Covid#10 - Dedicated to the staff of the NHS

The first death from Covid19 in Bournemouth was recorded yesterday, with two in Poole also.  It’s a tragic milestone that brings this emergency much closer to home.  When people die in your hometown, it takes much less than six degrees of separation before you know someone who’s lost a loved-one.

Beyond television drama, I have few points of reference for what it must be like to work as a doctor or nurse in a hospital.  I was seriously unwell about a year ago and had a day in hospital as an emergency patient.  I was enormously impressed by the care I received from doctors and nurses in several departments and by their professionalism.  They were all incredibly thorough and efficient and wonderfully sensitive and kind.  As I got better, I was in no doubt that without their excellent expertise, care and reassurance, my recovery would not have been so speedy.  My experience inspired confidence and admiration.  I wasn’t exactly surprised by the amazing hard work of the NHS, but it reminded me of how much we take them for granted for most of the time, when thankfully we don’t need them.

My cousin is a nurse in Perth, Australia and a friend is an F1 doctor, currently working in Bournemouth hospital.  I'm embarrassed that even after years of watching Casualty and Holby City, I only recently understood what ‘F1’ means!  Along with their colleagues, they are both very much on my mind today and I find myself regretting not talking to them more about their work, how a typical shift unfolds for them or how it affects them.  Not that much of what they are doing today is typical.

I’m not sure their hard work and compassion today is especially remarkable – it’s what they do every day.  What makes it extraordinary in these circumstances is how they so willingly and so selflessly set aside their own fears and anxieties about what must be the most dangerous virus they have ever encountered, shoulder the burden of caring for desperately sick, dying and infectious patients along with the inevitable concern they must have for their own health and the safety of their families and loved ones and manage the pressures of hospitals at the busiest they have ever been together with the apprehension of worse to come. 

My gratitude to the incredible staff of the NHS knew no bounds a year ago when I needed them myself but it and my admiration for them then is far surpassed now.  They are the heroes of this emergency.

Covid#9 - How this virus will define us

The ‘Church Closed’ sign on the local parish church was one of the most striking and sobering things I’ve seen so far.

It’s not because you would find me at church tomorrow or on any Sunday; I’m not religious and only go to church for a special occasion.  It got me wondering if there has ever been a time in British history when churches have been closed in this way.  I’ve done some Googling, and it seems there hasn’t.  As far as I can tell, even during previous great calamities – the Black Death, the English Civil War, the Great Plague, and the two World Wars, for example – churches stayed open.  The ‘Church Closed’ sign therefore emphasised the magnitude of our emergency.

There was a time when a pandemic like ours would have been seen as punishment by the Almighty.  During the Black Death of the 1340s, people turned to the Church for forgiveness of their sins, solace, reassurance and answers.  Ironically, the faith of many was rocked when the church seemed impotent and the very priests they turned to succumbed to the plague in large numbers.  During the Civil War, both Roundhead and Cavalier prayed in church for victory.  Churches remained open in 1665 when plague was once again attributed to divine retribution and the faithful sought God’s protection and mercy.  The start of the First World War saw a surge in church attendance as people identified with the justness of Britain’s cause and sought guidance from the Church, and the immediate inter-war years saw it rise again.

Historically, in times of emergency, we went to church and prayed for deliverance.  The closure of churches was unthinkable.  Today, relatively few will turn to God for solace, answers, protection or mercy and the closure of churches goes largely unnoticed.  

Instead of turning to priests for salvation, we turn to science.  Coronavirus is an invisible enemy just as Yersinia pestis was in the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, yet we all know what it looks like.  It’s our doctors and nurses that we believe will save us and whom we’re urged to protect.  Virologists and epidemiologists explain the spread of the virus to us.  Science labs around the world are racing to produce a vaccine – today’s holy grail. 

For consolation, we turn to our smartphones and tablets and to the Internet.  We’re connected to each through myriad apps and more become available every day.  With a swipe of our thumb, we can message and call each other, video-conference and Facetime; we post memes, jokes, film-clips and photos to keep each other smiling; we stay up-to-date with the news and keep informed;  we continue to work; and when we feel anxious or upset, we find support.  Some of us even blog – like modern-day Samuel Pepys’!

