Don’t believe
Making ill-informed comparisons with flu is not helping anyone, writes Kevan Christie
Day Job: I’ve taken a welldeserved break from washing my hands while singing the Russian national anthem twice, to bring you up to speed with the latest developments from the heart of the global pandemic engine room at Hootsman Towers.
A momentous if somewhat surreal working week has passed, dear readers, where as health reporter I have found myself thrust into the frontline of looking up stuff about the coronavirus on the internet.
The original plan was for me to team-up with our man in China and anchor proceedings from the fifth floor of Orchard Brae House but it turns out he resigned under a cloud in 1864 shortly after the Taiping Rebellion – amid rumours of an expenses row and a pet monkey that still persist to this day.
However, I digress and there’s a lot to cover today, so let’s crack on, for it appears the phoney war is now over and we’re on the cusp of a global Covid-19 pandemic if not there already.
The number of cases in the UK has risen sharply with the first death recorded – a person over the age of 70 who had underlying health issues – and Scotland has 11 confirmed positive tests and 1,514 negative ones as I write this.
There’s been the usual herd-like, media frenzy to come up with new lines, including reports of people putting condoms on their fingers for protection, but on the whole the medical advice around prevention and what to do in a suspected case has for the most part been sound.
At times, the guidance from both the UK and Scottish Governments has read like one of those 30-year rule revelations where Thatcher’s contingency plans in the event