Monday
Just when you think things can’t get much more surreal, we hear that Donald Trump has been dosing himself up with the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine in efforts to ward off the coronavirus that he doesn’t yet have. “I’m taking it for about a week and a half now and I’m still here, I’m still here,” he told reporters during a White House briefing. Given that hydroxychloroquine is not a vaccine, is completely unproven as a treatment for Covid-19 and can have dangerous side-effects, you can only wonder about the president’s state of mind. And that of his medical team who are happily prescribing him a drug that is far more likely to do him harm than good. Next he’ll be hooking himself up on a ventilator at night. I thought my hypochondria was bad – I’ve lost count of the number of times over the past 10 weeks when I’ve woken up with a slight headache or the merest hint of a sore throat and imagined I had the virus – but it’s never occurred to me to start dosing myself up with remdesivir. It would be like me marching into the doctor’s and demanding to be put on a course of chemotherapy on the off chance that I had cancer. Or having elective surgery to remove my appendix to ensure that I don’t get peritonitis.
Tuesday
Two weeks back my daughter was tidying her garden in Minneapolis when she came across a small burrow of tiny, furless animals, with their eyes shut, that were clearly no more than a day or so old. She sent me a picture and we wondered if they might be moles, before someone pointed out they were above ground, had large ears and were obviously rabbits. Anna even got round to setting up a webcam so she could check up on them at all times, and we got used to watching the mother returning from time to time to feed them and scrape her fur to keep them warm. At a time when so much else in the world seemed so bleak, they came to represent something new and hopeful. A week or so ago, we got the call that we had been dreading. The webcam had picked up a neighbour’s cat entering the burrow . When Anna went out to check up on them, there was no sign of the bunnies. Then today, Anna was looking out of her kitchen window and spotted a small rabbit at the bottom of her garden. It was almost certainly from a different burrow, but I would like to believe it was one that had escaped the carnage and come back to let us know that just occasionally the natural world can provide a happy ending.
Wednesday
Boris Johnson sold himself to many voters at the last election as the great communicator: the leader who could unite a divided country and get Brexit done. So it’s been a surprise to find just how invisible he’s been since recovering from the coronavirus. He’s given one confusing TV statement – with no questions allowed – and sent out junior cabinet ministers in his place at the Downing Street press conference. One explanation for his absenteeism over the last week has been that he was so wounded by his mauling from Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions that he had spent the last seven days preparing for this week’s encounter. If so, it only partially paid off: Boris was much more of his usual aggressive, unpleasant self, but the Labour leader still came out comfortably ahead on points. Not least because Boris insisted that all those overseas nationals who were working on low salaries in the NHS would have to pay a visa surcharge of £624 to access health services if they got ill while doing their jobs of trying to keep the rest of us alive. It was so obviously unjust and immoral that Boris was shamed into doing a massive U-turn the following day. There was no screeching reversal, however, on him forcing through a vote preventing MPs from accessing Commons proceedings remotely at a time when the official government policy is still for people to work from home if they possibly can. When recess ends in 10 days’ time, the only MPs able to join in the debate will be the 50 or so allowed in under the physical distancing guidelines. So MPs from constituencies remote from London will be in effect disenfranchised. Some would call it a scandal. Boris calls it taking back control.
Thursday
We need to talk about Kevin. Again. Last week I wrote about my friend Kevin’s experience of coronavirus testing as performance art. What neither of us had realised was that he was only in the first act of the play. Two weeks to the day after his initial test, for which he was never able to get the results, he was offered a second test. On Monday this week he went off to have that second test. The following day a result of “unclear” arrived back, so a further test was required. However, what was also unclear was whether the result was from the first or second test. Kevin rang the ironically named helpdesk who, as ever, had no information and put him on hold for several minutes. After a discussion with all of his colleagues, the adviser reported back that they had unanimously concluded that the result couldn’t have come from the second test as they had never known of an instance when the system had been that efficient. So on the basis of their absolute certainty of the incompetence of the system, they say he should ring back next Monday to find out if the series is to be extended to a third test. And the government wonders why the whole country doesn’t share its excitement when it announces a new testing programme.
Friday
I’ve watched more of the Downing Street press briefings than I care to remember and will have to endure many more before the pandemic is over. Though sadly I will miss Priti Patel’s outing this evening as the home secretary is such a liability she is only allowed out in public when no sketch writers are writing for the following day. Already though, there are signs that the government is regretting its decision to give the country daily updates, not least because more often than not the minister taking the press conference – Boris has long since decided these are too much like hard work and can’t be bothered to turn up – has nothing new to announce. So on Thursday we were treated to Matt Hancock running through the same slides that have been used in every other briefing for the past two weeks, before being forced to admit that the “world-beating” test, track and trace app that he had insisted only a month or so ago would be a game-changer in easing lockdown restrictions wasn’t going to be ready in time. And, in any case, it wasn’t such a big deal as all that and had only ever been intended to be an adjunct to human track and trace. Most of us would just settle for solutions that were good enough to make a difference. Still, in these days of existential despair, just occasionally something remarkable does happen. I had been checking on the status of my exercise bike I had ordered from Amazon and had been informed that the one I had ordered was now indefinitely unavailable, so I had mentally prepared myself for the likelihood it would never appear. Then, out of the blue, I got an email saying it would arrive on 3 June. Even more remarkably, it turned up two weeks early and was comparatively simple to assemble. It has been the best £229 I have spent for a long time. Nearly an hour free from anxiety about the coronavirus and thoughts of missing my family and friends. What more could anyone want?
Digested week, digested: Starmer 3-0 Johnson.
