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