LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS PART SIX

Lockdown went into effect 23^rd March 2020 although we’d had a bit of a hint the week before when Prime Minister Boris Johnson started talking about ‘shielding the vulnerable by the weekend’.

When I heard that phrase ‘shielding the vulnerable by the weekend’, I knew.

In late November – early December I noticed a very few reports out of China. The reports, posted on the back pages or in the ‘Odd’ or ‘Health News’ sections of newspapers and online feeds, were short and sparse on information. Usually just one line – There are rumours coming out of China about deaths to a strange new pneumonia. Later, closer to Christmas and New Year, the reports expanded just a wee bit to say the strange new pneumonia hadn’t killed many people (at the time still in the low double digits) but the deaths look a lot like SARS. (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) 

Which of course got my attention and I began preparing in case this strange new pneumonia that wasn’t carrying off tonnes of people (yet) went seriously SARS version 2.0 on us. Which, of course, it has.

Inventory – food, household goods, BBQ supplies (power outages). Medical supplies including spare disposable gloves, masks, and mob caps. Reading up on caring for a pneumonia patient at home. Reminding myself of SARS and ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome), how it is contracted, how it spreads, how it kills. Oh dear, that didn’t help my peace of mind.

By the middle of January everyone had heard of this novel coronavirus killing thousands in China, specifically a city, Wuhan, in the Hubei region. Here in the UK no-one had the virus and the belief early on was essentially ‘Oh, but that won’t happen to us’.

Meanwhile I was topping up the fridge-freezer and store cupboard, buying a small chest freezer, and buying one last large box of disposable gloves and other medical supplies.

When the lockdown was ordered, I was more or less ready for Paul and I to manage comfortably for at least two months. Then Britain saw the first cases, two and in the same Chinese student family group down in Yorkshire. And then a super-spreader came home from a ski holiday in Europe and the cascade of cases began. I began a spreadsheet of cases and deaths. The numbers here in the UK grew.

And I kept topping up the supplies, worrying where I was going to stack everything we needed to get through what was beginning to look like a six months long mass quarantine about to happen, and how I was going to get replacement supplies in as what I had stocked needed to be replenished. I checked with the local butcher – yes, he would deliver our monthly meat order. I signed us up at the big box supermarket (ASDA) for Click&Collect when I couldn’t get a slot for home delivery before June (this was the first week of March – I wasn’t the only person paying attention, clearly).

First C&C slot I could get for us? The middle of April and I used the booking to fill in some gaps – more ‘pot noodles’ (actually pasta packets, with a few pot noodles in addition), peanut butter, Bisto Best Gravy Granules (don’t laugh – in a pinch that reconstituted gravy over rice or pasta with some veg on the side or mixed in makes a decent and filling emergency meal). Paul picked it up Monday.

From the last week of January the Government began issuing guidance to GP surgeries and hospital A&E units on handling suspected cases of what was being called ‘the novel coronavirus’ whilst advising it was only dangerous to elderly and those with underlying conditions, and that younger people would have mild illness if any at all. Transmission routes were considered to be the usual droplets and it wasn’t until the beginning of March it dawned on anyone this ‘novel coronavirus’ spread easily, the droplets were like a fine mist that bloody well might have been considered airborne, and were found to be ‘live’ as long as 17 days (from swabbed cruise ship cabins where the virus had swept through passenger and crew lists like wildfire). It’s not front-page news, the way this virus remains live on surfaces – but it should be. Also not front-page news is the virus can be spread by the asymptomatic, and just by talking unmasked – the infected person doesn’t have to cough (or sneeze) to spread the virus.

WHO was exposed relatively early on as being China-centric and unwilling to call this bloody spade the spade it is, the global spread and shockingly painful death from what scientists at least began calling SAR-CoV-2 (and are now, not surprisingly, calling simply SARS-2) finally forced WHO to declare it a pandemic until 11 March 2020. The ‘common name’ of the virus became known as Covid-19, or ‘the virus’. But the real name is SARS-CoV-2 and it is SARS returned and this time better equipped to overcome immune responses, and to overcome the antibody immunity in a person declared virus-free. Several patients have been discovered to be testing positive weeks after recovering and being tested negative. The research is on-going, does the virus go dormant in the body to return later, or does the supposed immunity in recovered patients have a very short shelf-life?

Worse, the virus is mutating and it’s doing so in a way that makes it more deadly than the previous mutation – but bloody well don’t try saying that to anyone as they are taking comfort in the ‘scientific advice’ from Governmental science and medical advisors who tried to talk the PM and Cabinet into letting this effing virus ‘run free’ and thereby create ‘herd immunity’. The bastards should be struck off and they should be in the stocks for us to pelt them with rotten fruit and veg!

The news is grim. So grim the Government is skewing numbers by not counting nursing home and in-home deaths. That scandal erupted as a side-bar scandal to the growing scandal of the shortage of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) in hospitals. There were concerns among the older population and some organisations dedicated to the older population that this virus would be looked at as ‘an old and weak’ illness that should be left unchecked – ‘respecting the dignity of the deceased, of course’ – and there were suggestions the virus would be seen as a sad (but useful) cull of people not able to contribute to the Treasury.

Each Thursday night we stand on our doorsteps and driveways or hang out first floor windows to clap as a United Kingdom for the NHS and other essential workers keeping the country going during the most difficult days we’ve seen globally since WWII.

Fox and I talk on the phone once a week. Since February, our greeting consists of ‘No coronavirus in me, how are you?’. He is an essential worker. My heart is in my throat 24/7.