July 23, 2021

Let's be careful out there

Pandemic pingdemic?

Sometimes, I wonder, where people get their ideas from? One of the latest buzz words seems to be pingdemic. Being notified is obviously not a very nice thing to happen. But then again having the virus is not a good thing at all. Surely the underlying risks of getting the virus is actually the problem, being notified is just a secondary issue? The virus is something that we need to continue to tackle. It’s very important to note that the virus has not gone away it’s still there and we as a community and as a country are going to have to deal with it.

I find it very difficult at the moment. As with most tourist seasons our little town has become inundated with people, and that is essentially a good thing. One of the problems that we faced last year was the lack of social distancing, and some form of reality distortion field effected our town. And even though, our town council had put up notices, little yellow footprints everywhere, including closing the main street to road traffic, the reality distortion field did its work.

Now I know that lots of people who have read my blog, think that I am some form of killjoy not wanting people to enjoy themselves. No that’s not true, I want people to enjoy themselves, I want people to spend lots of money in the town, and I want to see responsible tourism. Maybe I was expecting too much. Maybe people came down here to escape from the reality (like I once did) and I (from experience) can see why people came down. As I said before people don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. People feel uncertain, maybe that is why they are partying like it’s 1999? Maybe this might be their last hurrah, like me they’re having their drink in the last chance saloon. Old words used before but worth saying again?

Looking back in history. We have had to deal with awful illnesses before. We have eradicated smallpox, we also managed to ameliorate another dreadful illness. But, even the illness we thought we had defeated, at least in this country, an illness which we thought had been consigned to the dustbin of history has sadly made a comeback, and that illness is Tuberculosis. More infectious forms of the illness have arrived here, and now we are trying to stop it’s spread into the wider community. So epidemics are absolutely nothing new and maybe we need to look at history to find out how we continue to live with the coronavirus. In fact coronaviruses are very very commonplace it seems?

If you look at some of the photographs of the United Kingdom during the 1950s you could see some people wearing face masks. I am told that those face masks which the pictures show, worn in London, were an effort to try and stop people getting tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. So nothing changes but even then not everyone wore masks.

Now with lockdown over I was surprised to see the amount of people not wearing masks in shops and enclosed spaces. Now I thought that the unofficial/official guidance was that people wore masks in enclosed spaces? Did our chief medical officer Chris Whitty say he would continue to wear a mask in enclosed spaces. In fact if you go onto the government website there is an entire page saying pretty much and I quote:

”** public advised to cover faces in enclosed spaces.** The public is advised to consider wearing face coverings in enclosed public spaces such as shops, trains and buses to help reduce the spread of coronavirus”.

So they have it. Concise clear and factual information from the horses mouth.

I’m assured that masks do help transmission, and I have no doubt the advice that I am given, is honest concise clear and factual information from our very experienced epidemiologist, none other than our Chief Medical Officer. So am I going to ignore that advice? No of course not. Maybe I have some form of resistance to the countrywide reality distortion field that is effecting everywhere. The reality distortion field is probably more infectious than the virus. I don’t know? Being rather facetious perhaps people have been reading Douglas Adams amazing book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and have engaged the infinite improbability drive? But being a human being and a member of the human race, human nature is that people will sometimes be rather oblivious to the danger that surrounds them. Maybe being oblivious is some form of psychological defence from the 'terror' of the modern world? I am not a psychologist, and I’m not qualified to speak about such matters, but there is, from my experience, some form of psychological 'tuning out' of things that are quite frightening? The threat of nuclear war during the Cold War is a prime example?

So loosely quoting from the aforementioned book, life the universe and everything will continue on, and us, the proletariat, will have no say in how things progress both economically and socially. In fact we will have no say, or power, to find out exactly what happened at the highest levels of government, and indeed beyond, during the coronavirus outbreak in our country.

It is also interesting to note that the venerable presenter Emily Maitlis has got into hot water about some statements that she made on the Newsnight program. She has been rebuked by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Emily is a smart cookie. I admire her because she speaks her mind and that’s a good thing. In many ways I would have preferred her to do the interview with Dominic Cummings, rather than the interviewer Laura Kuenssberg. But that’s just my own personal bias perhaps?

I enclose a link to the article published in the PressGazette. It is very much worth having a look at? So this is me signing off and in the immortal words from the sergeant in Hill Street Blues, ‘remember people let’s be careful out there’!