Coronavirus Precautions - how to keep your distance

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The Italians have introduced a sensible three foot rule. Keep your distance. On trains you can sit with one empty seat between you and the next person.

When standing in a line (in the UK we say queue) you can space out.

Even if everybody recovered. having a large proportion of your work force off sick, or in quarantine, is damaging for hospitals, restaurants, transport, schools, every business and every social event.

How serious is the situation? Whilst it is good to keep up morale, not at the expense of taking action. As Benjamin Franklin (and others in different but similar words) said: Prepare for the worst but hope for the best.

I wrote in Facebook:
Flu Versus Coronavirus 2019
More people die of flu. Yes, and that's why huge signs outside my doctor's tell everybody to get flu jabs.

If you took this attitude, you would never bother with hospitals or traffic lights because you could always die from the other cause.

Government Responsibility
A government is responsible for preventing all preventable deaths. Same as a parent protects a child. If you were ill and went into hospital with anything minor or major wrong, what would you think if the doctors all shrugged and said, 'I'm ignoring you and your illness and collecting my salary and drinking coffee because more people die on the road every day'.

Action Taken
We have placed traffic lights and zebra crossings and speed cameras to reduce the traffic fatalities which are higher in other countries. We have laws to reduce possession of offensive weapons such as knives. We have prisons to threaten and punish and restrict those like to resort to violence.

So now it is time to introduce precautions connected to this latest threat. This is not an alternative threat. Although you might die of knives or read accidents or flu or the latest virus, although for any one person one cause of death can be sufficient, the nationwide death rate is the sum of all these. You could recover from flu or being knifed and then get coronavirus.

Alternative Or Cumulative
You can't allow somebody to die of one cause because they might die of another. If your plane crashed because of a fault you would demand compensation and remedies to prevent it happening again. You wouldn't expect to be fobbed off with the comment that 'you might have fallen under a bus instead'.

Protection and Prevention
We pay taxes so that the government and the NHS and the lawmakers take action to protect everybody from all predictable eventualities. They also prepare 'worst case scenario' emergency actions for unforeseen emergencies.

Even if most people recover, what does recover mean. 'Recover' meaning up and back at work one hour later with no physical or mental side effects? No.

The fit and healthy doctors who died in China did not recover. Those people in body bags and dropping dead in the street did not recover.

What about all the people who could not get treated for other conditions because the hospitals were full of coronavirus patients?

Are the statistics reliable? Overstated? Understated?

Cause of Death?
All you have to do to reduce the death rate to nil is write pneumonia or heart attack on the death certificate of everybody who died of coronavirus. My father 'completely recovered,' from pneumonia. Unfortunately he went into isolation, was told that thrush preventing him from eating would be treated when he left hospital, but he died in hospital.

My uncle 'will live three years after this op'. But he died in hospital after being told he had recovered from the operation. One died with MRSA, the other with clostridium difficile. These were not mentioned on the two patients' death certificates.

Even assuming that the answers concerning recovery rates given are true, the patient can be so weakened that they succumb to something else.

Isolation When my beloved uncle was put into isolation I was unable to visit him until he was unable to see him.

I could not touch him because I was in protective clothing and in any case he was sensitive to touch which hurt him.

I was appalled to read that even in this era of conference calls we cannot speak to and see patients in hospital at any time we or they wish to speak.

In this day and age hospitals should have arrangements for patients to speak to relatives on a mobile phone or screen. It is appalling for morale of the patient, and the family, to be out of contact. Bill Gates should donate special phones or laptops or screens. To prevent infection they can be remotely operated by Siri or similar so the patient can say, 'call my wife, or call my mother,' or 'call my son' and speak to them. this would help the morale of the patient which might help them survive. Also the family would not be left with nagging suspicion that their beloved had been neglected or worse still bumped off.

So, lots of serious stuff to think about.

However, if you have taken all necessary precautions and would like light relief.


Useful Websites
Italy

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8094777/Italian-doctors-forced-choose-lives-dies.html UK https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8098419/Family-man-British-coronavirus-victim-die-claim-say-goodbye.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed

Light relief - Keep Smiling
https://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2020/03/getting-spiritual-protection-from-coronavirus

About the author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I am never at a loss for words. No well paid writing or speaking job refused. Please share links to your favourite posts.