Right.

Developments are developing fast; this morning the entire country of Italy has been put on lockdown by its government.  Italy is facing the worst crisis thus far in Europe.  The latest figures are that the country has had 9,172 cases, with 463 (5%) of those proving fatal.  Now, it has become serious.  They’ve had almost as many cases in that country alone, as they did across the world during the SARS pandemic of 2003/4.  This time tomorrow, I expect the Italian total will exceed that of the world of 17 years ago.

In the former United Kingdom, we’ve had 319 cases and five deaths (1.5%) since our first infection back in January, and, considering as of nine o’clock this morning, 24,960 frightened souls have been tested, that’s about 1.27%.  Therefore at the moment at least, 1.27% of 1.5% of those who have been tested have died as a result of the illness.

But, there are small bright spots of hope.  In China, case numbers are lowering to such a degree that President Xi Jinping, was able to visit Wuhan yesterday for the first time since the outbreak began there in December.  Indeed, in a population of 1.4 billion, only 19 people were tested positive on Tuesday, of which 17 were in the central province of Hubei, and one was an airline passenger from Britain.  There’s an irony!  Takin’ it back to China.

And in South Korea, formerly the second-worst affected country, now overtaken by Italy, the rate of infection has slowed down there in the last few days; indeed, enough for its health minister to express the hope that they had passed the peak.

These, however, are glimpses of hope, but only small ones at the moment; the media plays a huge role in this international crisis that exceeds politics, religion, or football.  The media must cease its alarmist reporting, and not focus on the deaths but on the living.  The people that have survived.  The people who test negative after illness with it and have therefore recovered.  What about those?  Little reported.  After all, who’s interested in survivors when you are queuing up for toilet roll?  We love a good panic, we humans.

In churches up and down the country, I can imagine priests closing their eyes, kneeling down and praying:

“Let us panic:

‘Dear God,

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!”

Amen.'”

I’ll keep this one brief, because as I said, panic is not the answer, and besides, you wouldn’t want to spend your last moments on Earth reading this shit. x

First of all, may I point out from the outset that, in this rant, I shall be referring to concert tickets, and not airlines, or travel, or any such like.

So, this morning, tickets to go and see prog-rock legends GENESIS were ‘released’ to the public for them to snap up for themselves to go and see this band’s first concert tour in 13 years.

Now, Genesis are one of those tricky bands that existed for a number of years with three different lineups.  There were others but I’m just talking about those since Phil Collins joined on drums in 1971.  The ‘classic’, pre-1975 lineup included: Peter Gabriel (vocals), Steve Hackett (guitars), Phil Collins (drums), Mike Rutherford (bass) and Tony Banks (keyboards).  In 1975, after Gabriel’s departure for a solo career, Collins took over on vocals and live drummer Chester Thompson was brought in.  Furthermore,  Steve Hackett left in 1977 and, while Rutherford could take over some of the guitar parts, he simply wasn’t in Hackett’s league, so live guitarist Daryl Stuermer was brought in to play those tricky Hackett parts Rutherford couldn’t play.  But these were live performers only.  In the studio, Genesis were now a three-piece.

Bear with me; this detail of the band’s history does have some relevance.

In 1996, Phil Collins announced that he was leaving Genesis, because his personal life was suffering as he was touring for, say, two years as a soloist; he would then go into the studio, record an album, and then tour two years with Genesis.  The two remaining members of the band, Rutherford and Banks, recruited former Stiltskin singer Ray Wilson to replace Collins.  For touring, they recruited Nir Zidkyahu (drums) and Anthony Drennan (guitars) to cover Thompson & Stuermer, who were both on tour with Phil Collins at the time.

The 1998 lineup, the final one, sank like a sack of shit.  I went to see the band at Earls Court on the ‘Calling All Stations’ tour, on 27 February 1998, and it was awful.  Wilson had no charisma at all, and when they tried to do the ‘I Can’t Dance’ silly walk around the arena, it was embarrassing.  Nobody knew where to look.  At the conclusion of that tour, Banks and Rutherford finally decided they had had enough, and formally disbanded Genesis.

That was the end, or so everybody thought; all the band members were still friends, and in 2007 they decided to put that friendship to the test once again by touring as Genesis with the ‘pop’ lineup from the 1980s – Collins, Banks and Rutherford (with Thompson & Stuermer) would tour the world’s stadiums making pots of money.  It was one of the top-grossing tours of the year.  I saw them on that tour also, and, despite limited view at Twickenham Stadium (I also saw them the day before at the Live Earth concert), they were fantastic.  That was the end.

Or, so everybody thought.

On Wednesday, 4 March, 2020, Collins, Banks and Rutherford appeared on Zoe Ball’s breakfast show in the UK to announce a British tour which would mark their first live appearance since 2007.  What?  Still no Gabriel, no Hackett?  No; the official reason is that Collins, through various health problems including a number of quite serious back operations, is no longer able to play the drums, and, if Gabriel were to return, Collins would not be able to play drums for a whole concert.  Furthermore, touring drummer Chester Thompson had retired, so he would not be along for the 2020 tour, which, to date, only includes gigs in the UK.  Fans in the rest of the world were left disappointed.

