Things to do while quarantined or self-isolating

Many people have been posting ideas of things to do while quarantined or self-isolating.

My first suggestion is with my family history hat on.  Remember how annoying it was when you found a picture of unknown ancestors in a box of photographs and didn't know who was who, because no one had labelled the photograph?  Yeah, well that's about to happen on a massive scale, because hardly any of us identify the digital photographs we take.  Take the time to sort photographs and identify the people appearing in them.

The second is with a view to the fact that we may be in this situation for months.  Why not start gardening?  Even if you only have a flat or balcony, you could be growing lettuce, herbs, maybe some tomatoes?  Bearing in mind that shops are being stripped of fruit and vegetables, if you have a larger space the most useful thing you could do is to plant some vegetables and make your garden productive.

The third is to adopt a local elderly person you can phone and keep their spirits up.

Ok, this list is growing, am reorganizing into subject headings

Archaeology
Course now free on archaeology.
Online course on forensic archaeology.

Creative
Affinity creative apps have given everyone a three month free trial - and they're half price if you want to buy them.  This is a great time to learn new software.

Lectures
Fancy a lecture?  Gresham College has 2500 lectures on a wide variety of subjects to educate you, on history, art, gardening, astronomy, pandemics... maybe give that last one a miss....

Plays
You can watch all the Globe productions on the Globe Player here.

Singing
You can join an online choir here with Gareth Malone - 15,000 people have already signed up.

Virtual tours
This page on travel and leisure.com has virtual tours of museums and parks.

This article in the Independent has links to tours of Rome.

I will add to this page as I find links and ideas.

Information sources

It's clear that there are good, bad and really terrible information sources in this current crisis affecting a large part of Europe and the rest of the world.  I'm going to try to keep this page updated with any I find that seem useful.

The public health England heat map of infections is here.  You can therefore see where the hot spots are, and the figures for infection in your region.

For an international overview, and sharing of information, the man I follow on the Peak Prosperity vlog is here.  He has been vlogging since the end of January and warned what was about to happen in UK and the USA.  I think he is a very good source of information; measured, well researched, not at all sensational.

The NHS website includes the information for what you should do.

I find the Guardian has a good mix of articles and updates. The have a rolling blog of information coming in from all over the world.  They also have a US and Australian edition of the paper.

So does the Independent. They also have a daily update of news you may have missed overnight.

Home-made masks

OK, I've done my whingeing.  We are where we are.  So I am going to use my blog to try to share information and tips for us all.  No use in saying "people affected by the Covid-19 crisis" because we all are.

This is a link to an article showing what materials make the best home made masks and giving information about how good they are at stopping infection.  Don't believe all the stuff about masks not working or making things worse.  YES they will make things worse if you constantly touch the mask while out, having touched other things.  NO they won't if you resist doing that. And make sure you wash your hands before and after taking off the mask.

We need to be resourceful and do whatever we can to keep ourselves and our families, but also the wider community safe. Hopefully this will help.

Protect yourself

It is been surreal this week, watching horror unfold in Italy and Spain, and seeing life continue more or less as normal in Market Rasen.  For weeks I've been shouting into the wind on Twitter, trying to get people in my country to realize how serious the situation is in Italy, and to understand that we are headed for exactly the same meltdown of our services if we don't react and act now.

I don't know if I would have done better to bombard my MP with more emails than I usually send, or to address my complaints and suggestions to the prime minister and his colleagues.  I can only say that it has been bizarre to be shouted at and told that the "experts" advising the government know more than I do, and to find out that was wrong, I was right.  What good does that do?

There is no doubt that I would prefer to have my drugs and doctoring done by experts, and I would not let Joe Bloggs loose on my body if I needed an operation of some sort, but sometimes a layperson can see what an expert requires too much evidence to believe quickly.  We had that example of Italy laid out in front of us, and yet experts modelled our behaviour and infection rate on an entirely different disease (viral pneumonia) and then were surprised that what was happening in real time in our country did not follow their models.

I am very concerned that along with draconian powers to close borders and control people's movements, there are clauses in the new powers that government are awarding themselves to curtail information and to punish people who whistleblow.  I completely understand the need to stop allowing people to sue the authorities if hard decisions have to be taken in the next few weeks about who to save and who to allow to die, but that should not mean that truth cannot be told.

We watched in horror last night on the television as truck after truck laden with dead bodies left the Lombardy area.  They cannot cope with the number of bodies they have for cremation.  Lines of coffins lying in churches.  Exhausted medics nursing their own colleagues, begging for protective equipment, valves for ventilators, ventilators. 

In Spain, it seems that the authorities did not react earlier because they wanted to keep the country open for the festivals which bring in a vast amount of tourism and money for the economy.  Many of the tourists apparently came from northern Italy, and so it is easy to guess that the economic decision which seemed justified a few weeks ago may turn out to be very costly in terms of lives lost and the boom which is about to hit their health system.

