Journalist, writer and broadcaster Leigh G Banks is stranded in Slovakia by the coronavirus crisis … fellow broadcaster Rodney Hearth can’t get home either and is ‘trapped’ in an apartment in Portugal. Here they talk about how it feels to be isolated from your homeland and families, ponder the future and the catastrophes which loom if this terrible virus isn’t stopped soon… CLICK HERE TO WATCH:
The coronavirus crisis is bringing opportunities for positive change that the whole world can’t afford to squander, say the smiley people involved in the eighth annual World Happiness Report.
The report ranks countries according to their happiness quota and looks at crucial clues to well-being.
“These will help in the weeks and months of the coronavirus crisis to come,” says Prof Richard Layard, co-director of the Wellbeing programme at the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance.
Finland remains at number one for the third year running, while the UK has edged up the table, from 15 to 13.
The report – put together by a group of independent experts and produced by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network – uses six variables to measure the quality of life in more than 150 countries: GDP per capita; social support; healthy life expectancy; freedom; generosity and lack of corruption…
STORY TO MAKE YOU SMILE 1.
I was driving into Waitrose car park when a bloke decided to walk down the middle of the road in front of me pushing his trolley, I waited a bit – not long I admit – and tapped my horn at him – without even looking round he flicked a ‘V’ at me! So, I got out to remonstrate with him, which I know you shouldn’t do, but sometimes you simply have to … as I explained what I considered to be the error of his ways to him another bloke came up to me and said “Err, excuse me mate, your car (It’s automatic) is headed for those parked cars and it’s going to hit them…” well, that was a bit embarrassing when you are in mid-remonstration but it was even worse when I had to give chase to my car .,.. I managed to open the door and jump in and slam the brakes on — it was then I remembered that my missus was in the passengers seat … so I asked her, very politely under the circumstances “Why didn’t you stop the car!!!?” She looked a bit dumbfounded and replied “Sorry, I didn’t notice, i was texting!” …. well sometimes you just don’t know what to say!
Historic research shows that co-operation and social support are fundamental to happiness.
Prof Layard believes the coronavirus crisis will speed up changes that he and others have advocated for decades. “To get through this we’re going to have to develop a much higher level of social responsibility.
“Some people are going to have to stay in quarantine, and others are going to have to support them to do that. My hope is that it will encourage a move from an atomised society to a much more caring one.”
Vanessa King, lead psychologist for Action for Happiness, the UK part of the World Happiness Report, said: “What we know is that social factors and trust are at least as important as income and being healthy. In this crisis, the more we can create social trust and support and connect with others, despite being isolated, the better we will be – and the rosier a future we’ll build.
“You might think you’re doing it for others but you’re also doing it for yourself: it’s win-win.” Setting up a neighbourhood group to ensure isolated people get help with the shopping, looking out for others and being outward-facing were some of the most psychologically healthy ways forward.
“This is a worldwide epidemic; it’s not us against them, it’s all of us against this virus. It’s a moment when we have to say: ‘we, as a world, are fighting this’.” Costa Rica and the U.K. Noting a “sudden decline” in happiness among young people in 2012, psychologist Jean Twenge suggested the growing role of digital media in leisure time may be linked to the downward trend.
The two unhappiest countries on the list are Trump’s America which comes in one above the Czech Republic.
STORY TO MAKE YOU SMILE 2.
I had a budgie that would get quite hysterical if we locked it in its cage. We also had a cat and a dog and all three would chase each other round the house so, we started to lock the budgie in the bedroom out of harm’s way when we went out.
Anyway one day I came home and found it dead. It had flown into the window and broken its neck. So I wrapped it in toilet paper and flushed it down the loo. Only thing was it floated and as I looked down I saw bubbles coming from its beak.
I grabbed it, pulled the paper off its feathers and began to give it the kiss of life – then i dashed off to give it a teaspoon of brandy. Well, if it wasn’t dead in the water it was dead now. I never really knew what killed it though – smashing into the window, the kiss of life or alcoholism!
What can the NHS do to help victims of coronavirus as the UK goes in to so-called lockdown?
Indeed what can the rest of the world do to help people while scientists try to come up with a vaccine?
Is it all really, isolation, face masks, panic buying, collapsing currencies and ravaged businesses … or is there some hope for the future?
Here the Preservation Society takes a look at what the near future hopefully has for us… there are waiting in the medical background experimental drugs and some tried and testied ones:
Drugs for HIV , rheumatoid arthritis, malaria, the flu and Ebola are serious contenders and are believed to be going through tests right now.
