Diary and experiences on the Coronavirus front
The UK government says that the population must assume that a coronavirus epidemic is highly likely. This will pose a huge challenge for our public service leaders.
How will they keep the country functioning and maintain societal stability, as increasing numbers of people at all levels become ill and need care? How will they create conditions for an informed debate on the risks and precautions? How will they forestall panic causing as much damage as a pandemic?
Anxiety is already having an impact on lives and communities up and down the country. The unthinkable is fast becoming the unpalatable reality which everyone must now face up to. We all have a duty to behave responsibly.
Thinking the Unthinkable plans to regularly post personal stories and leadership insights so that everyone can benefit from the experiences of others.
Please share your experiences either by adding your comment below or email us at contact@thinkunthink.org
This posting is from TtU Founder and Director Nik Gowing.
Advice is taking time to sink in. Surely people are aware by now?
At Sunday church, there are frowns, then a grimace, when I decline to shake hands. Instead I offer an elbow bump greeting at the start of the service, then again for the usual sign of peace among those around me in the congregation. I see both nervous amusement, then unease in faces I know well.
For communion the request written on the pew sheet is to dip the biscuit in the wine. I watch as many sip wine anyway. Have they ignored advice on possible Covid-19 transmission? Or are they stubbornly rejecting it. It is not a conversation I want to have.
Are people washing their hands and singing for twenty seconds? Certainly in the Men’s toilets I have visited there is more water splashed on the floor than I have ever seen. It confirms what I hear on Radio 4 that until now, barely 30% of men wash their hands. Shocking for personal hygiene anyway.
Every time I pull a door handle to enter or leave somewhere, it is sobering to work out how to avoid my hands contacting metal, plastic or wood. Do I wear gloves? Do I use my little finger to grip lightly an extremity of the handle? Whatever I do, surely I am risking new contact after doing the twenty second handwash and silently singing Happy Birthday to myself for twenty seconds.
What about touching anything like the button for a lift? My brilliant and brave former BBC colleague Frank Gardner posts a good tip on Twitter. During his months of hospital treatment after being shot and paralysed in Saudi Arabia, nurses told him to use his knuckle to reduce the chances of getting infected. Wise, Frank. Thank you.
On the District Line tube, the carriage is emptier than I would expect. No one sitting or standing around me shows an ounce of Corona care. They grip with bare hands the arms on seats or the poles and bars where they steady themselves. A couple of people sneeze. All are moments of potential infection. Have they worked that out yet?
I attend a lunchtime briefing on how climate change will weaken the nation state. Professor Anatol Lieven, a former journalist like me, has flown in from Qatar. I watch as so many attendees shake hands. Instinct and usual courtesy of course. I am fighting that. My offers to wrist bump are accepted with either bemusement or a wince of realisation. Surely others are thinking what I am thinking?
The House of Lords debates – or at least airs – how they should set an example. I hear guffaws when Lord Robert Winston (of IVF and fertility fame, along with a giant moustache) relates to the house how he resisted the attempts of two fellow peers to kiss him. He mentions his wife’s likely reaction!
The taxi driver to a meeting at Piccadilly Circus is on top talking form. We have never met before. But he natters like a friend. He quickly volunteers to me his anxiety: business is dropping badly. As his own boss, he won’t qualify for sick pay. We speed along the unusually empty taxi lane on The Strand. The clear road confirms a drop in travel volumes. When I pay using my card, will touching the machine risk picking up infection?
The panel discussion on financing climate change at the London School of Economics is packed. It is hard to avoid contact with surfaces. As we wait, we are handed voting pads. Should I take one? The risk was worth it: 600 of us are asked our views on whether there will be a framework for financing action to stem climate change before the giant COP26 summit planned for Glasgow in November. 80% vote No! It’s a reminder that we must not forget what was always going to the big issue of 2020: action on the climate emergency. It is just as existential as the Coronavirus.
I am handed a glass of wine. Should I accept? What about the hygiene of the person who served it? I decline crisps and nuts. How many hands and fingers have been in the bowls? Other people don’t seem to care.
That evening, Nadeem the Pakistani Uber driver from Faisalabad is great company for ten minutes. But he tells me business is poor. Unusually there is little demand at airports or stations. “Few passengers or tourists.” He knows it is going to be even tougher than usual making an income and feeding his family. The fare for me is not even £7. Sometimes it is £10-£12 for the same trip.
I return home in time for the 10pm news. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has told parliament it is “more likely we will see widespread transmission in the country”. We must “plan for the worst and hope for the best”.
When I see my wife for the first time since breakfast, do I wash my face and hands before giving her a kiss? It shows how we must all challenge ourselves. We must question everything we do by instinct: until now we have done things without a second thought.
I am trying but I realise I don’t have most answers that I need. There is a health challenge in almost anything I do.
More when I have something worth sharing. I suspect it will be most days.
Read our other personal stories of Coronavirus:
Carley Bowman: How Coronavirus uncertainty infects daily life