Who to play drums?  I’ve got someone who can play, Collins said to the rest of the band.  His own son, Nic, has been bangin’ on the bongos like a chimpanzee since Collins himself resumed touring in 2017.  At the time, young Nic was just fifteen years old, and here he was in a professional band led by his old man!

We shall see how young Collins Jr. copes with the 15/8, 11/4, etc. time signatures that the band’s most prog-rock music demands.  Playing in Phil’s more pop-oriented music is one thing; a 25-minute prog medley is quite another.

At least, some will see that; but I won’t.  Why, as a confirmed Genesis fan for almost 40 years, will I not, I hear you both ask.

Because the f***ing tickets are too expensive, that’s why!  They are playing a number of concerts in the UK, and the tickets are split into four bands: £68.15 / £85.35 / £136.50 / £176.50 are the base rate prices.  That is daylight robbery in itself.  Seventy pounds for a restricted view of a band whose drummer can’t play and is replaced by his son, two of whose members will never play with the band again, and the other two who clearly need the money.  That can be the only reason for this tour – maximise income for the minimum of work.  Phil Collins’ health is very poor at the moment; why is he doing this?

But those base rate ticket prices, I’m sure you’re both aware, will not be enough for the online ticket touts – sorry, agencies.  Head over to Ticketmaster, I was told, and buy tickets from Friday, 6 March (today, readers of the future), and buy your tickets there.

Of course, all the tickets sold out in double time, and additional dates were added at all of those venues, except the one in London, for some reason.  What they don’t tell you is that ticket agencies are allowed to buy tickets in huge blocks, normally the best seats, to sell them at ridiculous prices to gullible customers in ‘Platinum’ packages.  Live Nation are selling these tickets at… wait for it… eight hundred pounds (UK) each!!!  You can buy a maximum of four tickets, which will cost you about three thousand two hundred pounds!!!  For you and three mates!  It’s unbelievable.  Basically a ‘platinum’ ticket is the gig plus dinner thrown in.  And people are buying them!  Who?  How???

Anyone who has been to a rock concert will know about the touts who go up and down the queues waiting to get into the venue, asking for “any spare tickets, buy or sell.”  These people are the Devil, according to the official sellers, because, of course, they take their profits away from them.

But the online ticket agencies – and I mean you, Ticketmaster, Viagogo, Live Nation, Stub Hub (two thousand pounds per ticket in the front block), and the rest of you – You are scam artists – touts – of the highest order where concert tickets are concerned.  What you practice should be made illegal.  You limit people to four tickets per purchase so that it’s ‘fair,’ but you then slap on anything up to 1000% of the ticket price for your own profit!  It’s wrong.

A few weeks ago, I went to see a Pink Floyd tribute band in Malvern Theatre for twelve pound fifty pence.  This is what I plan to do from now on, you thieves!  I will go to a tribute band concert – in this case, Genesis – rather than see the band themselves.  Only one of them will be playing with real affection for the music, and I can pretty much guarantee that it won’t be Genesis. x

There is a virus going round the world, and many in my head have been asking me why I have not commented upon it thus far.  The symptoms of that virus are complete and total fear, panic, anxiety, making unreasonable demands upon society, and a refusal to look at the facts.  This virus can affect anyone, but most vulnerable are politicians, the media, the easily led, the intellectually bereft, and just about anyone, really.

The reason I have not yet commented on it is because, well, it’s totally stupid, isn’t it?

Now, I’m not for one moment suggesting that this coronavirus, which causes Covid-19, an infection that can give your lungs a really bad day, is fake.  Far from it.  It is a real disease, the World Health Organisation says so, caused by a virus that jumped species because some idiot in China forgot to wash their hands after handling a bat.  Or a snake, or a cat, whatever it was.

Viruses can do that – jump species, that is.  They don’t often do it, but they can, and, when they feel like it, they do.  Just to flex their DNA muscles, you know.  Let you know who’s Boss*.

So, some cretin handles a diseased bat in an hygienically-bereft market in the back-arse end of Wuhan, China, in the weeks before Christmas.  He or she forgets to wash their hands, then shakes hands with a customer, and within two months, it’s a national emergency in 57 countries.

What makes this disease particularly shitty is its incubation period.  It is thought to be around fourteen days, or up to that limit, before you even show any symptoms, which means you can be infecting people quite happily for a fortnight before you come down with it yourself.  Thus, one week you might have one infection, a week later you could have several hundred.

WARNING: STATISTICS AHEAD.

The nerdally sensitive among you may want to look away now.  Keep scrolling down; I’ll post a line telling you where you can pick up reading from.

The fear that this global series of epidemics is causing is totally out of touch with reality.  Seasonal flu, you know, the influenza that circulates around the world every single year, is caused by a number of different viruses, and a number of different subtypes of those viruses.  There are twelve subtypes of the Influenza A virus which are the most common flu-causing viruses.  The worst of these, H1N1, is actually considered one of the least fatal, but it caused the pandemic of 1918/19, killing anywhere up to 100 million people worldwide; and it caused the 2009/10 pandemic, commonly known as ‘Swine Flu,’ which killed far less people, but still a significant number – around 500,000 people.