However, the government has refused to confirm if any are being tested on the 2,626 coronavirus patients in the UK – the NHS advises anyone with troublesome symptoms to take paracetamol and rest at home.
Chloroquine phosphate (Malaria)
Doctors are fighting the coronavirus outbreak is chloroquine phosphate, an anti-malarial medication. The drug – sold under the brand name Arlan – kills malaria stopping the tropical disease in its tracks.
Tests of the drug show it has potential in fighting the life-threatening virus.
Experts at the University of Palermo in Italy, as well as a team in Israel, collated the research on the drug in treating the coronavirus.
In their report, they claimed officials in the Netherlands already suggest treating critically-ill patients with the drug.
It is cheap and relatively easy to manufacture.
Hydroxychloroquine (Malaria)
Chinese scientists investigating the other form of chloroquine wrote a letter to a prestigious journal saying its ‘less toxic’ derivative may also help.
Drug giant Sanofi carried out a study on 24 patients, which the French government described as ‘promising’.
French health officials are now planning on a larger trial of the drug, which is used on the NHS to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis as well as malaria.
Lopinavir/ritonavir (HIV)
Lopinavir/ritonavir, marketed as Kaletra and Aluvia, is an anti-HIV medicine.
The drug has shown promise as a way of tackling coronavirus, scientists say, because it is able to bind to the outside of the coronavirus.
It is a class of drug called a protease inhibitor, which essentially stick to an enzyme on a virus which is vital to the virus reproducing. By doing this it blocks the process the virus would normally use to clone itself and spread the infection further.
The drug is available on the NHS and was prescribed around 1,400 times in 2018, either as Kaletra or ritonavir on its own.
Favipiravir (flu)
Favipiravir is the active ingredient in flu drug Avigan which is sold in Japan.
Doctors in China have claimed it was ‘clearly effective’ in patients with the coronavirus after they gave it to 80 people in the cities of Wuhan and Shenzen.
They said it sped up patients’ recovery, reduced lung damage and did not cause any obvious side effects. It is also used to treat yellow fever and foot-and-mouth.
It is not used by the NHS.
Remdesivir (Ebola)
Remdesivir is an anti-viral drug that works in essentially the same way as favipiravir – by crippling the RNA polymerase enzyme, stopping a virus from reproducing.
It was developed around 10 years ago by the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences with the intention of it destroying the Ebola virus. It was pushed aside, however, when other, better candidates emerged.
Remdesivir is not prescribed on the NHS.
Sarilumab (Rheumatoid arthritis)
Sarilumab, a rheumatoid arthritis drug which is marketed as Kevzara and is available to be prescribed on the NHS, is to be trialled on patients in the US.
Pharmaceutical companies Sanofi and Regeneron plan to give the medication to people with the coronavirus to see if it can help calm their immune response. The drug works by blocking part of the immune system which can cause inflammation, or swelling, which is overactive in people with rheumatoid arthritis.
As war planes flew overhead and loved ones faced the legalised murder of war, Geraldo and his world famous dance band took to the crackling airwaves with We All Must Stick Together.
The sheet music sold in millions across the world and the song went across the dance halls of war-torn Britain, almost like a virus…
And in so many ways it reflects how people throughout the world are feeling today.
Having grown up in World War II where the government unceremoniously dragged down all your wrought iron railings for the war effort, put your children on a train with a gas mask round their necks and a tag to say who they were. They also took all the dads and granddads and sons and sent them out to fight, probably to get killed. Obviously there are many books to be written about those times, but here we are in a situation where, seventy-five years later, we are seeing a situation with similarities.
Government is increasing taking over and making difficult decisions. And now, as then, we are reluctantly accepting the necessity. We need such leadership.
One thing I didn’t see much of until the other day, however, was the war time spirit. Down any street way back then people were as one family, helping the old folks and the children in their nightclothes down to the Anderson shelter in the gardens as the planes dropped bombs; queuing up for food, during the ‘rationing’, buying in for the house bound; Comforting the bereaved and treating all the children in the neighbourhood as precious as their own.
Why no wartime spirit? I was looking at my local town’s Facebook where people arrange for litter picking and tidying the park, slag off the councillors and argue the politics. There it was, the spirit. Who, they were asking, will volunteer to help those who are self isolating who can’t get their shopping. Or to telephone those who are becoming lonely and frightened as they sit in their homes alone and would love to chat. The response was immediate, from all over Greater Manchester. I was filled with pride; irrational maybe, but I was taken back to those days so long ago.
