by I can’t complain. My hours have dropped off a cliff in the last ten days, and that’s certainly a bugger, but psychologically this new way of living, this new normal, isn’t all that different from the old normal. The things we’re all told to avoid – interacting with large groups of people, mostly – are precisely what I like to avoid anyway. Self-isolation is practically my default option!
For some people it’s clearly been harder. I’m talking here about the (mostly young) people crowding on beaches, or even worse, in pubs. You are killing people by your actions. Have killed people. It’s that simple. You might not get the virus yourself, and will in all likelihood survive it even if you do, but you have unnecessarily caused the virus to spread further and faster. This will cause extra strain on the health system, and in two or three weeks some doctor might be forced to decide who lives and who dies. All because you wanted a few pints with your mates.
I can hardly imagine what doctors and nurses in Italy are going through at the moment. They are forced to do the impossible – decide who lives and who dies – every day, and are putting themselves in grave danger in the process. It is heartbreaking. Today – on one day – Italy recorded almost 800 deaths. Those are wartime numbers.
The question I keep asking myself is whether the UK is going the same way as Italy. All things being equal, it shouldn’t be. The proportion of very elderly people isn’t as high (Brits don’t live as long as Italians on average), three-generation households are far less common, and Italy had the huge disadvantage of being Europe’s guinea pigs. But the UK death toll is rising fast, and they lost at least two weeks of precious time in late February and early March when the control panel was flashing red but they peered out of the window instead and everything still looked rosy.
Yesterday my aunt called me from the UK to wish me a happy birthday. My birthday is the 20th of next month, not this month, but that didn’t bother me. She said that Boris is doing a good job. I remain unconvinced, but I watched his chancellor Rishi Sunak (22 days younger than me) at yesterday’s press conference and he was very impressive indeed, and the sort of compassionate conservative Britain used to have.
Romania has yet to record its first death within the country, although some patients are in critical condition. Cases today rose from 308 to 367, a rate of increase that is very close to the fourth root of two. In other words, if cases continue to increase at the same percentage rate as they did today, they will double every four days. Although it could be worse – Turkey’s official case figures are doubling almost daily – that isn’t good, and alarmingly, nearly a tenth of those tested in the last 24 hours were positive. That suggests that the real figures are much higher.
Here is my manual logarithmic chart of Romanian coronavirus cases, starting from 10th March, when the numbers first exceeded 25. It is some comfort that, after going like a steam train at the beginning (from 59 to 95 in one day – ouch), the curve has flattened somewhat.
I just got the highest level of alert on my phone – it made me jump out of my skin – telling me that groups larger than three will be banned outside the home, and that everybody must stay inside between 10pm and 6am. So far we’ve taken more draconian measures than the UK every step of the way, and I’m all for that.
I haven’t seen the elderly couple who live on the sixth floor for a while. They’re probably hunkering down in their apartment. (Why can’t you hunker up? Or just plain hunker? As an English teacher I have these thoughts all the time.) I wrote them a message to wedge in their doorway, but I’m not sure which apartment is theirs. I then put my note in their letterbox. I wonder if they’ll go downstairs to collect it.
Tomorrow I will try advertising for Skype lessons. Are you bored? Why not learn English? Some of my students have been happy to migrate to Skype classes, others not, and my hours have been cut in half. I might set my location to Bucharest because my location is all of a sudden irrelevant.
And a funny (I guess) story from one of my students yesterday. Unlike in Australia and the UK, people in Romania haven’t been hoarding bog roll. Here it’s flour, which makes a great deal more sense. My student told me that she’d put the last three remaining bags of flour in her trolley, but when she’d got to the checkout they’d magically disappeared.
