In Episode 25 of his new book, author Julian Roup listens to plans on how Covid-19 lockdown in the UK will end.
In case you missed Episode 24, click here.
Life in a Time of Plague
Sussex, 1st May 2020
By Julian Roup
Today is the 1st of May, and the emergency callsign MayDay, MayDay MayDay’ has never seemed more appropriate. Much of the news is about how and when the lockdown will end here in the UK. Boris is due to outline a plan this week. A survey just out says that Britain has been self-isolating not because the Government demanded it, but because people were truly fearful of catching the virus and even when lockdown is lifted, many would be nervous of leaving their homes to use public transport, visit pubs, or go shopping.
So if and when Boris lifts lockdown, let’s see how soon the general population take up the offer of walking out through their front door. It will be a telling indication of how much Boris is viewed as being capable of making a judgement call that anyone can trust. I am reminded of the wolf and the three little pigs. The pigs are cowering in their house as the wolf call out in a falsetto voice. “Oh little pigs it is safe to come out now, the big bad wolf is gone!” I think Boris has a profound credibility problem.
His mate across the pond, Donald Trump, has announced that he has seen compelling evidence that the virus was manufactured in a Wuhan laboratory in China. What he is unsure of is whether it escaped accidentally or whether it was deliberately allowed to spread. But US Government experts say the virus is “not manmade or genetically modified.” Oh Lord! Trump will leave the White House today for the first time in a month when he travels to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. For how long, nobody is sure.
The UK Government is sticking to its figure of 26,000 dead in hospitals and nursing homes but not yet at home, a far cry from the 43,000 the FT and the Office of Statistics have mentioned.
There is concern that Boris’ right hand man, Dominic Cummings, the architect of his political victories with Brexit and to the general election, his ‘eminence grise’, has been attending the scientific body set up to guide the Government. The fear is that as a result, the scientists are not at liberty to talk freely, and that their messages to Government are being edited by Cummings.
The weather has turned cold and wet for three days now, much closer to the seasonal norm after the warmest April ever recorded. Lockdown has largely been a case of being indoors while the sun shone outside. And this after the wettest winter in living memory, when people were desperate for a bit of sun.
A new study shows that 18 to 24 year olds have been hardest hit by lockdown, coping worst with its confining realities. It makes sense, with hormones in full flow and the sap rising in spring that they are going stir-crazy. It will be interesting to see when lockdown ends how soon they start circulating, choosing sex over the fear of death. My bet is that Death won’t get much attention from them, unless Death starts paying them particular attention himself. And I suppose that this youthful brio is the way of the world and just how we as a species have bounced back from worse setbacks than this hiccup.
It was so good to see Dom and Steph yesterday, however briefly. Both Jan and I were so much wanting to touch them, to hug them, to kiss them. To be with them and to embrace them. To thank them for all they have done for us. Yesterday they popped in to collect their post and the parcels delivered here, to take Gus to the vet for his annual shots and to do some top-up shopping for us. They looked well and happy and full of life and in love. Their lockdown in Jupiter’s tiny confines has not challenged their relationship at all. It is not surprising, as the 37-foot yacht has been a dream boat for them, helping them to realise their ambition of a life afloat, carrying them round Britain’s treacherous coast safely in the first leg of the new life they have planned for themselves.
Through the dark days of winter and then the bright sunny days of lockdown, they have been studying for their captain’s tickets. While the world has been locked down these two have focussed on how to navigate the earth by the stars. It is no wonder that they have coped. They have been travelling the heavens even as Britain feared to open its front door; their shared dream of going further and faster across the world’s oceans is gaining strength, day by day.
During this dark time, they have put together a compelling business plan to buy a bigger boat to run a charter service for university oceanographic departments, and have done a lot of research to this end. They have spoken to universities about what their requirements would be in the way of yacht chartering for their scientific teams. And just before lockdown, they flew to New Zealand to view three yachts.
Now they have come up with a new strand of their plan. Both aim to study further. Dominic has opted to study boat building – marine architecture – and Steph, who is a chemical engineer, to study marine biology. This part of my family are truly leaving the land for the sea. And that part of me that loves the sea is singing for joy while at the same time my fear and respect for the sea gives me pause. Please God keep them safe as they sail upon the earth’s oceans and come to harbour in good heart each time they leave port. They already make a formidable team, their courage and spirit of adventure wedded to intelligence and discipline. I am so very proud of them. Their children one day will be modern Vikings!
But before any of this can happen, we need to beat Covid-19; that is the storm we are all riding at anchor, and it is fairly tossing our British barque about.
Yesterday afternoon Jan drove me to collect my car from Tony Carvell, our mechanic in Groombridge, ten minutes from home. Then in rubber gloves, having sprayed the car seat and steering wheel, I drove my old car back home through Crowborough. It felt good to be moving again in this car that I am so fond of, a car that has criss-crossed Europe with us for thousands of miles, eating the distances effortlessly, in effect our home from home. I will have to keep the battery charged by giving it an outing regularly from now on. Diesels thrive on work.
