Hysteria has pulled into town
Last weekend – from personal experience – I found myself drawing inexorably towards the view that the British public had either gone mad and/or, fuelled by boredom, frustration and perhaps a sense of “Oh, what the hell …?”, had begun to ignore the Government’s “Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives” mantra.
This weekend, from both the same perspective and what I’m now seeing and hearing in the media, I’ve become convinced of it.
Yesterday mid-afternoon I went out and about upon my daily exercise in the warm sunshine.
As it happens, at my age (inevitably) going walking for anything up to two hours in what is basically a built-up area carries an attendant risk in the bladder capacity and control department – not infrequently the first thing I need to do upon returning home is visit the bathroom – and on this occasion, after completing only about a quarter of my traditional route, I began receiving signals that I might need to relieve myself ere long and therefore turned and retraced my steps back home for the purpose.
That registered, as ever on my outings, I listened via earpiece to Radio Five Live on my smartphone, I took in the current Saturday afternoon offering from Conor Murray’s Coronavirus Common Sense Show featuring “Dr Chris” (Smith) of Naked Scientist fame, a cast-iron guaranteed mix of news, discussion, entertainment, humour and medical enlightenment/advice all prompted by its incoming listener phone calls.
I learn plenty that I didn’t previously know from this source.
Yesterday’s curtailed expedition produced a call from a gentleman who had contracted coronavirus, been taken to hospital, had a tough time of it (endured ‘assisted air flow’ but not to the extent of being put on a ventilator), got better and eventually sent home.
Three weeks later he wanted to asked Dr Chris’s advice because he had received little or none himself upon being sent back out into the world and was becoming concerned.
He described that when he had first got home he had struggled to do much more than sleep, rest and potter about. He had begun going for the odd walk and doing a physical jerk or two in the quest to return to his normal previous good health and fitness but hadn’t made much progress. In fact recently he’d begun feeling weaker, lethargic and out of sorts.
Dr Chris was his usual immaculate self in terms of bedside manner, easy-to-understand explanations of medical details and advice. Everybody was different, but the notion that, once past the experience, most coronarvirus patients would immediately return to full fitness and quality of life was fanciful.
Based upon what the caller had described of his own experience, he should be able to get back to 80% or more of his former state of health but this could not be guaranteed. And in any event it would take time.
The gist of Dr Chris’s theme was that anyone who regarded the virus akin to a large sea wave that would hit the metaphorical shore just the once, wash over or through the population and then pass on, leaving behind the world back as it was and unaffected, needed to think again.
I have consumed most everything I’ve seen and heard since in the media through the prism of Dr Chris’s comment.
Today – in advance of Boris’s big address to the nation this evening – we’ve been assailed with the battalions of business demanding a wholesale ‘opening up’ of the lockdown because without this, the economy may take ages to recover, if ever.
Public transport needs to be ramped up back to ‘normal’. Those who have to go to work should cycle if they can. But how is ‘social distancing’ going to be established, let alone maintained, on buses and trains? It’s going to be chaos …
The unions are demanding guarantees over worker safety – and some of them want more money for going back to work in the current circumstances.
Separately I watched an interview with a couple who owned a café. They were complaining they needed guidelines on social distancing. Their sector was foot-fall dependent – if they could only accommodate half their previous customers, they’d only need half their previous staff. And so on, and so on.
It feels as though the population is floundering, confused and unsure exactly what it wants – save it knows it wants it now!
Transparency is an issue here to stay. Everyone wants it – and clarity.
Yet the more transparent the Government becomes in response – the more details it gives – the more confused everyone becomes, the greater grows the number of ‘armchair critics’ emerging to take to the airwaves … and the more the average man or woman in the street begins to doubt whether anything anyone tells them is fact, myth or fake news.
Which is why we’re all becoming headless chickens …