It was even better when I found out on Google that this organized volunteering is happening all over England. All over, I expect, the UK – and the world.
And up and down the streets individuals are putting notes through their neighbours’ doors offering to help in any way they can.
We, as we sit and read, watch interminable television, and those of us who are young and active but have to self-isolate because of underlying health problems, are facing maybe months of frustration. Soon the schools will close and parents will be facing months of re-organizing their lives.
But knowing that we are part of a new ‘family’ which cares and understands will keep us from feeling quite so isolated.
Maybe we are temporarily saying goodbye to the hand shake and the hug but there is a much more significant and lasting way of bonding. The war time spirit has arrived.
We know what it’s all about, and yes we ALL need pull together once more… we are at war!
Dorrie Jane Bridge
Suddenly it became real in Poprad … the clarion cry from the powers that be came down demanding we wear face masks in public places.
And to make it happen, security guards at supermarkets began intimidating like pretend secret police officers if somebody wasn’t wearing one.
Within minutes coronavirus changed the face of this beautiful little city at the foot of the snow-bound High Tatras mountains.
There were no faces, just a small sea of white oblong material topped by ski glasses.
Slovakia has decided supermarkets are breeding grounds for coronavirus. You can get it off the shelf, so to speak.
Poprad, has become a dystopian film set, silent except for the mournful church bells, a rag-tag of ancient and new buildings now dark and abandoned, its historic square rattling in the freezing winds from the white shrouded mountains.
We had caught up with Hong Kong where people on the streets, trains and buses have been wearing masks for many weeks— ever since, in fact the much-maligned Press and media broke the news about this mysterious viral pneumonia from Wuhan, China.
While wearing a mask has become the norm in many countries, particularly in Asia, this mask frenzy has hit nowhere as hard as Hong Kong. At first residents lined up overnight outside drug-stores to buy them.
South Korea, Singapore and Japan handed them out to people while Taiwan and Thailand banned the export of masks to meet soaring local demand.
In our case most Slovaks got to know about the face-mask edict as official messages lit up their mobiles.
However, in the US wearing a face mask is still being seen as almost socially unacceptable. The US government, in line with World Health Organization recommendations, says only those who are sick, or caregivers, should wear them.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams even tweeted: “Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching Coronavirus.”
And Dr William Schaffner, a professor in Vanderbilt University’s Division of Infectious Diseases, says that medical masks commonly worn by members of the public do not fit snugly around the nose, cheeks and chin.
But, David Hui, a respiratory medicine expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong says it’s “common sense” that wearing a mask would protect against infectious diseases like COVID-19.
“If you are standing in front of someone who is sick, the mask will give some protection,” Hui says. “The mask provides a barrier from respiratory droplets, which is predominantly how the virus spreads.”
Hui adds that the lack of evidence over the effectiveness of masks against the virus is no reason to dismiss them.
But even before the coronavirus outbreak, masks were common across East Asia—worn for a variety of reasons. It’s common for people who are ill and want to protect the people around them to wear masks. Others wear masks during cold and flu seasons.
The difference in perception of the mask comes down, in part, to cultural norms about covering your face, Hui says. “In social interactions in the West, you need to show your identity and make eye contact. Facial expression is very important.”
So, it was little eerie then to see this burgeoning city – a representative part of the Little Big Country – becoming home to the masked marauders of the supermarkets.
They move silently and with the precision of intent, almost like the old communist cogs in the wheel, clearing shelves and fridges … yes, because of a virus, decades of freedom, for a few seconds at least, seemed to have been wiped out.
The dystopian world of empty shelves, regulation and uniformity and faces well hidden has just returned to Slovakia.
Well, it looks like baked beans, beer and box-sets for the foreseeable as the climes of this foreign land we now call home put life on hold.
The Slovak government has ordered a 14-day ban on all cultural, sporting – and many other – events to avoid the spread of coronavirus.
Twelve cases of the infection had been reported, when the country shut down its airports and most of its hotels, shops, bars and restaurants and opened up ‘municipal facilities’ so it can isolate infected visitors and travellers.
Slovakia’s decision about coronavirus means that most of emerging Europe is now effectively closed to prevent the number of cases reaching epidemic proportions as it has in Italy and Spain.
States of emergency have been declared in Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Schools in almost all of the 23 countries in this once burgeoning part of Europe have been closed or are set to close from March 16.
Both Czechia and Slovakia have to all intents and purposes closed their borders to foreigners with exemptions to the travel ban only for trucks, allowing the economy to continue operating.
Czechs and Slovaks who commute to work in Austria or Germany will also be exempt from the travel ban.