Undoubtedly, this pandemic will define the generations that lived through it in the same way wars of the past defined our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations.  More than that though, while the already diminished church submits to the microbe, Covid19 will help define our age as one of great scientific and technological discovery and endeavour.  

Covid#8 - This is just the beginning

When I started writing this Covid19 diary just over a week ago, we had just been told that schools would be closing at the end of the week, panic buying was still a relatively new phenomena, the over-70s and the vulnerable were still walking the streets and there had been 3,300 confirmed cases in the UK and 144 deaths. 

We were all grappling to come to terms with being in the grips of a global pandemic and I was reminding myself as much as anyone else that it was just the beginning.

A week on and we’re reeling from the impact of the virus and the change it has brought to everything.

Schools are closed.  Panic buying has been replaced by strict controls on our shopping – one-in, one-out at the supermarket and limits on what we can buy.  No-one is walking the streets; we’re staying at home and the Police keep an eye on our movements.  We’ve quickly become used to staying two metres apart from anyone we meet.  The friends and family we saw so regularly and hugged so freely are now just voices on the phone and faces on a screen and we don’t know when we’ll see each other properly again.  Pubs, restaurants, cafes and shopping centres are all shut.  Sport is off.  Many of us are working from home and accepting the limits on what we can achieve.  Many others find themselves suddenly with no work and no money.  Planes are grounded and the skies are empty.  Billions upon billions of pounds have been borrowed to keep us all afloat; after all those years of austerity, the national debt has abruptly rocketed.  The NHS is frantically readying itself for a ‘tsunami’ of cases.  We’ve been on lockdown for three days, with eighteen still to go – probably more.  The Prime Minister, the Prince of Wales, the Health Secretary and the Chief Medical Officer have all tested positive.

As of today, there have been 14,500 confirmed cases in the UK and 759 deaths.  Worldwide, there have been nearly 600,000 cases and 27,247 deaths. 

The picture is bleak but there’s cause for hope too.  Rainbows have appeared in windows across the country for children to spot.  We’ve found a deep new regard for our public services, especially the NHS.  We’ve remembered who the vulnerable are in our communities and shown how much we care.  An army of volunteers has mobilised.  Everywhere, people are supporting each other in wonderful acts of kindness.  Social media is alive with positivity and optimism.

We are still reeling.  We’re in shock and adapting to a new reality for which we weren’t prepared.  We’re fearful and uncertain of what the future holds, but we’re staying positive.  We don’t know how long it will all last.

There’s one thing I’m sure of though: this is still just the beginning.

Covid#7 - The benefits of Cornish isolation

Britain came out onto its doorsteps, driveways and balconies to applaud the staff of the NHS at 8pm this evening.  We watched it on the BBC and it was really very moving and uplifting; a reminder of the hard work of our doctors and nurses at this most desperate of times; a well-deserved show of admiration, confidence and gratitude; and a wonderful display of national solidarity.  Here in Cornwall, we didn’t stand on the doorstep and clap; aside from the badgers and horses, there’s no-one to hear it.  We were there in spirit though.

This is one of those remote corners of the land that feels a world away from an emergency.  It still felt unreal last week when I was at home in Bournemouth, which was then still relatively untouched by the virus – people said it was like watching a film – but here, at the southern-most point of Britain, you could turn off the news and be almost oblivious to anything untoward happening – until you try to go anywhere else or visit the supermarket, of course. 

Living in a small village surrounded by open space and looking out to sea, there is an understandable hope that the virus won’t spread as wildly here as in towns and cities with their greater concentrations of population, but no-one is complacent.  People aren’t visiting each other and when you see someone, they’re sociable but strict about keeping two metres distance.  There is the same fear here of that first case in the village as there is everywhere.  The locals are all worried for their families and for the elderly and vulnerable residents.  The giftshops wouldn’t yet be open for the tourist season, but this year they won’t open at Easter as they should.  Obviously, the few pubs, cafes and restaurants in the village all have their curtains drawn and remain in darkness.  There’s concern about the impact there will be on the local economy.

