Over the hump

Among the survivors (Joel 2:32) 

There is a survival atmosphere where we are in rural Dorset. Like Banstead during the Blitz, it feels like the bombs have missed. Oh, there was one down on the High Street, someone might say, but we were lucky not to be hit worse being so near London. The hospitals have experienced no great influx of patients. Indeed without the routine operations and with very reduced Accident and Emergency (no pubs and clubs!) they are rather quiet. Even the undertakers tell me that business is pretty much normal. 

In such an atmosphere you start to wonder what the legacy will be, what will be your most vivid memory. Will it be the crowds at Cheltenham Gold Cup or the talk of 'herd immunity' at Downing Street briefings? Will it be the images of Italian hospitals overrun with COVID-19 patients, or those serried ranks of Chinese medics marching through the barriers away from Wuhan province? For some it will be a last glimpse of a relative as they are ambulanced away to hospital, or the message that tells them that they will never get to say goodbye.

The words from our Prime Minister appeared to encourage such a feeling of survival, of starting to stand up amid the flotsam and jetsam of the flood. No longer should we Stay at Home. Now we must Stay Alert. We have passed the peak and, provided we keep R down, we can slowly begin to get back to some semblance of normal. Specific industries, like construction and manufacturing, may reopen, provided we all learn to cycle to work. Certain children will be released back to school and may even look forward to going. Some non-essential shops may eventually reopen, some small businesses may get busy and we may even be allowed to go out to the cinema or theatre. All as long as we continue to observe the rules on social distancing.

Now I am all for this positive atmosphere, but I am not convinced. I wonder how closely you follow the Downing Street briefings. I had been avoiding the news to keep my anxiety levels down to manageable levels, but have now started to watch and I am most enthralled not by what is said but by what is not said. Have you noticed the rate of decline of the 'rolling average' death toll for instance. It is slow. This shows that R (the rate of re-infection) is below 1, the key marker of success in this battle, but it is not by much. Roughly speaking the average daily death rate has reduced by half in a month, from 1000 to 500, so the hope is that in another month it will be nearly zero. If we guess a 2% death rate, that means that there are about 25,000 cases of COVID-19 currently in the population. I don't know about you but that feels like a lot. Indeed it reminds me of when the first cases appeared in Brighton. While we were going, 'shut the town down, now, please' the authorities were going, 'don't worry, it's just a few, we'll easily trace them'. This feels the same. While the Spaniards are given set times to go out segregated by age, we are told to all rush to the parks as soon as the sun appears. While New Zealand has locked its borders for weeks, we are told that sometime in the future we will be expecting all air passengers to isolate for 2 weeks. I mean, why not now, or a month ago, and why only air and not sea? Have I missed something and it now takes two weeks to cross the channel?

I may have mentioned before that, like half the government, I am an ex-boarder. I, like them, was locked away at school for my teenage years and grew up in an atmosphere of survival of the fittest. You learned fairly rapidly not to show weakness, definitely don't cry for Mummy, and find a way quickly to prove you were a winner. This feels very much like that. "Ok chaps, don't do anything stupid and if Sponger (who, frankly, is a bit of a weakling) cops it then that's his lookout". Certainly empathy is not a survival trait in a boarding school and soon evaporates, so it is small wonder that our leaders are able to accept quite casually numbers of deaths that leave other countries aghast at our incompetence. For an army commander it's a great grounding, for a captain of industry, for an academic, even for a teacher in certain contexts, but I'm not convinced it's what we need now at the helm. I never thought I'd say this but give me Sturgeon any day.

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