America is hurting particularly badly at the moment. As recently as ten days ago their president was somewhat bullish about how slight the threat was but, by the weekend, of the million plus peope infected globally a full 25% were in the USA. Friends in CO are not charitable about how seriously the authorities are taking the threat.
Today, something that has the air of a small event that turns out to be hugely significant to the plot. It is reported that a tiger in the Bronx zoo has tested positive for Covid-19. Apparently some pets have tested positive before, but this is the first symptomatic non-human. In contrast to the charming anthropomorphism of a giant killer cat with "a dry cough", some sinister questions occur. I am assuming the "asymptomatic keeper" who is thought to have infected the tiger wasn't hugging or sharing a meal with his victim; in fact I'd be surprised if he had got within the magic 2 metre zone upon which we are all relying to keep us safe. Is this evidence of an increase in virulence? And what are we expected to do to get animals to stick to social distancing? If this is a legitimate concern, off-leash dog walking, at the very least, is finished for the foreseeable. And what about cats? Or wildlife in general? Is this how we go? Blasting away at anything that moves with air rifles in between coughs?
At dinner we trialled running Zoom through the projector to put the rest of the family at the end of the table. It worked brilliantly. I did have to smother the skylight with a blanket in order to see anything but it was a lot of fun. My sister told us a story of a poor family whose mother was due to complete on her house on the very day when lockdown went into force. Already in homeless limbo, she found herself waiting for the funds to transfer in a ludicrously high stakes parody of an already stressful situation. Unsure exactly what to do to keep to Government rules, but without a home to go to just yet, the friend and her mother attempted to self-isolate at either end of a six-seater car on Brighton seafront while they waited for word from the bank. "Imagine," our storyteller mused, "if the money hadn't come through and my friend had had to take her Mum back to hers for .. who knows how long? No marriage could survive that." Apparently the BBC have been asking for scripts for a lockdown-themed sitcom; I think we have episode 1 in the bag.
Tiny's fever has been absent for three days now, so off she goes tomorrow to her Dad's for a few nights. My miles per day graph is going to have a hell of a spike, after literally zero in the past three weeks followed by over 200 tomorrow afternoon.
In other news, the big plot reveal in today's real life drama wasn't the tiger. Boris Johnson became, I think, the first sitting Prime Minister to go into intensive care. A mendacious bell-end though Boz may be, he deserves better than clinging on to life while his pregnant girlfriend panicks at home alone. What is going on out there?
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