Wednesday 8 April 2020
It got too much for one chap, who leapt to his death from this bridge
We had our first full day today, with three openings of the supermarket. Actually, the term supermarket is somewhat over-the-top. The place is more a distribution centre. The food comes in, largely by donation, we stock the shelves, and then apportion it out. Either way it is doing a decent task.
The lunchtime opening is mayhem, in many respects as one might expect. Today there was a line of socially distanced staff stretching for a good 200 metres around the hospital. At one point we were blocking the front door and Security was starting to fidget. That caused fair chaos and we have adjusted the line markers that we have sprayed on the ground to ensure a smooth flow of staff in and out of the hospital’s front doors. I go into the hospital itself as little as possible, simply because of the infection risk. It is physically impossible to effectively socially distance in the building, as the place is crammed with people, many of whom appear to feel that distancing applies to others but for some reason not to them. What few visitors there are simply do not have a clue.
Fruit and vegetables are very popular and run out quite rapidly. Breakfast cereal, too. There are plenty of secret munchers out there. By the end of the day we had managed to distribute all our Corn Flakes. I survive on Corn Flakes when on operations overseas, as I am simply unable to cook, so sympathise with those others who have the same taste. When I am overseas, the Red Cross claims that I am a security risk, as wherever I go, they will find half-used boxes of Corn Flakes after I have gone. Anyone could trace my movements if they wished.
For our supermarket, the aim is that a single staff member should only be able to attend once each week. Realistically, there is not a chance of the staff following that requirement and there are evidently repeat offenders who come as many times as they can. London is presently verging on survival of the fittest. People take what they can, when they can. It is the way of it when surrounded by disaster. I do not have the heart to send the repeat offenders away and simply pretend I have not noticed.
The situation this morning – 8 April 2020 (courtesy Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University)
I am finding it difficult to manage the social distancing in and around the supermarket without being a complete pain to everyone. I am sadly obsessed by it, as one might imagine of a surgeon, but there are so many who ignore distancing completely. It was the last thing I was expecting of a major London hospital. The circuit we have created allows for a safe flow of staff, always two metres apart. Despite this, some still do not get it and manage not to follow the arrows we have carefully positioned. The guilty parties then look upset when I pull them to one side and point out what they are doing, or not doing in practice.
The supermarket is open for three sessions each day, generally for about two hours. We hold a team debriefing after every shopping session. This seems to be a good thing, as it allows us to make tiny adjustments so that each session is slightly better than the one before it.
The provision of food is impressive. The vegetables are picked somewhere in the Home Counties, make their way to Borough Market, where they are packed into biodegradable paper bags before being delivered to the hospital. Imagine how many people would be involved in that task, just to support a single hospital. There are a lot of people in London right now who are seeking to do what they can. It is remarkable to form part of that process and something each of us will remember.
One of the team had an utterly astonishing story, which he shared with us all at the end of the day. Yesterday evening, simply to stretch his legs and clear his mind, he had taken a walk across Westminster Bridge. The stroll had started out normally, without anything untoward, when a man a few feet in front of him, and walking in the same direction, unexpectedly leapt over the edge of the bridge and into the River Thames below. The man did not say a word. He simply jumped. My colleague, being an ex-Serviceman, acted instantly and swiftly opened the life-ring container positioned ostentatiously to one side of the pavement – there are several containers on the bridge, there for a moment like this. But when he opened the container, guess what? You got it. There was no life-ring inside. It was empty and no one had thought to check. By the time my colleague had done what he could, summoned the police, and kept an eye on the jumper for as long as possible, Nature had taken command. It did not take long for the jumper to disappear beneath the water’s surface and that was that. One more death to add to the many occurring daily in the United Kingdom, London in particular.
Breakfast at my hotel today, which I gate-crashed mid-morning, was a joke. I am certain the establishment is being used as a holding area for infected NHS staff. When I entered the hotel’s restaurant and grabbed myself a banana and a bowl of Corn Flakes, I saw one man in his early thirties sitting in a far, darkened corner. For a moment he looked normal, until he started coughing. The cough was incessant, dry, and clearly painful. In another corner sat a man of roughly the same age, who was wet coughing and snorting continuously. I needed no training to realise, certainly at today’s breakfast, that I was surrounded by Covid-19.
Meanwhile the Prime Minister is still in intensive care, but rumour has it that he is improving, which is good news. Overseas, an Australian cruise ship, the Greg Mortimer, is in trouble somewhere near Antarctica. It set out on 15 March and now has 128 people on board who have tested positive for Covid-19. I do not understand why any cruise set out on that date. It was a time when the UK was already beginning to think about locking down. I imagine money lies behind it all and I note that several passengers have already been evacuated to hospital in Montevideo (Uruguay).
Sign outside a Delhi house (BBC)
India is beginning to look like a disaster and its future does not bode well. To date it has 508 new infections, with 13 deaths in the last 24 hours. There have been 124 deaths in the country so far. Some of India’s states are urging for their lockdown to be extended and Delhi’s government is seeking to track 2000 mobile telephones of the worshippers who took part in an extended religious event. The result has been many clusters of Covid-19. The Indian Prime Minister has set a personal example by taking a 30% salary cut himself. Have I ever heard of a politician agreeing to take less money before? I am not sure I have. More worrying, perhaps, are the two patients from Kerala who underwent a 14-day quarantine without symptoms, but still tested positive afterwards. There may be a lot of virus out there that is being missed, despite testing.
In Delhi, some of the stories sound similar to the days of the Black Death in fourteenth-century UK. For example, when people are quarantined in Delhi, signs are posted outside the house and personal data are released, which has led to unintended consequences. For example, one family had its details published on WhatsApp, which led to passers-by photographing their home. Others had neighbours shouting at them to get back indoors, even if they went onto their own balcony for a few seconds to grab some fresh air.
Singapore, which was once a Covid-19 goodie-goodie, is presently slipping backwards and cases are increasing. The city has 1481 cases to date but does not like what it sees. It has thus given itself the power to restrict people’s movements, and interactions with others, even in their own homes. Social gatherings of any size have been banned. That is a lot of power for a government at a time of increasing social unrest.
Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr Calderwood, is apparently not the only bigwig to behave like a covidiot. Try the Mayor of Alton in the USA, Brant Walker. He arranged for police to break up parties, which they promptly did. However, recently a police break-up of a party identified the mayor’s wife. When this happened, the mayor said, “My wife is an adult capable of making her own decisions, and in this instance, she exhibited a stunning lack of judgement.”
Too right she did. I would love to have been a fly on the wall of the mayoral home.
At the hospital today, the television cameras have mostly left as the Prime Minister is improving. Wretched cameras – do they only go places where they anticipate misery? There was one photographer who stayed on Westminster Bridge all day, pointing a bazooka-sized telephoto lens towards our supermarket. I made doubly sure that the shoppers’ social distancing was textbook quality as I am pretty sure the photographer’s lens was looking for trouble. There is plenty of that around at the moment.