People have commented though that living here, enforced isolation isn’t very different from everyday life.  They walk to the village butcher, waving to neighbours through their windows or greeting them in their gardens as they normally do, and when they get there, the butcher’s is well stocked.  You walk the dog through the village to the clifftop and then for miles in whichever direction you please, only passing fewer people than usual.  Many villagers don’t travel far, nor often but it’s rare to see the Police in the village anyway so no-one expects to see officers here checking where anyone is going.  They’re content occupying themselves in their homes, with their gardens, with a good book, a game of cards or a jigsaw puzzle.  For many, it’s why they choose to live here.

My exercise today was with my parents’ dog across heathland, alongside babbling brooks, through sharp ravines, over the cliffs and beside the sea.  We accidentally flushed snipe, were followed by buzzards and ravens and spied upon by a peregrine; we scattered the meadow pipits and rabbits and seals ducked under the waves as we passed.  There was a chilly breeze but all the while, the sun shone gloriously.  We walked for ten happy miles and saw only four other people.

With the rest of the world in meltdown, this place ticks along at a barely changed pace.  I’ve wondered what villages like this were like at other times of crisis – during the war, for example.  Did the war seem a world away?  It’s easier here, not exactly to forget about the virus, the catastrophe it’s causing, the pressures it’s bringing and the deaths, but to find peace in isolation in an already-isolated and beautiful corner of the country.  I’m lucky to find myself here.

Covid#6 - Lockdown

Last night, Boris announced new measures to tackle the virus, all designed to keep us in our homes.  Do not go out unless it’s to do occasional groceries shopping, for medical reasons or for one spell of exercise per day, he told us.  Travel for work only if it is essential.  Gatherings of more than two people are prohibited.  Baptisms, weddings and other ceremonies are off.  It will all be reviewed in three weeks but could well be extended as it has been in Italy, Spain and other countries.  We knew it was coming, but it was dramatic and shocking nonetheless.

The necessity of it is obvious.  Unless we act now to slow the spread of the virus, the NHS will be overwhelmed in the coming weeks, we’ll see the appalling scenes from hospitals in the north of Italy repeated here and more people will die.  I have friends working in the NHS in Bournemouth.  It’s quiet at the moment, they tell me, but they’re dreading the coming onslaught of Covid19 cases and it’s critical we do everything we can to ease the eventual burden on them.

Knowing the sense to this lockdown doesn’t make it easy – and it’s only day one!  I have what I know is the good fortune to be in Cornwall, staying at my parents’ house in Lizard, having come to visit them for a few days at the end of last week.  Yesterday’s announcement meant I had to make a choice: go home to Bournemouth or stay in Cornwall.  I’ve since joked about my first-world problems!  Which of my two lovely homes do I stay in?!

It was a difficult choice though.  In Bournemouth, I’d be surrounded by all my things – the stuff that would help to keep me occupied over the coming weeks and months – and I’d maintain at least some of my routine and independence but I would be alone with very limited options of places to go for exercise.  Being in Cornwall means I have numerous cliff-paths I can walk with the dog – so long as it’s dry – and I have company, but I have to compromise on my independence and I think my parents and I already share some anxiety about how we will get on, living with each other indefinitely.  My sacrifices are small and I’m much better off than many, but the impact of Covid19 on all of us is already enormous.

This morning, I re-read my New Year’s Day post from just a few months ago when I was full of positivity, optimism and hope.  It’s startling how then, none of us could foresee how the freedoms and rights we take for granted would so soon be curtailed.  Now, none of us know how long this new way of life will last or how we will endure it.

It’s been announced in China today that restrictions in Wuhan will be eased in a couple of weeks – nearly three months after they were introduced. 

Covid#5 - Be kind to each other

The news today has been full of people’s shock at others who apparently aren’t following the social distancing rules.  For many, the past weekend was sunny – that one that feels like the start of spring when ordinarily, everyone wants to get out in the sunshine to mark the end of the long, grey, cold, wet winter.  It coincided with Mother’s Day too.  Accordingly, news reports have aired footage of families walking together through parks, across the moors and along seafronts.  Alongside this, they’ve shown slow-moving rush-hour traffic moving through city centres and commuters pressed together in Underground trains, all implying that for many people, little has changed.  This has provoked an indignant, appalled reaction from many.  The Health Secretary called these people ‘selfish’ and in his latest tv rant, self-appointed spokesman for the nation, Piers Morgan questioned what is wrong with these people.

