Down the rabbit hole...

Ok, so that seems completely mad right? What I mean, in my own quaint albeit crazy way is. I've had this pain in my arm for a few months but for the last month I have not had the pain because I have not taken the action that causes the pain to become evident. That is... if I rub my arm from elbow to wrist with a degree of firmness such as when drying oneself with a towel, then I get a sharp pain from a point in my forearm that passes almost as quickly as it appears. Almost as though a needle has been stabbed into me and withdrawn. I did wonder whether there was a splinter or some similar body in the skin and that when I rubbed in that downward direction it was causing the splinter to push in and cause the sharp pain. But I looked and could find nothing, I even went so far as to shave the affected area so I could have a close look at the skin and found nothing! Mysterious I thought! So why Schrodinger's arm? Well, because after having this issue continually for a couple

Good to see that Donald Trump has some good old common sense and has kindly decided to stop referring to Covid-19 as the Chinese Virus. Although he retains the right to do so if he so wishes. That goodwill gesture came after some people in China called some people in Washington and asked nicely if the President might refrain from such terminology. That was followed by a call between Xi and Trump. A call that was, of course great. Having said that. As we know that neither of these men are really great sentimentalists but they are both kinda keen on nationalism and waving big sticks at each other so I suspect the call was more along the lines of 'you need to stop, right now, or we'll take actions that will hurt your economy and with it your reelection'! Like maybe a freeze on buying any more grain products or pork for instance. Who really knows, except we know that Trump loves goading people and feels he is the master of everything he views so to simply stop calling the vi

One of those unintended consequences from the current crisis will be future taxation. I have a sense that some people, maybe most people, think that the stimulus packages being unveiled and in action around the world are being given out by governments thankful to a good a loyal workforce with a pat on the back and a kind word in the ear. Wouldn't that be nice. More likely, and call me a sceptic if you wish, is that, once the crisis is over and the country has regained 80% of it's pre-crisis level, the people that have been helped out will begin to see the bill arrive at the table, just like a date that went wrong and the would be partner has stormed out without paying. How this money will be expected to be paid back is another question. Possibly through increases in general taxation levels or in increases in tax on what might consider luxury items such as wine and tobacco. The usual suspects. Or, and it is not exactly rocket science to suggest, but another round of aust

I feel this very strange sense of surrealism, not the Magritte type of surrealism, the 'this doesn't feel real to me' type surrealism. I guess it's because I don't work full time any more and I keep pretty much to myself and I stopped partying like it's 1984 back in 1984... ok so I carried on for a couple more decades but I did stop eventually. I guess it's not helped by the bizarre inputs I keep picking up. Like Trump saying he wants the epidemic over within the next twelve weeks, or to have the churches full at Easter, at the same time as the governor of New York is stating there is a storm coming and he's lacking critical supplies. Then we have a national shutdown in the UK but no resources to actually enforce it. And rather a lot of people ignoring the restrictions anyway. Plus the  restrictions seem to be getting ever more vague every time a minister, without the merest hint of irony, clarifies them. For instance, there is the instruction that

First day of a complete lockdown in the UK. It's always fun when such things happen, which is never, to see the other effects. Like being advised not to go to the supermarket unless you can absolutely help it and instead use the online home delivery services, except of course getting a delivery slot any time in the next month is currently impossible and one of the main four supermarkets website is currently crashed due to excessively high traffic volumes. Even the click and collect slots are all full. So, trip to the supermarket and spinning the chamber of the covid-19 gun for a game of Russian roulette! In the US the esteemed president has made comments indicating he would like the restrictions lifted in a couple of weeks or sooner so the US can get back to work and start making money again. It's all well and good making such statements so long as he is willing to accept the consequences, which would be a considerable number of dead. Not simply because of the virus itself

One of the questions that bothers me an awful lot, and it is odd that in the grand scheme of things it really is not important at all, is, why does Donald look like some kind of orange panda? In fact he would look more at home in the forests of Borneo (are there still any forests in Borneo or have they now all been converted into coffee tables for westerners who then place conservation magazines atop of them???) or maybe the Andes with the other spectacled bears. Certainly he would be more use if he was just sitting in a tree eating some fruit and defecating onto the forest floor than standing in front of a microphone and talking what can only be described as utter bollocks the consequence of which he seems blissfully ignorant of. But then blissfully ignorant is pretty much his stock in trade. He is rather good at blissful ignorance and one can only hope that in as short a time as possible he is returned to being a tv star on free to air tv helping other total dicks become even big

One of the strange things (wait, have I used that as a starting point previously? Hmmm, well, then this is simply today's strange thing... and I guess in these times of strange things that's probably acceptable!) about this pandemic and the lock-down that most of us are either in or will soon be in is the odd sensations. Sensations about things that you feel you want to do and should be doing but can't because you either cannot go and get what you need or there simply is not what you need available. But that you feel frustrated that you cannot get on and do this pressing thing, whatever it might be, because everything has changed! Thing is, the thing that you wanted to do could have been done at any point in the preceding nn years but was not and yet now you have all this free time it suddenly seems important probably because you cannot do it rather than you really want to do it. It's a bit like being physically constrained (except for those that do ot like being p

