Well it’s not going away is it? As the late Miles Kington might have said in his Franglais, le merde is definitely frapping le ventilateur. I’ve pretty much avoided writing in this retirement blog about the c word but it’s quite hard to ignore right now. Especially if you read the news on your phone every morning before staring your day, as I do.
So, and this is what annoys me, despite trying to keep up to speed with the virus (above, so pretty) by reading each morning and the weekend papers, truth be told I haven’t a bloody clue what’s actually happening. If there was a prize for contradiction then this whole business would win it hands down.
Between contradiction in the political arena, which is to be expected, but also in the world of science which isn’t, except where the science is politically led, which is more often than it should be in an ideal world. Which this most certainly isn’t. We have contradiction between countries – France and Germany and Sweden so it seems. Between states or counties.
Or at a local level, ‘our hospital is practically empty’ (from a local dog-walker who’s a nurse) to, it’s bursting at the seams, according to some newspaper reports. Certainly my visit this last week to our hospital didn’t help at all, certainly there were less people in the eye clinic but what does that prove? I know I won’t be rushing back.
Throw into this melting pot of contradictions / disagreements those between family, friends, neighbours, people in the pub (one of our landladies doesn’t think it exists at all). It’s the young people that are spreading it. No, it’s us old gits, etc. and you have a situation within which informed decision-making is impossible.
So this is where a person falls back upon their values. One of my key values about being happily retired is, maintain a balance. I’ve written about this value several times before so I will try not to repeat myself here. But, that said, I believe our ‘balance value’ has been useful in these times of the virus.
For example, we have adopted a middle of the road position to our behaviour. We do go to the pub, although not as often as we used to and we choose our pubs with care – mostly. We haven’t gone away on holiday this year but we have continued to visit our other two homes (except when lock-down was at its most stringent). We don’t go into Leeds any more, except that one occasion I wrote about recently. We don’t go on public transport but did get a lift with a mate going to our local pub in Nidderdale.
Generally we’ve kept our distance from other people except when we had the electricians in our house doing a job that definitely needed seeing to. We don’t go shopping except for essentials like food and wine. So far this tactic has kept us safe but I realise that I’m tempting fate writing this. You may laugh if it all goes pear-shaped now.
And here’s the thing with all this, I do it because the quality of information we have at our finger-tips that which might enable us to make more informed and less value-driven decisions about our behaviour, is next to zero. Given the number of Covid cases, the number of deaths, the spread across so many countries, the advice we are offered is nothing short of pathetic. All this data and at best flimsy conclusions.
Is it that the data doesn’t exist? Or that it does but the sources aren’t analysing properly? Or they are but not passing it on to the papers so we can understand it? Maybe it’s because the ‘truth’ is untenable to us plebs and must be kept from us? What?
What I want to know, and if I’m missing it please correct me, is who exactly is getting the virus, who is being admitted to hospital, what happens to them then, who is dying from it and, the big one, how or where are they getting it? Is it from family members, from groups, neighbours, our pets, community contacts, shopping, restaurants, hospitals, care homes, which shops, which pubs and why is it happening in those places where it is happening. Come on there must be plenty of relevant data. Oh and I want this data as percentages or similar not just raw data which isn’t all that helpful. That’s not too much is it?
Give me the data and I will then make an informed decision. Otherwise, Gawd help me I will have to be guided by politicians who are following the science, when it suits them of course. And what kind of world would we be living in then, retired or not? Or back to the values and yes, they do help to answer my titular question.