However, Slovenia has closed its border with Italy.
Albania has closed bars and restaurants, and implemented a 72-hour curfew on private vehicles.
Albania’s Central Bank Governor Gent Sejko has announced a three-month loan holiday for both business and families. All those who wish to can now postpone the payments on their loans – including mortgages – without suffering penalties. Other countries are likely to follow suit.
Poland had banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people but some have set the bar a lot lower: Latvia – 200 people; Hungary, Lithuania and Romania – 100 people; Czechia – 30.
In Bulgaria only one seat in two can be occupied.
In Romania, the entire government went into isolation on Friday after a ruling party senator, Vergil Chițac, tested positive for the virus. Incredibly prime minister Ludovic Orban made the announcement at a press conference attended by dozens of journalists.
Sadly, 14 of the 70 people infected with the virus in Romania are people said to have come into contact with a so-called ‘super-spreader’ who is said to have lied about a trip he made with his mistress.
He has apparently affected his whole family and faces criminal charges and a possible prison sentence if found guilty.
Serbia has closed a number of crossing points on its border with Romania and
Estonia’s foreign minister, Urmas Reinsalu, has told people in coronavirus at-risk zones not to travel to his country.
On March 12, Azerbaijan reported its first death from the virus, a 50-year-old woman.
The only country in the region yet to report any cases of the coronavirus is Kosovo. The country has, however, closed schools and banned flights from a number of countries.
In the tiny valley where we live, the small city of Poprad has many new businesses – plush restaurants, bars and even a kebab house. They have opened for the approaching summer season when the High Tatras Mountains draw visitors from across the world.
But with no airports open and few hotels working properly, many of these new business owners fear the worst.
However, if the virus is contained in the next few weeks and mostly impacts the economy through March and April, most economies could bounce-back, as consumers resume their typical spending behaviour and businesses fix their supply chains.
But if, coronavirus continues to spread there will be deep and prolonged economic disruption and could cause a full-fledged recession.
It is being predicted that the slide affect (sorry, side affect) of corona-virus – the wholesale going-down-the-pan of world sanity – will come to an end next Tuesday.
It’s all just been a splash in the pan as far as some marketing gurus are concerned – particularly that lavatorial madness of stockpiling toilet rolls!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and anybody else who is reading, a consumer psychologist has predicted that toilet-paper hoarding will end within days.
Well, I bet that’s wiped the smile off the faces of some of the idiots who can no longer move in their toilet-sized homes because it’s packed to the ginnels and ceilings with puppy-dog soft pink Andrex, double quilted whiter than white Bliss or the workman like skiddy but medicated Izal.
Adam Ferrier, from Oz, one of the characters behind renowned advertising agency Thinkerbell, who has to keep a close eye on buying trends, says the stocking up on toilet paper was declining. ‘Most trends are over at about the same rate they start. The quicker the rise, the quicker the fall,’ he said.
And predicting next Tuesday for no reason at all, seems to be as good a day as any to call it a day on this incredible hand jive of shame had people fighting each other in the isles.
Some supermarkets have even taken to selling single rolls only from behind the counter in an attempt to stop violent scenes in the aisles.
And as so many people got bogged down in this ridiculousness, the sight of empty toilet paper shelves started them worrying they would miss out, and so they went on a buying spree too!
After three women knocked 10 bells of **** out of each other at Woolworths in Sydney’s western suburb of Chullora, NSW Police Acting Inspector Andrew New told the public ‘to calm down’.
But seriously, the worldwide spread of the novel coronavirus is leading to some very very curious side effects … store shelves are being stripped bare from Singapore to Seattle. Supermarkets in the U.K. have started rationing items and in Hong Kong a delivery man was apparently robbed at knife-point of hundreds of toilet-paper rolls.
That actually begs the question, where was he going with them?
But psychologists are viewing it as a fundamental human reaction.
One said: “People are really not equipped psychologically to process this type of thing,” said Andrew Stephen, a marketing professor at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School. “So that just makes it worse for a lot of people in terms of uncertainty, and then they do whatever they need to do to try and get back some control.”
And the U.S. Surgeon General has told Americans to stop buying face masks to ensure that health care workers have them.
EBay is banning listings for health products – packs of hand sanitizer that usually sell for a couple of pounds were going up for hundreds.
Similar panic buying often heralds snow storms and typhoons, but the global nature of the coronavirus’ spread — along with access to information facilitated by social media — means hysteria today is travelling in ways not seen in previous epidemics.
There is a little girl who is fighting as hard as anybody to expose the shame of parental alienation to the grown-up world.
