The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Best to take matters into own hands with Covid-19 defence
Like a true numpty, I have spent the past week buying 3,000 toilets rolls, 160 crates of bottled water and enough baked beans to last until 2030 in order to inoculate myself against coronavirus.
Sure, that goes against all medical advice and common sense but nonetheless: if the spread of a relentless and potentially deadly virus does not allow for one to lose one’s marbles in a supermarket, what does?
Of course, in real life I have done none of those things.
Like most people, I have watched the inexorable spread of coronavirus since it emerged in China at the turn of the year, at first with a detached sense of complacency that has developed into growing anxiety as it inched its way across Europe into our homes. Then, as a final insult, it infected Tom Hanks too.
Our world for the next few weeks, perhaps for the next few months, is going to be dominated by a virus that was only identified on January 7.
In those few weeks, it has spread to more than 100 countries and threatens to overload our health services and destabilise the economy.
Those who still believe the disease can be brushed off as a slightly more virulent strain of flu forget that the elderly and those with underlying health conditions – of whom there are many – are real people too.
We are now at the stage where the number of new cases will increase exponentially.
Similarly, if the gears of the economy do grind to a halt due to fall in demand for services and workers staying at home, possibly on reduced wages, then the potential repercussions could be massive.
Bills will still need to be paid and food will still need to be bought. The tenuous payday-to-payday lives many of us lead now face a microscopic and potentially catastrophic threat.
And if schools and nurseries close, parents will suddenly have to make alternative child care arrangements, or take more time off, as a result. If you’re a single parent, the situation could be even worse.
We are living in a new world and will have to adjust and cope as best we can.
But life will have to go on. And amid all the doom and gloom there are simple steps we can take that will minimise the risks to ourselves, families and colleagues.
It seems ridiculous that the benefits of soap and water need extolled in 2020 but these are unprecedented times.
We may not have a medicine that can protect us from the virus, but the humble bar of soap can break down the fatty layers between cells that binds the virus together and to your skin.
Alcohol-based hand sanitisers are also effective, but your humble bar of Zest is far, no pun intended, handier. Basically, if you mimic Jack Nicholson’s attitude towards soap in As Good As It Gets, you’re on the right track. It is impossible to say how long the coronavirus outbreak could last, or whether we see outbreaks for years to come.
It is also impossible to predict just what the full ramifications of its spread will be.
But the small matter of taking hygiene matters into our own hands could still make a big difference.
How the other half lives
Ian Blackford, the SNP’s Westminster leader, likes to portray himself as a simple crofter.
And this week he took up the cudgels for Planet Earth, slamming the Tories for their environmental policies, or lack of them, during the Budget debate.
Unfortunately, car dealership Parks Land Rover of Inverness posted a
picture of him accepting the keys for a brand spanking new Range Rover Velar the next day.
Prices start at a humble £44,500, easily affordable for any environmentally-conscious crofter.
It’s the end...
Like Tom Baker falling off a giant radio telescope in Doctor Who, or Colin Baker falling off a resolutely normalsized exercise bike in Doctor Who, my time here is done.
After more years than I care to remember, I am off to pastures new. But I leave this column in the more than capable hands of my (now former) colleague Morag Lindsay: the pixieish Patrick Troughton to my crotchety William Hartnell. But before I go, I would say it’s been an absolute privilege to have occupied this space for the past 62 weeks, which, my calculator tells me, works out as just a smidge under 50,000 Saturday Journal words. That’s 20,000 more than Shakespeare needed for Hamlet. Perhaps if he had put just a bit more effort in, it would have been funnier.
If you’ve read every single word then I can only assume you are a close relative (hi, mum!) or an exasperated Courier sub-editor.
Either way, you both have my heartfelt apologies.
For any remaining readers, I wish you all the best in the adventures ahead, whatever life throws at you.