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 read Professor Positivity.
COMPARISONS with other countries are so tricky, especially when discussing fatalities but we can and should look to our neighbours for encouragement.
Smaller European countries such as Denmark, Norway and many others have all dealt with this pandemic admirably.
Some first eased their lockdown all the way back in April, three months ago, and have managed to keep the virus largely under control since.
A remarkable achievement and we should be learning from their success. They have had no second wave at all.
Testing is the key. If there is the capacity to test huge numbers of people on a daily basis, then you can track the virus down, isolate those infected and so starve it of healthy hosts.
This is an area in which we have seen significant improvement in the UK, although I was disappointed to see the Government refusing to release the actual number of people tested.
Our situation is far more comparable to that of Italy and Spain, certainly in terms of numbers of infections. These are big countries with large populations who were both hit hard by the virus and sadly lost far too many people.
Italy was the first European country to suffer and served as a much-needed wake-up call for the rest of us.
Now new cases are consistently below 250 and fatalities are below 50. At the peak it reached about 6,000 cases a day and 900 deaths.
They both eased their lockdowns much earlier than us and have seen no uptick in positive tests yet. I was heartened to see pictures of Rome, above, and other Italian cities virtually back to normal, busy bars and people enjoying the summer sun.
We don’t hear so much about them any more, but it’s a country very close to my heart. I’m very relieved that the situation has improved so much.
To any Italian readers – buona fortuna a tutti!