If you want to know more about Influenza, and who doesn’t, then I would advise you to check out its Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza

I understand that this current epidemic is caused by a coronavirus and not an influenza virus, but the virological principles are precisely the same.  Because I’m not here to write about Covid-19 as a disease, but I am here to write about the effect that it has had on us as a global population.

Wuhan, located in the Hubei province of China, is home to about eleven million people.  So, it’s quite a sizeable metropolis in a country that has the world’s largest population, roughly 20% of the entire total of souls living on this Earth at the present time.  The coronavirus probably couldn’t have picked a worse city to perform its little species-jump; probably only Beijing or Shanghai might be the only ones in that country that could have had a more severe outcome.

The coronavirus, which I shall hereafter refer to as ‘the virus,’ was already a significant problem in the city of Wuhan before the world even got to hear about it.  As I understand it, the first cases came to the attention of the Chinese authorities on 1 December 2019.  Case numbers grew further more or less exponentially, but the government did not notify the World Health Organisation until 31 December 2019.

What were the Chinese authorities doing during the intervening 4+ weeks?

Attempting to cover it up, that’s what.

It was felt necessary to protect the reputation of President Xi Jinping than to help those poor individuals who were scared stiff, frankly, and suffering from an illness even the World Health Organisation didn’t know anything about.

If, when this is all over, the world starts looking for someone to blame, as I am sure they will, then this man, the President of the People’s Republic of China, must shoulder the ultimate responsibility for the spread of this virus around the world.

By the time the virus was public knowledge, and it was clear that containment was the only ‘cure’ at the time, he should also have at the very least postponed the celebrations of the Chinese New Year, because it was estimated that half the country’s population would be travelling to meet with family and friends.  As difficult as I am sure it would have been, that would have been the best answer in the long term.  Citizens could at least still be alive to look back and say, ‘Well, at least I’m still alive.’

But no, profits of the companies that sold public transport, a huge cut of which goes to the Central Government, were more important than people’s lives.  And the reputation of the President.

Of course, we don’t know what would have happened, had the Chinese government acted quicker at the start of the outbreak, and informed the World Health Organisation sooner.  But still, since the vast majority of cases at the time of writing (March 2020) are still located within the city of Wuhan and in the province of Hubei, then it’s a safe bet that the numbers would have been much lower.

In the vast majority of infected countries, including the United Kingdom, case numbers are relatively low.  In Britain, for example, we have 53 infections which, being less than one millionth of the population, can hardly be called an epidemic.  But our government knows that that number has the potential to skyrocket any day now.  On the other hand, the numbers may stay low.

But there are certain other countries who are not so fortunate at this time.  South Korea, where a religious cult leader refused to give the names of infected members because he feared persecution (he thinks he’s Jesus), is struggling with over six thousand cases in just two short weeks because of his paranoia.  Why the virus is so virulent in some countries and not others is a mystery.  Their neighbours North Korea do no have any cases at all; it just goes to show that complete isolation from the world does have its advantages every now and then.

Then there is Italy.  The president there has made all sorts of claims in recent weeks, including that the virus circulating there is not the same coronavirus that is attacking the rest of the world, suggesting that it has mutated there.  More than 80 people have died there, and the number looks set to rise very quickly in the coming days.

So, there is some serious shit going down, there’s no denying it, but the kind of panic-buying that has been seen in Australia in the last few days does nobody any good at all.  It seems to me that the media want to keep the panic going because it sells papers/advertising space, and anything that brings them in money.

***YOU CAN READ AGAIN FROM HERE, NERDOPHOBES***

The media should report the facts and not instill panic all across the world.  They’re all doing it, no matter what part of the world you are in, as though they have been struck down by some sort of panic-virus.  Especially in the United Kingdom where, thank God, the virus situation is not too serious at the moment.  The government is right to prepare, and to ask the population to remain hygienic, but they also need to reassure people that relatively few people die from the disease, especially if they have no underlying health conditions.

You know, deep down, everyone has a fear about infectious disease, but most people don’t want to show it for fear of looking stupid.  But now the media has created a sort of institutionalised fear; people now feel free to air their panic in public, because everyone else is.  Everyone is wearing masks – which, by the way, does no good at all in most instances – and they’re wearing them to protect themselves, not to prevent the spread of it to others.  If you’re wearing a mask to protect yourself, take it off; it won’t work.

Yesterday, 3 March, our beloved Prime Minister Boris “BloJo” Johnson, held a press conference in London to launch the Government’s four-stage initiative to combat the virus.  He said – and I bet he never envisaged this during his dreams of ultimate power – we must all wash our hands regularly using hot soapy water, long enough to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice.  Great.  Does the Prime Minister know that that particular song is still in copyright, which means that if we sing it in public, we should pay the Performing Rights Society?  I thought not.  See?  Panic means you don’t think through your plans properly.

This is an epidemic of an infectious disease; we’ve had them before, we’ll no doubt have them again.  Just remain calm, look after yourselves, and we’ll get through it. x