Well, I sort of struck lucky in the wee small hours of the morning. I had set up an account with Waitrose ‘Click and Collect‘ mainly for cleaning materials, wipes and the non-food items that we were likely to run out in a couple of weeks time (or at least, not find in the store) To my delight, a ‘slot’ came up on Monday next which I eagerly accepted although it entails a jouney (by son and/or daughter-in-law to nearby Droitwich, where the Waitrose store is so much bigger) It will be interesting to see how much of the original order is actually fulfilled – we shall see!
Today, I was also delighted to be the recipient of ‘The Times‘ and ‘The Guardian‘ which had kindly been collected for us by the family on their morning walk. Although we are prepared to forego newspapers during the week, those on a Saturday are particularly valuable as they contain the guides TV programmes in the week to come.
As I was watching TV tonight, I was particularly struck by how pointless many of the advertisements are on commercial TV. Of course, they would have been commissioned months ago and made weeks ago – but an advert advocating a particular brand of cosmetic seems singularly pointless when it is impossible to go to a shop that could sell it for me. I forget who it was who opined that at least half of all the money spent on advertising is absolutely wasted but the difficulty remains that no one can discern which half!
I thought I would attempt to be virtuous today – if the weather had been better, I would have spent some time in the garden doing a bit of a spring tidy up. Instead, I engaged in a stepper routine to which I have a link via YouTube – the presenter is quite a likeable young American lady who with her partner runs a series of programmes called on a website called FitnessBlender.com. It takes me about 15 minutes and gets me out of breath as well as exercising my lower body – in the meantime, to get me going for the day, in the morning and before breakfast I do a series of Pilates style stretches and incorporate a 4kg weight to make sure my arm muscles do not waste away. The way that I know whether these various exercises are doing their job is (a) how easy it is to put a loaded suitcase in an overhead luggage compartment when one is going on holiday (a distant hope?) and (b) whether my muscles ache or not after the first mowing of the season (which tends to be the heaviest one) Whilst on the fitness theme, I am in two minds whether to do the online yoga course which my local yoga studio is putting on to try and gain a bit of income for themselves whilst it is not possible to attend in person. I think I probably will if only I would like their small business to keep going after the ‘crisis’ and a combination of yoga and Pilates exercises ought to keep me in shape.
The news continues to be shocking, of course, and I keep wondering where the ‘inflection’ point of the curve will come i.e. the point at which the rate of new cases starts to moderate, indicating one is nearing the tope of the curve. The following is copied from the MedScape website:
Number of Patients With COVID-19 in ICU Doubles Every 2 to 3 Days
Manca has calculated from the Italian data that the number of patients in intensive care with COVID-19 initially doubles every 2 to 3 days.
This rate slows fractionally every day until, after 3 to 4 weeks, the doubling time is around 4 to 5 days. Around day 18, the rate of increase is maintained for 3 to 4 days without increasing further, known as the “inflection point”, after which the rate of increase in ICU cases begins to drop.
He found that the inflection point was reached in Lombardy 19 days after the outbreak started in the region.
For the rest of Italy, that point will not be reached until the start of next month, he therefore predicts. The consequence is that “every day counts,” he stressed.
On these calculations, we still have 2 more weeks of really bad news. Interesting that exhibition centres (ExCel in London, NEC in Birmingham, GMex in Manchester) are now being commissioned as instant hospitals-cum-morgues.
© Mike Hart [2020]