It tickles me no end that in the TV series we’ve been watching, ‘Ray Donovan’, the character after whom the series is named, drives the same car as me. His son says he too wants to be a gangster like his father, and when his mother denies that her husband is a gangster, he says: “Mom, look at the way dad dresses, look at his car!” Maybe at heart I am a gangster too? Maybe.
And speaking of bad behaviour, Britain’s largest pharmacy chain, Boots, is now supporting domestic abuse victims. They will be able to access safe spaces at Boots pharmacies across the country from today, under measures to improve access to support during the coronavirus lockdown.
These stories of how the virus is infecting our lives have no end. One that catches my eye in The Guardian is about failed ventilators. “Chinese ventilators that ministers heralded as vital to the NHS’s efforts to tackle Covid-19 were badly built, unsuitable for use in hospitals and potentially dangerous for patients, it has emerged.”
All of the devices in a consignment of 250 ventilators that arrived from China on 4 April posed such serious problems that they could not be used and were ditched. Doctors in NHS hospitals in the West Midlands, among which the ventilators were shared, were so concerned that they wrote to Matt Hancock the health secretary, warning that they could kill patients.
“We believe that if used, significant patient harm, including death, is likely,” they wrote in a letter, which was obtained by NBC News. “We look forward to the withdrawal and replacement of these ventilators with devices better able to provide intensive care ventilation for our patients.”
However, as they say, the darkest hour is just before the dawn, and there are glimmers of light on the horizon. The country has now achieved the Government’s stated target of testing 100,000 people a day, many of these at drive-through facilities run by the army. And now a key test is underway. A randomly selected group of 100,000 people in England will be tested for Covid-19 in an attempt to quantify whether transmission levels of the virus are low enough to exit the lockdown. The tests, next week, will provide a national snapshot of the proportion of those infected with the virus ahead of a planned review of restrictions on May 7th.
Professor Ara Darzi, the director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, which is running the study with the pollster Ipsos Mori, said that – short of a vaccine – testing represented the only way out of the lockdown. “But the testing landscape is like the Wild West with no rules, no standards and widely varying reliability,” he added. “With this ambitious programme, the biggest in England, we aim to establish a viable testing programme on which the government can rely.”
Amen to that!
In South Africa, which has a draconian lockdown, one of the toughest in the world, they have managed to limit deaths to just over 103, according to official figures. This has been achieved with stringent lockdown measures and an army of social care workers going through townships testing and testing and testing for Covid-19. But the fear now is that this strategy may be hurting the country more than the virus.
South Africa’s lockdown is costing its ailing economy £570 million a day. Yet with fewer than 103 dead and just 395 infected patients in hospital, the country’s population is beginning to question if that has been a price worth paying. A phased easing of restrictions, starting tomorrow, will offer some relief but there are fears that the number of failed businesses and job losses will be far higher than the number of fatalities from Covid-19.
“Even if our unlikely hopes of escaping the health consequences of the pandemic come to pass, we will not escape its economic consequences,” Ravi Naidoo, an expert on development policy, said.
Amid all the gloom, there is the odd story to make one smile. Here in the UK, the mainstay of celebration is beer, and today brings heartening news. It sounds like an offer drinkers anywhere would raise a glass to – a brewery is giving away its beer after being left with a surplus amid lockdown. With pubs and restaurants closed, the firm was left with nobody to sell its dozens of casks to.
The Alnwick Brewery Company in Northumberland has asked local residents to take its cask beer home in their own containers. In return, they were requested to make a donation that will go to the NHS.
The brewery said one person “joked he would arrive with a bathtub.” Each cask holds about 70 pints (some 40 litres).
“We’d brewed up in anticipation of Easter. Suddenly the business was shut down and we thought “what can we do with this?” co-owner Ian Robinson said. “It’s all very well giving it away, but why not try to raise some money through donations? “The beer has a relatively short lifespan, and we’re down to its last three weeks so we’ll be doing this for the next few Fridays.”
So we can expect a rush north to Northumberland for a cask or two for the weekend.
And then there is happy news from my connections in South Africa. My sister Jay in Cape Town sends news: “Just back from our first walk in five weeks! We are allowed out between 6am and 9am. We went along the roads – me in an engineered sock mask! Everyone very festive and all saying hello.” I am glad for her and Guy.
Elma in Johannesburg writes: “Went for a long walk to freedom this morning as it is now allowed. Hurrah. Good to breathe again.” And she attaches an image of a magnificent tree with a vast trunk from which massive branches reach out just five feet from the ground. And I am happy for her too.
Small steps to freedom for us all.
Click here for Episode 26.