Meanwhile, people continue as normal.  A local pub, the White Swan, advertises on the local facebook groups that they are open as usual, but have separated the tables more, to avoid contagion.  I posted begging them to close - I cannot understand why Boris Johnson has not acted to close the restaurants, pubs and clubs and to force them to turn to take away and delivery options only.  It's going to cost lives, in the long run, and won't help businesses that are quickly going to be unable to afford to keep going even if they do that.

Finally, his reluctance to institute a universal income, is meaning that those who have already lost their jobs are despairing.  Half the population is carrying on as normal and wants to be able to collect rents, charge people for things, and the other half has already stopped behaving as normal, is doing their best to stay and home and is watching the other half play Russian roulette with everyone's lives.

I caught the broadcast of a podcast on BBC yesterday, Newscast, which I didn't even realize was a thing.  It's a filmed version, which is going out every weekday on BBC1 apparently.  It featured BBC journalists, including Laura Kuensberg, discussing the days developments, and interviews with a brave journalist in Italy reporting the army trucks leaving Lombardy because they are now overwhelmed with bodies as well as patients.

It was surprisingly informative.  But I still recommend you watch Chris Martenson on youtube.  He's been right for weeks, and is continuing to sum up what is happening around the world.

Like watching a slow-motion train crash

It has been obvious to me for some time that the Covid-19 crisis unfolding in Italy was likely to unfold in the same way here if we did not take the measures of social distancing that other countries have been taking.  Today the government announced that they are advising people to self isolate if anyone in their family has a high temperature or persistent cough, and that we should not gather in pubs, clubs and theatres.

They didn't do anything useful to those business owners like closing the pubs, clubs and theatres so that the owners could claim on insurance.  They just told us not to go there, ok?

It was after the press conference that people posted information on twitter that suggested the government's modelling team had been surprised by the speed with which this virus has spread.  It appears that they have used viral pneumonia in their models, rather than the known variables for Covid-19.  And surprise!  Their model didn't follow the pattern of infection that has been noticed in other countries.

They are now acting to add social distancing, but still not testing people in the community, in contravention of the advice from WHO, who say that testing and contact tracing are the only way to stop the virus.  They haven't closed the schools, saying that it is a mild illness in children.  Of course, those children will be free to infect everyone in their families as people appear to be asymptomatic when they are first infectious, a few days before they develop symptoms.

I had assumed the lack of testing was related to a lack of testing kits, and maybe this is the case.  It seems very strange then that a manufacturer of kits in England and northern Ireland (Novacyt) tweeted that he had the capability to make 3.5 million kits but hadn't had any orders placed by NHS England.

The people most in need of kits for testing are the nurses and doctors who are on the frontline for the treatment of the virus.  It was reported that nurses and doctors who fall ill are being asked to continue to work in some areas and self-isolate in others, without any testing unless they fell ill enough to warrant admission to hospital. 

This is not a sustainable choice.  Without testing, doctors and nurses will either be at home for 14 days unnecessarily, or working with patients and putting them and their friends and families at risk. 

That they are at risk is not under discussion, but the powers that be have recently downgraded the sort of protective equipment a nurse or doctor has to wear when dealing with Covid-19 patients, to what they have in the cupboard. A situation which people are very unhappy with.  And who could blame them.

The procurement procedures being followed at the moment are bizarre in the extreme.  The UK needs ventilators very urgently, and the government said that they had been discussing with Rolls Royce the possibility that they could turn their production lines over to making ventilators - an assertion that was denied on twitter and elsewhere by the company, who said the government had not talked to them. 

I fully expect to read soon that the leading UK manufacturer of ventilators hasn't been asked to supply any, so chaotic and inefficient is the story.

We should be producing hand sanitizer, protective equipment and masks, ventilators, testing kits in very large numbers NOW if we are going to be properly equipped for the catastrophic increase in numbers that can be expected after the disastrous handling of the crisis.  I am very worried that they have let the genie out of the bottle, and no amount of social distancing at this delay of time will put it back in the bottle.

They still haven't addressed the point that there are a lot of people in our society - the self-employed and those on low hours or zero hours contracts - who cannot afford to self-isolate, as instructed.  That there are people who live week to week on their wages and have no savings and nothing to fall back on. They definitely need to do something about that, so that people can afford to self-isolate, before the UK becomes Italy and we are overwhelmed.

They haven't shut schools, saying that children aren't at risk.  Their parents are, though, and their teachers.  And as they may be asymptomatic they will probably infect their parents who will then have to self isolate.  The delay in losing the workforce may not be very long, and it would be far better to close the schools and slow the spread even further.