Corona pop, crooners and just keep washing those hands .......

Today the World Health Organisation declared Covid 19 (Coronavirus) to be a Pandemic.

Not quite as mad as a plague of frogs but close I suspect.

Last Sunday in Shotleyfields we used hand sanitisers, we didn't shake hands during the Peace and we received Communion in the form of the Host only.

I held a dialogue with our safeguarding officer, also a GP, and began to understand the urgency that is being promoted about the Virus.

There is it seems no conspiracy theory.

It is the case that this Virus, unlike for example Influenza A is simply highly contagious and easier to catch.

Nevertheless the simple precautions that contribute to public hygiene work well, so hand washing should be maintained and physical contact avoided where possible.

This morning I awoke to discover a news bulletin telling me that a junior health minister had herself tested positive for the Virus and had recently attended a reception at 10 Downing Street.

Mmmm .......

Her breezy message was keep washing those hands .......

The word pandemic does to a degree sound fearsomely close to panic ......

And I guess that is the worry, as hand sanitisers fly off the shelves only to appear on eBay for massively inflated prices, panic buying of everything including Toilet Paper.

My Mum would have just torn more pages of the Manchester Evening News into quarters and hung them in the outside Loo on a nail.

C'est la Vie!

Of course being British we joke about it and Facebook is full of Memes from references to Corona Pop delivered by a lorry carrying the Corona logo, to not giving in to a Virus named after a light beer and to references to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin as Crooner Virus.

There are an increasing number of articles referring to the Spanish Flu of 1920 which killed more people than died in the First World War.

Similarly statistics are rehearsed describing the deaths from poverty, climate change, war against which there is very little action.

Italy has been closed down, my friend Fr Giovanni in Randazzo tells me that his Congregation cannot now meet until April 3rd.

Given that Britain is now at the stage where Italy was a fortnight ago who knows what might happen?

The Church England is focussed on safeguarding but the advice is changing in degrees on a weekly if not now, daily basis.

My suspicion is that if Churches are advised to close the impact on the Church of England will be dramatic both in terms of communicants and in terms of money, because it is a simple fact that if people leave they are unlikely to come back, habits will be broken.

The suns outer layer, its hottest layer, is called the Corona. Usually only seen at an eclipse. It will be interesting as we await the full impact on British society and the economy just how hot things will get before they will return to normal, the stage after pandemic is endemic and I guess we may just have to live with this virus for some years to come.

As the junior health minister has it, keep washing those hands .............


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