Struggled to drag myself out of bed this morning. It was another restless night’s sleep hampered by this totally unexplained knot of anxiety in my lower abdomen keeping me awake. After two hours of just lying there after Mrs Jones left for work I finally motivated myself to get out of bed and go for a run.
I needed something positive to do, my work has ground to a halt now the initial rush of Covid communications – leaflets, web updates, social media – seem to have dissipated.
Last week it felt like the country was on the road to returning to something close to normality. Today all I seem to see and read in the news media is more negativity.
No one seems to want to get back to work. The TUC has reared its ugly head to demand a totally impractical set of legal guarantees around health that would make it impossible for many businesses to take the risk of opening up.
Teaching unions are fighting tooth and nail to keep schools closed until September despite the fact that there’s no reported cases of children under 10 spreading the virus. It almost feels as if they regard education as having no value at all.
Even the good things that have been done such as the opening of the new Nightingale hospitals which thankfully have not been needed are now presented =as a waste of time and resources.
The new NHS tracing app which is being trialled today on the Isle of Wight is getting the most hysterical reaction from lefties on Twitter as if it’s some Dominic Cummings-inspired Conservative conspiracy to control us all forever. This has been fuelled by a totally irresponsible article in The Guardian.
Surely the job of all those in positions of influence is to provide reassurance to an anxious and frightened public that we can resume some vital parts of normal life, and you don’t get much more vital than education and work.
People need reminding coronavirus remains a disease that most people do not even know they’ve had or experience just mild symptoms. The findings of a German study of the effects of the virus on a single community – Gangelt which was the epicentre of the country’s first major outbreak – puts the fatality rate at 0.37%. That’s considerably less than the percentage who die on the UK’s roads each year and we are now past the virus’ peak.
My morning run certainly helped clear some of my depressing feelings. It’s also, I like to think, helping me keep healthy. Another report argues that obesity is more of an indicator of how likely you are to become seriously ill with coronavirus than your age.
About two years ago before my fitness campaign I was two stones heavier and suffering from high blood pressure. Now my BMI is just below 25 and my BP is in the healthy range.
Thank god for the running, it’s helping me stay positive, getting rid of that anxiety knot and hopefully keeping me alive.