What concerns me a little is that even now the populations of most countries do not appreciate that the strategy of governments around the world has got to be one of allowing the majority of their populations to catch the virus but to try to manage how many people catch it at given times. As has been shown time and again, the graph that demonstrates how the infection will spread in the community of left unchecked is rapid but relatively short lived. Unfortunately allowing such a devastating spike in cases would result in considerably higher rates of death simply because there would be no system in place to deal with the majority of cases requiring high dependency care. Effectively, those people would be left in their homes to die and then collected for mass burial until such time as the crematoria could cope with the deceased. So the governments are each trying to manage the spread in their own ways but the aim will be to achieve the so called 'herd immunity'. Once there i

In the meantime... The question about testing is intriguing, or did I mean concerning. We can know when a virus has passed when people stop getting sick and/or dying. That's the sure sign of it having passed, assuming it does not mutate and start all over again. I hate to mention it but that's what viruses do, that's what this virus did. But what I would like to see is not a test that tells us that somebody has the virus because that's a two week thing. It's great if you catch it early because you can isolate and monitor the individuals that have the virus. A great test would be a test that tells you when you have the virus antibodies. That is, tells you that you have had the virus, it has passed and you can now resume normal life. Indeed, you could even get a certificate which allows you to work, travel and just go back to normal. All sounds a bit Orwellian or maybe even war like but it would only be temporary. It's important because if, as is consta

In these difficult times it seems quite important to put aside petty political differences and support the government of the day in their efforts to manage the highly complex issues that come about due to a pandemic like the one we are living through. It would be nice but sometimes they seem to make it really really hard to do so. For instance, today the government has effectively asked the public at large to restrict themselves to only essential trips and to not visit pubs, clubs and theatres, I guess by inference that the actual list of places we should not visit is considerably greater but those were the ones that were mentioned explicitly. But this is a request and not an order. At the same time, as they have not banned anything for the adults, they have chosen not to close schools. Having not closed schools they have implicitly left in force the laws that force parents to make sure their children attend school else they can face penalties starting with warnings, then fines

Panic buying, such an interesting phenomenon, at least from a purely academic perspective. There is some of that happening right now in the UK and, from what I have seen online, in other parts of the Europe and the World at large as well. I imagine that those living in poorer countries might be somewhat bemused at the thought of people buying up car loads of toilet rolls and hand sanitizer! In fact I am a little bemused by it myself, if not somewhat amused. Sometimes there are understandable reasons for panic buying. If there were a strike of all fishermen and they also blockaded all the ports for other fishing boats leading to a possibility of a national shortage of fish which in turn could potentially cause a shortage of fish products on supermarket shelves. But that all starts with speculation and rumour before any actual impact has been observed.This in itself causes panic buying as people who really want fish for dinner next Thursday want to stuff some in the freezer so they

The strategy being taken in Italy is, interesting! Locking down a whole country, a modern, free, liberal country, is quite a challenge and relies mainly upon the goodwill of the people to actually achieve anything. I suggest the goodwill is a finite thing and that after a maximum of two weeks the people of Italy will have had enough. It is not just a simple matter of asking 60 million people to effectively self isolate, it is the myriad number of other impacts. Children not being educated or allowed out to play, the massive financial impact upon a country that has the past decade trying not to declare a state wide national emergency and who's bond rates have always been perilous in financial markets but now must surely be turning somewhat toxic. People travel to Italy from all over the world to savour its many many delights from beaches, to hills, history and food and wine, and of course the delightful Italian people themselves. And so this 'lock down' will have massi

I wanted to just recommend a small docu/film called Lost Lives that recently aired on BBC based on a book of the same name. The book aimed to document every one of the lives lost as a result of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. In total, and not wishing to appear flippant, the number of lives lost over several decades is less than a bad week in Syria or Yemen, but it happened right here in the UK, the UK excluding Northern Ireland where most of the carnage occured. And that makes it personal, that it should happen in the west, in Europe, for decades, in a modern first world country, a liberal country, with the rule of law. I also acknowledge that the numbers don't really compare to what happened in the Balkans but this was right here in a modern democracy. I was born shortly before The Troubles started and it took me decades to understand it for what it really was. the main problem I had was, apart from my age I guess, the reporting of the time always referred to the religious a

It is disappointing to see some of the disinformation that is being spread on social media sites.In particular, at this time, about Covid-19. It has always been the case that social media has been ill equipped to deal with disinformation and always runs up against the largely philosophical debate about free speech. That's all well and good when we are talking about Russian bots interfering in elections and helping Trump get elected or the UK leave the EU, it simply means the other side of the argument needs to step up its game and fight back. But that's not the same when we are talking about a pandemic. Some of the information being disseminated on social media will actually result in the needless death of, potentially, large numbers of people. From its inception the beauty of social media and the internet in general was always that it had the power to revolutionise the world of knowledge and, by connecting billions of people worldwide, it would have a transformative effec

If there is one thing the current pandemic should teach us, it is how fragile life can be and how unexpectedly short it can also be. You could be hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow, such freak accidents will always happen. You might develop a serious and life threatening illness in a few days, that is also true, or indeed you might be one of the hundreds of thousands that die every year from complications arising from standard influenza (for reference the mortality rate for seasonal flu is c.0.1%). So with so many things that might kill us anyway, why would we worry any more about this one additional threat to our life. I guess it is because we already either ignore the threats from all the other things that might harm us or we have simply come to terms with the and our chance of being struck down by them. Sure, there are some of us who spend everyday thinking about what we consume and what impact it is having on our bodies and thus the increased likelihood of developing something c