From coronavirus to Corfu

As a good citizen I have been working from home this week.

No sign, yet, of a high temperature and persistent cough which is ironic because, for the previous few winters, a constant cough is something I’d grown to live with.

I haven’t completely escaped the effects of the coronavirus pandemic however.

Three meetings I was due to attend (two in London, one in Brussels) have been cancelled.

A planned trip to Scotland next weekend is also off following the postponement of all football matches.

What else?

Oh yes, on Thursday I was asked to do an interview for BBC1 Look North.

Before they booked a studio I had to confirm I had not recently visited a category one country (China, South Korea, northern Italy) or a category two country (Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore etc).

When I arrived at the studio the receptionist kept me waiting outside until I reassured her I was not infected.

Then, when I was allowed in to the building, I was instructed (very firmly) to wash my hands immediately with sanitiser.

Only after that was I permitted to enter the studio.

Meanwhile we’ve just had a visit from the Waitrose delivery man. No toilet rolls, no hand wash and no paracetamol.

Help!

PS. Four weeks today I hope to be back in Corfu (below) where we had a very pleasant holiday last year.

I’m not a betting man but what are the odds?

Update: No sooner had I posted this than my wife read this - Greek seasonal hotels and resorts closed until end of April.

Guess we won’t be going away after all.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

Life goes on as normal here. We are all in work, there are no closures, no panic buying of toilet rolls, as far as I have noticed during my weekly shop, but I did hear that anyone who goes to A&E with severe symptoms without taking 111 advice first will be arrested.

We smokers know all about NHS so called "compassion". The rest of the country are about to learn it too.

Clearly smoking cannot be that dangerous when we are only excluded from indoor meeting places and even when we smoked inside, there was no daily death rate - except the imaginary figures pulled from the heads of professional anti smoker activists and not from the grief of people losing family members daily thanks to their "selfish" smoking parents and grandparents as the anti smokers would have the public believe.

I hope to go away for my annual holiday in July and hope that the worst of this crisis is over by then. However, I must admit that I am enjoying the so called "super spreaders" or toilet roll panic buyers being public enemy No 1 instead of smokers for a change.

I am sure the kind folks at ASH and their stooge charity front groups are already working on a lie that smokers are spreaders and only they alone can be blamed for having Covid 19 because they are smokers - unlike everyone else who is just unfortunate enough to catch it from someone else, probably a "selfish addicted" smoker.

Meanwhile, the Government pretends to care so much for the health of the public it deems it vital to abuse and punish smokers for their own good - while stating that the public can go to hell during the Corona crisis for the sake of herd immunity and it doesn't mater how many weak, old or vulnerable die as a result.

Hypocrisy and snobbery are the defining features of 21st century life.