There’s nothing like a good pandemic to flush out, exactly what kind of people we really are. In doing so of course, we also discover the calibre of human being that we have all around us. COVID19, a microscopic virus has put the entire human race under the microscope. Unnaturally cooping us together, this nasty Coronavirus doesn’t take any prisoners, when it comes to highlighting our shortcomings. In short, are we positive, thumbs up ‘glass half fullers’ or a bunch of miserable ‘glass half emptiers’? Let the Lockdown Games begin!
COVID19 a killer you can survive. Yes, COVID19 is terrifying but you can come out the other side and live to tell the tale. It’s not many diseases that have brave nurses the world over, as frightened as the patients they’re caring for. When it has you in its grip with a fever, rasping cough, abdominal and chest pains, coupled with a shortness of breath, you really think you’re not long for this world. When you start bringing up blood and your temperature rises further, then you really think it’s goodnight Vienna. Unfortunately, for some it is, while others live to breathe another day. Phew!
The Ventilator business is booming! In the UK the production of new improved ventilators, designed specifically to treat COVID19 victims is being stepped up. Which is great news for those, like me who still have relations dependent on the understaffed, undervalued and underfunded National Health Service. Maybe the NHS will at last be appreciated post COVID19, by those who couldn’t wait to sell it off. It’ll take more than clapping for the cameras, to get the NHS back up to where it should be. In the meantime, the brilliantly named Ventilator Challenge UK Consortium, which includes companies like Airbus, Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, Ford, McLaren, GKN, Meggitt, Renishaw, Thales, Siemens and Ultra Electronics, are all set to make a killing from COVID19. (Words Chosen Carefully.)
Africans feeding Italians? For years, African migrants had been exploited in their adopted country of Italy. In 2011, a co-operative near Rome was founded by a group of young Africans. Some of whom took part in the Rosarno revolt, a year earlier. An uprising which saw hundreds of African fruit pickers, rise up in support of a workmate seriously injured in a brutal racial attack. Today they spend their days out in the field and in the warehouse, packing delivery boxes full of fresh, healthy vegetables and yoghurt, to help feed increasing numbers of local families. È una cosa bellissima!
Lockdown Lowdown. Experts in the art of isolation have been coming out, to give us an insight on how to live happily on our own. A monk says it’s a good idea to create a rhythm for each day, while distinguishing between boredom and laziness. Having nothing to do and not wanting to do something are two very different things. We shouldn’t confuse them for our own convenience. A female cosmologist, spends three months a year at the bottom of the earth on the South Pole, maintaining telescopes. When she’s not attending to her formal duties, she cares for plants. Nurturing it seems balances her psychologically. A lesson for us all?
‘No man is an Island...entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.’ The immortal John Donne wrote that in 1624. It’s as if the ink is still wet on the parchment. The coming of COVID19 proves beyond doubt that we mortals are interdependent on one another. We cannot manage this thing called life, let alone a vicious Coronavirus without the support of each other. Let us hope we come out of lockdown, better people, then we went into it. Stay safe people. x
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