #solaceinnature and #wildlifefrommywindow hashtags, and the Self Isolating Bird Club account, for those interested. Lovely stuff: far less depressing than being overwhelmed by the multitude of corona hashtags..
So these articles are interesting because I feel they help put things into some sort of perspective. Something we desperately need right now, to keep us sane. COVID19 (caps?) is serious, as is the seasonal flu. Of course we can vaccinate the latter. But nonetheless panic is not helping anyone, no more than our dreadful inept PM.
The first, from the FT, questions whether Corona may have already infected half the population. (there may be a paywall). At first blush this seems horrifying. Certainly, given the government's complete failure to test adequately, it would be foolish to think there weren't more people carrying/infected than there are recorded cases. Those would be the ones serious enough to warrant hospital admission.
This seems to suggest that, if herd immunity is possible with COVID19 (don't know why I'm using caps), then, if so many people are infected, then herd immunity might well work. I'm not suggesting this was a good police but we don't really have anything else after all. Government should have been more prepared and more vigilant: testing tracing quarantining. It could also means the crisis could perhaps 'end' sooner. If true (if!) then that's good, surely.
Zoe Harcombe, a very thorough nutrition expert and researcher whom I follow, posted this article. It is intended to reassure. The take home is that we should maintain both vigilance, good hygiene, and perspective.
I leave it to you to read and make of what you will. I do not want to tell people what to think say or do; this is a scary time. Potentially terrifying: one moment you're sat in the garden reading a nice book, the next thing you're reading that a young girl otherwise claimed to have no underlying health conditions (which doesn't mean she was fit and healthy living on a good diet etc) has sadly been lost to the disease.
There will be people who, when the vaccine comes, will receive the inoculation and still die. Just as there are 17,000 people that died from seasonal flu which can be vaccinated. Apparently healthy people drop dead. It, sadly, happens; though of course infections don't help.
But 17,000 didn't seem to overwhelm the NHS in quite the same was this outbreak could. I'm not suggesting we shouldn't anticipate the worst, that's what government should have done. But I don't even think the worst cases we've seen across the world thus far (and hopefully never see) come that close at all. Furthermore there would have been more people that got sick with flu but didn't die. Our NHS seemed to have coped. As it does yearly. Which isn't to say it isn't overworked and underfunded because we know that to be the case, thanks to deliberate Tory misrule.
Lastly, and perhaps a bit conspiratorially, there's this. Now this comes from an official source (or I'm a gullible fool). But it seems odd to read "as of 19 March 2020, COVID19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (sic) in the UK". On the face of it that would fly in the face of everything we are told. It's possible that is a very specific scientific term and that it doesn't mean COVID isn't serious and dangers, nor am I saying otherwise.
Consider who is in charge. Capital faces a huge crisis right now and one doesn't need to be Oliver Stone to know that the ruling class makes laws and changes to keep power centralised. It's been doing that for the last ten years under the Tories. It's stripped away the rights of many, and plans to do so more with its Emergency legislation. While it is right to respond to crises, whatever the shape of your society, one must always, as a private citizen, question the motives. Apply Tony Benn's five questions:
1. What power have you got?
2. Where did you get it from?
3. In whose interests do you use it?
4. To whoom are you accountable
5. How do we get rid of you?
This last is perhaps the most important.
Meanwhile, wash your hands, take care, don't be an arse :D
'Till tomorrow.
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