Who knows what's best - nobody!

Saturday, 14^th March 2020

As usual, I get up, walk the dog, buy the Saturday newspaper and go to my boxing fitness class at the local leisure centre. It is a popular class and attendance normally numbers between 20 – 30 people but today there are 14 of us. Hand gel is on the front desk when we go in and our instructor keeps telling us we can go and wash our hands at any time during the class. My wife and I take our own gloves and pads and work together as a pair so contact with others or shared equipment isn’t a worry.

Driving home through the local high street, where there is a small supermarket, a barbers, bakers, grocers, butchers, florist, chip shop and several charity shops, is very quiet. By 10 am when the class finishes, it is usually very busy with traffic and shoppers.

Over breakfast, our eldest son tells us that one of his co-workers at Waitrose was in the carpark and were beckoned over by an elderly couple sitting in their car. The couple asked the staff member if he would be willing to do their shopping for them as they were too scared to go inside. They explained that none of their family live nearby and they didn’t have anyone else they could ask.

I ring a good friend who lives nearby and, like my wife, works for the NHS. He tells me he has been trying hard to make arrangements for his mother who is over 70, very overweight and very worried. She has been having panic attacks and he spent three hours on the phone to her the previous day as she lives in the midlands, several hours drive away. His sister, who had been living there with her partner and baby, have moved into an Air BnB for a couple of weeks and bought a static caravan to put at the end of the garden whilst the work continues on the house they bought for renovation.

Another good friend who runs a business is rapidly laying off staff: four last week, eight this week. His company offers technology solutions for conferences and expositions which are all being cancelled or postponed. He asks me to urgently write a blog and webpage for their website about virtual meetings as he tries to temporarily reroute the business and keep the company afloat.

The government announces measures for the next phase of the pandemic here in the UK and it is, to the bafflement of many, different to what nearly all the other countries of Europe are doing. This, it is announced, is on the advice of scientific experts (apparently, we haven’t, after all, had enough of them, even if Michael Gove is at the heart of the government as Minister of the Cabinet Office, a role which involves co-ordinating government departments…) who seem to know better than the experts over the Channel.

It appears that we are aiming for ‘herd immunity’ which requires for around 70% of the population to contract the virus. Thus, schools will not close, mass events will not be banned, and most people will not be tested. 

Obviously, nobody knows what exactly is the best way through this but to me, this approach has hints of Brexit: ‘We’ll go it alone/We know best/Just you watch us do this our own way (even if it turns out to be a really fucking stupid idea). It’s all, apparently, been forecasted so that, for instance, closing schools will only reduce overall infection by 5% but would have a serious impact on the economy, if keyworkers have to stay home to look after their children. 

Clearly, the government is balancing public health and the nation’s finances. If a few thousand more old people die but the economy survives, well, when you’re burying your granny, just console yourself with these lines by Morrissey (The Smiths):

But that's okay

Because she was old and she would have died anyway

Latest data for the UK (as of 6pm):

Infected: 1,140

Deaths: 21

Celebrity Deaths: Connor MacGregor’s aunt

People I know who are infected: 0

People I know who have died: 0