She is not even 11 years old.
Many of you reading this will probably already know who she is … but we have been asked to keep her name out of things because of the fear of ribbing from her schoolmates.
Because, yes, we all know how cruel children are …
But they can never be as cruel as the wicked people who drive an emotional wedge between a young person and a parent.
These people are the modern-day wicked witches and monsters of our children’s’ worst nightmares. Sadly, they also haunt the dreams of millions of adults too.
How shameful these people are.
They deliberately destroy dreams, hopes, ambition, futures, faith, honesty, truthfulness, families … and they destroy their own children too.
An alienator is cannibalistic, devouring their own child’s happiness, an alienator is the new demon of misery, a tunnel-visioned Cyclops born of the thunder of their own anger.
The Li’l Legend sadly, despite the tenderness of her age, already knows the pain of parental alienation and one day recently, unprompted and in the silence of her bedroom, she sat down and wrote this for us all:
“To all you alienated parents remember that your children rely on you to fight for them in court just like my father did for me and that has made my life a lot easier now. That’s what you need to do please share and let others know that too. Li’l Legend.”
And her words ring to true as far as the fairytale world of those brothers and sisters grim of social care are concerned.
The Li’l Legend’s words, in their own way highlight, the failings of social and family care systems across the world … social workers, Cafcass in the UK and family courts every day need to heed her plea and fight for our children, not their ‘child-snatcher’ bonuses, their profit and loss sheets, not their tick boxes or their Damoclese-ean decision making.
Old records are back on the spin cycle! And it’s all down to Covid … basically, we have time to spend delving into the collections we’ve had stuck in the attic for decades.
Amazon has even launched a subscription service, the Vinyl of the Month Club, jam-packed with ‘golden era’ records straight to your doorstep (let’s hope they aren’t delivered like Frisbies eh!).
The subscription will only include records from the 1960s and ’70s, showcasing albums by Pink Floyd, Aretha Franklin, ABBA, and more. Hmmm…
But what’s happened to the hardcore of old records – those brittle bits of shellac with built-in scratches, the 78rpm? That’s not making a comeback sadly.
Well, here is a story about a 78 that made me and my mate a few quid and burst the bubble of an old country auctioneer….
“Back in the day when dealers were all as knowledgeable and honourable as Lovejoy I found a 78rpm shellac recording of George Bernard Shaw reading Spoken English and Broken English. He’d scratched his name onto either side of the disc in the run-off groove.
So, being a proper purveyor of paraphernalia and curiosities and not some waddling granny who gained what little knowledge she has by watching Bargain Hunt, I phoned the George Bernard Shaw Society.
I could see this immaculate recording of a BBC radio show from 1927 being worth hundreds if not thousands – well, it could potentially keep the wolf away from the door for a couple of days anyway.
Sadly, the GBS society soon disavowed me about its value by saying it is a wonderful thing to own but any real GBS fan already has one, so it might be worth £20.
Still, true antiques dealers travel ever-hopeful – not for us a bus pass and a tartan pull along shopping basket – so I went through my contacts book and found a far-flung country auction of questionable practices in the wilds of Shropshire and phoned them. We had a chat, I told the auctioneer what I had and the thousands I thought it might possibly have been worth. He recommended I put a reserve of £400 on it, which, on his advice, I did.
And so to the day of the auction I was tending to my mullet hairdo in the my La Maison-chic bathroom mirror when my Chocolate and Cream GPO 746 bell telephone began ringing off the wall. It was the auctioneer calling on his second-hand Nokia.
He couldn’t have apologised more, saying that he had dropped my George Bernard Shaw shellac and smashed it “But don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll give you your full reserve on it.”
I thanked him profusely but it was a good job he could not see my impression of a Jeremy Clarkson smug face down the telephone – I sold sold something I got for nothing which was worth possibly £20 for £400 after all!
And do you know, I couldn’t help thinking that the country auctioneer hadn’t broken my record at all – just like I had done, he thought it was worth thousands and at £400 he thought he’d got a bargain!
And do you know what else? I felt quite virtuous because now that the expectation of the value of the record had rocketed I realized not one bargain hunting, limping, jobless bobble hat wearing pretend dealer would be hurt in the making of that deal!
So, old records, mainly vinyl it has to be said, are so on-trend now that many are no longer cheap as chips but the ones to watch out for are ones which have been owned by a celebrity or were made in limited numbers.
Some time ago vinyl specialist and record shop owner Phil Barton came up with this list of how to get rich by keeping your eyes and ears open for a record buy!