Conovirus arrives. Each day the number doubles up of caught and dead. Mell sends out an independent paper on it, with serious projections and alerts I had not considered. It’s not like flu, its not 2% who die. It’s 0.2% of anyone under 50, 4% of 50-60, 8% of 60-70 and 14% of over 70 people.
I’m trying to articulate my underlying view on this extraordinary unfolding drama, that rocks the core of our lives, with each move having rippling repercussions. Our Forest School was cancelled. If schools are empty who looks after children? Grandparents, if possible, and when not possible? What about people who need to go out to work to pay mortgages? Yes, the practical Rachel.
Stock markets crashing, flights cancelled, flights turned back. And carbon dioxide emissions down by 25% than last year.
In the past month, the world has seen a remarkably large drop in emissions of carbon dioxide, the main driver of global warming. The reason isn’t something to celebrate, though. The coronavirus outbreak in China, which has sickened at least 80,000 people, has shut down factories, refineries and flights across the country as officials order people to stay home. As a result, China’s carbon dioxide emissions over the past three weeks have been about 25 percent lower than during the same period last year. (New York Times
It challenges our economic capitalist and carbon base.
Refreshingly on the usual purely national news we hear of what other land masses are doing at this time, even Iran (eventually) was mentioned (although it took over a week). In the Co-op supermarket today in search of Puy Lentils (no such luck) I found people engaging with me, exchanging disappointment at not finding starch based matter like pasta (who ever thought the English so keen on pasta). In the queue an older woman behind voluntered she was stocking up on a bottle of brandy.
‘For hand washing?’, I jested. Not likely, she laughed, i’ve got plenty of rain water for that, she said. So we take care of each other.’It’s like war time’, she said, we’ll all get used to it.
So she reminded me that this was the first time that my generation had experienced a foreign invasion.
Kalikellett 