It's right to be concerned.  If we don’t distance ourselves from each other, we’re putting ourselves at risk, we’re putting the people we love and live with at risk, we’re putting people we don’t know at risk and we’re potentially adding unnecessary strain to the hardworking NHS at its most challenging time.

I don’t think we should be too hard on each other, however.

Some people have adapted incredibly well to these new circumstances and restrictions but it shouldn’t surprise us that it’s been harder for others.  Coronavirus has arrived and spread so quickly; on one hand, this should be a warning to everyone but on the other, it’s meant that we’ve had limited time to process the dangers and the warnings and to utterly change our ways of life as we’re expected.  If your community’s not yet been directly affected, it can all still seem very unreal too.  It’s not that you think you’ll escape it or that you don’t care; it’s just that you think you may have another day or two and you want to make the most of it.  Neither is it in the British mindset to react so dramatically to a crisis.  Traditionally, we’re expected to adopt the ‘blitz-spirit’ and to keep calm and carry on with a stiff upper lip.  Retreating to our homes by ourselves and stopping everything is not the British way.  In other times, we’d frown at people who did that.

Let’s generously give people the benefit of the doubt.  Those people who were shown on the news walking in the sunshine yesterday may never have intended to mingle with crowds and never thought they were going to be televised.  Many of them were probably out only with the people they live with and they probably did their best to keep a distance from others, in spite of how they were portrayed on television.  It may have been naïve of them but they may have regretted it too.  This morning’s commuters may feel they have no choice but to continue going to work and whilst trains are still running, they may think that it’s fine to travel on them.

This is just one example of the muddled messages we’re getting: it’s not safe to travel by train but we’ll keep them running anyway.  Last week, the same politicians who today call people selfish were emphasising the importance of building herd immunity.  Some people – especially the young and healthy – could be forgiven for concluding a week ago that the best thing they could do for themselves and wider society was to catch Covid19 sooner rather than later and become one of an immune army.  Now, they’re told to avoid the virus at all cost.  

This diagram's everywhere today:

It's serious advice and I know this is cynical, but I wonder how we'd feel about this diagram if Boris put it on the side of a bus.  People's attitudes in this crisis might also reflect their trust in politicians.  Personally, I wouldn’t choose to have Boris lead me to shelter in a rainstorm, let alone have him lead the nation through an emergency of this magnitude.  I don’t think it should surprise us that people are dubious about advice from him and other politicians, no matter how many experts they surround themselves with. 

As this virus takes hold, we shouldn’t forget that viral message that followed Caroline Flack’s untimely death: Be kind to each other.

Covid#4 - In which Santa and the First Horseman of the Apocalypse meet in Wuhan, China on Christmas Eve..

Santa took off his hat, unbuttoned his coat and mopped his brow.  Even in the dead of night, these big cities were too warm for his Arctic wardrobe and it was a busy night, his busiest – obviously. 

Wuhan, China.  The night was young but Australasia, Japan and the Korean peninsula were done and all had gone smoothly, much like every year.  The only strange thing was some of this year’s present requests: toilet rolls, hand sanitizer and face masks were an odd choice.  An in-joke, he supposed.  Something circulating on the Internet probably. 

Behind him the reindeer pawed restlessly at the ground.  They had pulled up in a small park surrounded by low-rise tower blocks and their stop had to be brief before they took once again to the skies for the next vast Chinese city.  Santa leaned on the sledge having a moment’s break before unloading the next sack of presents and he sniffed.  Something was off.  There was a rotten smell on the air.  He’d smelt it before, not for a long time but still, it made him anxious.  He shuddered.

He turned to sort through the enormous sacks loaded into the sledge, then he hesitated.  The air temperature had dropped dramatically and he pulled his coat around him.  He closed his eyes and sighed in resigned expectation.  The reindeer had fallen still, the night seemed darker.  Much darker.  Behind him, a horse snorted loudly as it trod purposefully toward him across the grass.  The putrid smell on the air was stronger.  Reluctantly, Santa turned.

