*May contain strong language and material that some people may find offensive!*
Date: Sunday 5th April 2020
Quarantine: Day 13
Location: 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
Specifically: 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
VR: Taking a silent yet wondrous journey across an azure blue ocean towards a utopian afterlife before nipping off to ram raid the off licence.
COVID-19 AND THE VALUE OF VR
I am so glad I bought a VR headset. It's the closest thing we have at the moment to a holodeck - a watered down holodeck of course, but still breathtakingly impressive. An opportunity to ’visit’ places we normally wouldn't get to see, to enjoy experiences that would be difficult or impossible in the real world; visiting other planets, travelling through the human body, entering a black hole, the exhilaration of being on a roller coaster, flying a spacecraft, driving a sports car, meditating in a forest or even in outer space. Places to ‘go’ when you can’t travel beyond the edge of your garden.
This evening I enjoyed a most wonderful experience. Being escorted by a dog in a journey from life to death and beyond. It sounds morbid but it wasn’t. It was wondrous. It begins with ‘you’ sailing on a boat along a crystal clear ocean. People gaze down at you, watching quietly and respectfully as your journey begins.
Up ahead a form sits on a rock protruding up from the sea bed. This is your guide who stays with you throughout your journey. All around you are ghosts of graceful sea creatures, surreal looking vegetation, structures rising out of the sea and vibrant explosions of colour bursting all around, channeling you towards your final destination. Amazing. Truly. You should try it!
CORONAVIRUS: BEWARE OF DRAMA QUEENS!
Despite clear information encouraging the public to be aware of the importance social distancing, it appears that many people are determined to turn the whole thing into a melodrama.
Bertrand Paranoid-Twatt told us, “I was just leaving the supermarket with a trolley load of medicinal product when just peeping over the horizon I saw a man approaching (at least I think it was a man. It might have been a woman. I'm not sure, but whatever it was it was heading towards me and I wasn’t going to take any chances) so I jumped into my car, started the engine, hit the gas pedal and drove off, leaving behind my shopping, a startled group of shoppers and an elderly gentleman wearing an expression surprise as he bounced off the bonnet of my car.
As if the point needed reinforcing, en-route to our next interview we passed a young man walking along the pavement on our side of the road. “Good morning. Have a nice day.” we said as we passed him, only for him to scream, “Keep away, don’t get your fetid breath near me you filthy disease riddled scum.” We thought it was a tad unnecessary.
We did try to speak to another passer by but she screamed and ran away.
Probably just camera shy.
To conclude our report, we spoke to a government minister who confirmed that more stringent plans were coming to tighten up social distancing. He told us, “We have some ideas on the table already and providing we can reach an agreement, they should be ready to roll out within 48 hours." When pressed, he went on...
“One of the most popular ideas is for all members of the community to be given a bell so that when they see someone coming they can ring it and shout, “Disease disease!” - a sort of reversal of the biblical story where *salt and peppers wandered around clanging a bell, and shouted, “Unclean unclean!” thus giving everyone the chance to scarper”
* Leppers
CORONAVIRUS & SOCIAL ISOLATION
I have been giving lot of thought to the issue of social distancing, particularly in relation to mortality rates and the attitude we currently have towards contagious diseases. My initial feeling about Corona was one of puzzlement. We live in a world of super viruses, viruses that have mutated, gotten more resilient and developed immunity to medicines like antibiotics.
I’m speaking as a layman so I can’t pretend to understand the mortality rates of a multitude of viral infections but what I do know is that Influenza has a higher mortality rate than COVID-19. I know that people can die as a result of contracting the common cold, usually where there are underlying health conditions that lead to complications. The overwhelming majority of people who have died after contracting COVID-19 have died with it, not from it, and there were extenuating factors, such as old age and ill health.
So what was different about COVID-19 that held the world in a grip of panic? Why did it require drastic measures to control, like lockdowns, the erecting of emergency hospitals, the recruitment of thousands upon thousands of extra staff and volunteers?
The answer, it turns out, is that health services have a much greater understanding of influenza because it's been around much longer than COVID-19. So the government know how many hospital beds are needed, how many staff are required, what precautionary measures to take, as well as the type and quantity of medicines. In short, they are prepared for flu outbreaks. Corona, by comparison, is an unknown quantity - a wild card and they don’t know what will happen. Chances are it will just fizzle out and we’ll all look back and say the government were just being cautious, but what if it mutates? What if it becomes something far worse than it is at present? It’s already passed from animal to human and the ‘what if’ is the really scary part.
Yet I asked myself what precautions I'd taken if ever I'd been around someone with flu, or if I was showing symptoms myself. Truthfully, pretty much none, unless I was so ill I had to stay in bed. I wasn’t even aware flu had a mortality rate, at least not in people who were in good health.
So given the frequently reinforced importance of prevention techniques like social distancing and self-isolation, how are we going to change our response to contagious illnesses in future? I joked earlier about certain people who seem to be taking a melodramatic attitude towards social distancing, acting like schoolchildren and shunning people with spots, “Ewww don’t come near me, you've got lurgy.”, or some such drivel.
DODGY DAVE!
Er....yes. Boom indeed. There we are, Alex and I reminiscing about the old days when Alex used to work for me on Saturdays at Huddersfield market. The trouble is, he never seems to remember any good bits. I find out for example than he and his friends called me ‘Dodgy Dave’, clearly not to my face. Why? Because he says most of my stuff was sourced from a local gangster and some from drug addled drongos who nicked stuff from gaming shops and sold it to me for next to nothing - I think that made me a fence. He then reminded me of the time I had a shop and never paid the rent on it. When I had run out of excuses for non-payment I went into the shop late one night with Vince, removed all the stock and disappeared. What I didn’t know at the time was that in my haste to clear off, I had left the heating on. Miraculously the place didn't burn to the ground but it was a close thing. Apparently this was reported in the local paper - not that I remember seeing it. Alex’s memory is different to mine. I recall a guy running an honest and successful business, whilst he recalls some sort of happy criminal who got by on his wits. However, he did say that 'Dodgy Dave' was a term that he and his friends used with affection. I feel so much better!
Dodgy Dave indeed!
Twat.
BOOM!
There are occasions when one witnesses an action so moronic that you can’t imagine anyone could be so utterly dense. When, poof! (thats a Harry Potter type ’poof’, not to be confused with a put your feet up for 5 minutes with tea and a scone; that would be a poufe) along comes someone who does something profoundly bloody brainless.
So there we are, Alex and me, discussing these wonderful stories, me over a beer and Alex at one with himself while slumped on the settee, when outside I hear a loud explosion. BOOM! I jump up, while Alex remains inert. “FUCK!“ I shout. “How did you not hear that!?“ He looks at me as if emerging from a coma. “Eh?” “That explosion!” He‘s awake now, and staring through the window where flames seem to have enveloped the garden and are racing skywards from across the way. “That's them scumbags who cause all the trouble.” he says, “The morons who keep revving the nuts off their car engines, screaming around on motorbikes, swaggering around swearing at each other and demonstrating how adept they are at skills like, knife carrying, stealing and injuring people. Now you know why I hate it round here and want to move”.
FACEBOOK HUMOUR
Only one today peeps but you know what they say, quality is better than quantity (not in this case but never mind!)
More viral fun later!!!
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