Battening down the hatches
Since 1st January or thereabouts [I’m choosing this at a catch-all date BCE “Before (this) Coronavirus Epidemic”], no doubt in common with many other Rusters, I’ve been doing my best to cope with a growing inner sense of combined “you couldn’t make this up”; “where the hell did this come from?”; puzzlement; bewilderment; resignation; disbelief; “nothing surprises me anymore” (did it ever?); “how could people be so thick/stupid …?”; and even “well, what the hell did you expect?”.
Back in the day – an incarnation and editor or so ago – one of the satirical magazine Private Eye’s regular and funniest features used to be a “Why, oh why …?” column mocking the hectoring style of the controversial late Scottish Fleet Street legend Sir John Junor (1919-1997), most famously the editor of the Sunday Express between 1954 and 1986:
For those with dodgy memories, see here for a link to an opinion piece by written by Graham Lord on Junor from April 2013 that appeared in the – UK PRESS GAZETTE
In my quieter reflective moments I’ve recently been channelling my John Junor-type reactions to both the public pronouncements of politicians, scientific and medical experts, media pundits, shock-jocks and every-other-what-have-you, on the one hand, and indeed those of the ordinary human beings I come across and/or interact with every week (family, friends, shop assistants, fellow public transport travellers and now those who walk about wearing face masks for reasons either sound or ill-informed), on the other.
Take yesterday for example.
In somewhat bizarre circumstances – the day after the Prime Minister had announced a tranche of ‘advisory’ [rather than dictatorial, which the catering industry is complaining about because it means they cannot claim on insurance] restraints upon people gathering together – I attended an event necessarily organised a couple of months ago.
In the past week, not least because of the current circumstances, it had become a somewhat knife-edge decision as to whether to proceed with it or not, but in the end – through a mix of a need for closure, stubborn Brit “keep calm and carry on“ Blitz spirit, and probably also a touch of “oh, what the hell?”, we did.
As a result of this possibly admirable (but just as likely crazy and ill-advised) decision in the event a total 29 hardy, or indeed foolhardy, souls attended against an (originally-predicted by those in the know) estimate of 200-plus.
Among those who might have attended but ultimately did not were family members who were in the specified “groups in danger” such as the elderly, pregnant, those with “underlining pre-existing medical issues” and/or possible symptoms of the virus.
The most important matter of the moment was that everyone should take responsibility for their own situation, including that of those close to them and especially those whom they might infect should they come into contact with the virus by attending and then go home and spread it to those who were vulnerable.
Those of us who made it ranged from those who were scoffing at the whole thing, to those who shared their uncertainties as to how best to greet each other (No touching? Elbow-bumps? Waving at each other from two yards distance? … and so on) and, finally, one bloke whose determination to “carry on” manifested in him simply going around giving everyone firm handshakes as if nothing whatsoever had happened in the world [mind you, if some of the more extreme predictions about come to pass, within a month or so he may have become single-handed and/or indirectly responsible for about 1,500 deaths!].
Last night a concerned family member rang me to insist that – as an oldie – I should take things very serious, i.e. self-isolate, wash my hands every time I go outside my front door, shower immediately upon returning from any visit to a supermarket for essential items (if there are any still on the shelves after the recent panic-buying). And so on.
I was also subjected to a raft of worrying statistics such as the supposedly-predicted 250,000 deaths that could occur in a “worst-case UK Coronavirus situation” and that somewhere between 17 and 100 million worldwide died in the infamous Spanish Flu” outbreak of 1918 – compared with the estimated total of 9 to 11 million deaths from military conflict (and 22 million overall) during WW1 and the estimated 25 million deaths from military conflict (and 80 million overall) of WW2.
Somewhat bemused by all of this, overnight I did some research of my own on the internet and turned up the following, in case anyone is interested:
According to the latest available statistics from the UK Office for National Statistics, there were a total of 541, 589 deaths registered in England & Wales in 2018.
This compares with the total figure of 657,076 live births in England & Wales during the same year.
Yesterday I also heard an interview with former Labour minister David Blunkett – very much of the “I’m not bothered and am just carrying on as normal, despite what anyone may say” persuasion – conducted by Emma Barnett.
At one point he claimed – we all might like to know – that on any given day 70% of all NHS beds in the UK were occupied by ‘oldies’, so the primary problem the authorities were facing was that – should vast numbers of ‘non-oldies’ need to be admitted to hospital because of Coronavirus infection – there was a factor of the straightforward mathematics of the “number of beds needed versus the number of those available” situation that, on the face of it, wasn’t quite going to work out.
I’m off back to bed now, everybody – good night!