The horse was enormous and ghostly pale with a rusting iron mask and a dark, ragged coat slung across its back.  Astride it, a cloaked horseman sat with a black hood pulled low over his face and a bow slung across his back.  He pulled on the reigns and the horse halted, its matted tail flicked impatiently.  ‘My old friend,’ the figure called, his voice high-pitched, scratching and wheezy.  Santa detected a sneer.  The figure reached behind himself to a tarnished brass quiver, hanging from the horse’s leather saddle and withdrew a long arrow.

‘Pestilence,’ sighed Santa, ignoring the figure’s over-familiar greeting.  ‘We meet again.’

Pestilence ran the arrow’s fletching through his bony fingers.  ‘It’s been too long, don’t you think?’ he replied.

‘Not long enough,’ answered Santa.  ‘Your business here?’ he enquired, eyeing the arrow, but he didn’t really need to ask.

‘The usual,’ came the answer.  ‘This one’s a good one.’

‘Has it begun?’ Santa asked.  ‘Do they know?’

The figure nodded, his very bones seemed to creak.  ‘Some know, but not many, not yet.’  Santa thought back to those strange present requests. 

‘How bad will it be?’

Even beneath the dark shadow of Pestilence’s hood, Santa saw his sallow face crease in a dreadful smile that answered his question.  His heart sank.  Over the centuries, the two of them had met several times in different continents; the last time had been just over a hundred years ago, but Santa was sure Pestilence had fired a few of his awful arrows since then.  Back in 1920, fifty million had died.

Briefly, as before, it crossed Santa’s mind to stop Pestilence.  Somehow.  They each had their own strange, ancient powers though, and they were perfectly, evenly matched.  Santa knew that nothing he could do could prevent the disaster that Pestilence wrought, just as none of his arrows could dent the joy Santa brought or harm any of his magical reindeer.  Here of all places, he thought, there was a certain irony to their yin-yang relationship.  They each had a grim regard for the other.

Pestilence knew the thought that had crossed Santa’s mind and he shook his head.  ‘You know better,’ he uttered.  ‘Take some consolation though,’ he suggested.  ‘They’ve learnt.  This one’s good,’ he fingered the arrow head which Santa knew bore some hideous poison, a vicious virus, ‘and it will be bad, but not as bad as before.  They know better how to fight it.  They’re making it harder for me.’  It was Pestilence’s turn to sigh.  His breath rattled.  He took his bow from behind him and nocked the arrow.

Santa couldn’t watch and turned away.  ‘Be gentle with them,’ he beseeched, futile as he knew it was.

Unseen by Santa, Pestilence pointed the arrow skyward, pulled back hard on the drawstring, belying his own sickliness, then loosed the arrow.  It flew high, high toward the stars and disappeared into the darkness.

Sorrowful, Santa held his head in his hands.  Though he could no longer look up, he could still picture the large number of arrows still held in the horseman’s quiver.  He knew that neither of their work was done.  Again, Pestilence seemed to know Santa’s thoughts.  ‘We both have much work to do,’ he said to Santa’s back.  ‘I shall bid you goodnight, until the next time we meet.’  Santa couldn’t turn to answer; he slumped against his sledge as he heard the horseman’s spurs kick his steed’s side, turning the horse before beginning to walk away into the night.

After a moment, Santa sensed movement in the reindeer once more and it seemed to him that the stars had come back out.  He was alone again and the air was clearing.  As the horseman had said, he had work to do, although he suspected it would be harder now to cheerily issue his booming ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ greeting.

He swung one of the huge sacks over his shoulder, turned and in the next instant, he was standing in the comfortable living room of a doctor’s small flat.  Smiling at the customary gaudy decorations, he recognised a child’s hand in their making.  He rifled in the sack, withdrew half a dozen gifts and arranged them around the decorations.  Before leaving, he glanced around the room; it would be rude not to take anything the family had left for him.  On a small plate atop a side-table was a fortune cookie, a hand-drawn card and unusually, a wrapped present for him.  He crunched on the cookie as he read the card.  This might seem weird, it read, but you should wear it and stay safe.

Santa unwrapped the gift and revealed a face-mask, the same as he imagined the doctor wearing.  He himself didn’t need the mask but he chuckled.  ‘They’re ready to fight,’ he thought.  ‘There’s hope.’ 

Then Santa turned again and vanished.