I have just listened to a Scottish doctor (Dr Thomas Spitz I think his name is) explaining patiently to Steve Nolan on Radio Five Live just what coronavirus Covid 19 is.
Announced as an expert in, inter alia, the common cold, he explained that Covid 19 is a common cold virus that has mutated into something more serious.
If it has penetrated your defences, the symptoms are a sore throat, a high temperature, exhaustion, a cough and generally feeling unwell. That pretty much describes how I have felt for much of the past week so maybe I have had it and am now recovering.
He says it will affect you for four or five days, another box I tick.
The people most at danger, the people dying, are mostly people whose immune system is failing, because of age, or being on anti-rejection drugs after a transplant, and people who have serious lung problems, caused, perhaps, by very heavy smoking.
I find that firm sense of perspective very reassuring but it doesn't make for good live radio in the modern sense. Steve Nolan, possibly with his producer screaming in his ear to sex things up, kept interrupting in his customary querulous manner, which caused the good doctor, it seemed to me, to begin to lose his sense of clarity and direction.
At which point I stopped listening and decided to spread the benefit of his perspective amongst my elite band of readers.
Enjoy, and relax.
ps I wonder if the fact that so many more people are dying in Italy than in the UK will shut up the smug middle class sermonisers constantly badgering us about the merits of the Mediterranean diet...maybe pie and chips and fish and chips do something for the immune system that fresh tomatoes and olive oil just can't...
RIP Roy Hudd
I have just been told that comedian Roy Hudd has died.
Roy told the first topical gag that I ever sold to BBC Radio, on The News Huddlines in February 1984, marking the beginning of my professional writing career, and I have had a soft spot for him ever since.
It was such a landmark that I still remember the gag in question, almost word for word.
RIP, Roy.
Posted at 11:50 AM in News & Comment | Permalink | Comments (0)