Mar 8, 2020 | apocalypse, Covid-19 Diary
The news continues to feed my hypochondria. I’ve been panic buying Tunnocks Caramel Wafers (dark chocolate) against the day.
My current thought, and it’s hardly unique, is that the USA looks to be in a particularly bad place with this virus. Since I have family and friends there, this is of personal interest. In the UK, we appear to be doing a respectable number of tests with a relatively low positive rate. On the one hand that’s good, on the other, there are currently no border controls at airports checking for indicators of infection in passengers entering the country, and the official criteria for testing is still tied to countries visited rather than community transmission. I think that will change very soon, but may well be too late. Looking at Italy, I wonder how long it will be before similar local quarantine measures are put in force here.
I hope I’m wrong, but I expect a substantial uptick in UK cases in the next week. At the time of writing, it looks like the lessons to be learned come from Hong Kong and Taiwan where controls and behavioural change appear to have restricted transmission of the virus very substantially.
I’ve pondered whether I’m overreacting and concluded I’m probably not. I’m as aware of the statistics as anyone else, and despite what I said in my last post, I’m a 60-year-old with underlying hypertension. There is a funeral I’ll probably go to on Tuesday, but my inclination is to self isolate as a defence mechanism. It is by no means a comprehensive solution because of other household activity, but it makes basic sense I think.
Having said all that, I’m faced with a dilemma: before I finished work (almost a year ago!) I bought some very good wine, and I still have most of it: should I be optimistic and leave it right where it is, or pessimistic and enjoy it while I can?
Mar 6, 2020 | apocalypse, Covid-19 Diary
Something I’ve tried to bear in mind when tracking any situation that’s in a constant state of change is that, on the whole, its better to watch trends than moment-to-moment volatility. It’s similar to hitting the point of diminishing returns on a rolling news channel when something major happens, the point where there’s no actual news, just talking heads chattering over endlessly-repeating footage in the absence of information.
It’s something I’ve tried to keep in focus about the current virus scare, especially given my tendency to mild hypochondria. It doesn’t do much good to keep my eye on constantly updated opinion, even if it is coming from people who appear to know what they’re talking about rather than, say, politicians. There’s a lot to be said for something I’ve heard said a couple of times today: there’s a good chance that you’ll get it and, if you’re very unlucky, you’ll snuff it. Yes, that’s fatalistic, but I think it also embodies a truth.
I’m at the lower end of the age group that might be vulnerable to complications. If we assume, as I think we must, that there’s community spread within Edinburgh (given its transport connections), then there must be a decent chance that I’ll get it, even if the uptake curve is flattened. As I’m in reasonable health I’m not especially concerned for myself, although I am paying heightened attention to basic hygiene like everyone else. But, still in a fatalistic vein, when out for a walk earlier I found myself thinking about that old trope of what you would do if you knew the end was near. The conclusion I came to is that I would do nothing different: I like my life just how it is.
The thing that I’m thinking about more is that it’s reasonably foreseeable that that this will happen again, and again, as diseases new and old emerge and mutate. The immediate lesson from the spread of Covid-19 is that our interconnected world has no real defence againt it.
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