THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR
SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that have won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring, everything’s going to be all right once you have read our Professor Positivity.
I WAS fascinated to read Danish scientists at the Statens Serum Institut are scratching their heads after they’ve seen no evidence of a rise in infections.
I know the Institute well and have visited myself, so if these world class scientists are confused then something must be up.
Since Denmark eased their lockdown in the middle of April - including opening their borders - there has been a consistent fall in reported infections, and have even had days when they reported zero deaths.
They ask whether it is because of social distancing or due to the virus weakening?
It’s too early to draw any conclusions, but this is a good sign.
Some seem to believe that a second peak is inevitable. I’m not so pessimistic.
There will be small flare-ups and troublesome clusters – like in South Korea where a single over-enthusiastic clubber infected dozens – but on the whole experts have been pleasantly surprised at the lack of a “second wave”.
I always refer to the four European countries which eased their lockdowns first: Norway, Austria, Czech Republic and Denmark.
Those four governments demonstrated such bravery by taking the leap first and have largely kept the virus at bay since.
Generally, it takes one to two weeks after a patient is exposed to start developing symptoms, so if easing the strict measures resulted in increased infections we would have seen that by now.
So what’s happening? Like with so much in this pandemic we just don’t know.
There are only two partners in this dance – the virus and us. We have certainly changed our behaviour and maybe the virus has as well.
It may well be weakening and will burn itself out just like its predecessors SARS and MERS.
Only time will tell. For now, we have to keep our distance, wash hands, be sensible and it will all keep moving in the right direction.