COVID-19 in South London :: 30-03-2020
									  									
I'm on day 9 of having not left the house, but for some time spent in
the back garden and trips to the waste bins out the front. Yesterday I
finally developed symptoms after all of my four housemates, the first
of whom came down with symptoms 17 days ago and largely recovered
after around 7 days, though with some flarings-up since then. That
seems to be the case with my other housemates who have been ill with
what we suspect is COVID-19: a few days feeling rotten (pressure on
chest, exhaustion/fatigue, some feverish symptoms like a chill/shiver
and a dry cough), followed by some recovery, and then some flarings-up
of the symptons again. Albeit quite mild. 

One of my housemates is high-risk, so she was really anxious when
symptoms came around, and a trip to hospital, while not testing her
for it (at present it seems to be only v.wealthy high-profile
individuals who are being tested), did test her to eliminate
everything else - so I think we're all feeling fairly certain that
this illness that we've got 'is it', and conversations with other
friends elsewhere in London seem to confirm these similar symptoms.
The main task is social distancing, quarantine and isolation during
the period of contagion. 

It took far longer than it should for the UK to have improved its
approach to this thing in shutting everything down and issuing
guidance on social distancing and isolation. I'm not sure how far this
made it out of the UK, but before this approach there was a lot of
quite irresponsible and violent talk from the state about an
alternative approach towards 'herd immunity', which, if this trend had
been followed, would have put our path of statistics (in terms of
reported cases and their outcomes) in a far worse position that they
are at the moment and would have overwhelmed the health services even
more-so. A consequence of the late Government decision on the advice
of global health experts, towards social distancing and isolation, was
that employers were also waiting to take their cue from the state -
and my own employer, I believe, reacted too late as well, moving only
to remote working on Tuesday 17th March, when all the signs were there
at least a week prior, or perhaps even sooner, that shutting down the
completely unnecessary commuter contagion network was much needed. My
own employer, like many others, were waiting on the cue from the
state. 

That said, when I informed my employer the day before they began
remote working that I didn't intend to come in to the office anymore
(out of concern for spreading things one way or another; as a
potential carrier spreading things from my home to the outside world,
or increased exposure between the outside world and my home) they were
supportive - and they have been v.encouraging for people to take time
to shut things down and get well. Hence why I'm writing this today,
rather than working, after being awake shivering all through the
night. 

Right now, I'm feeling okay. I'm hoping the symptoms stay as mild or
at least as manageable as they have been the past two days, though I'm
also prepared for something slightly worse - with enough now-recovered
housemates there to look after me if I need it, plenty of fluids, and
enough space to rest and try my best to take it easy and recover as
fast as I can.

As I was awake through the night last night, I watched the talk[1] by
Maciej Ceglowski that solderpunk[2] recently referenced - on the
'website obesity crisis'. The talk is spot on, in many regards, though
I would say that my own interests as well would be in framing these
considerations even more-so on the functionality of the Web and what
we want - if anything - from it. I would say that the ubiquity of the
Web is the biggest barrier to us thinking out side of it in terms of
the use-cases for much of the functionality that gets de facto built
on and through the Web. A discussion for another time, once I'm
feeling better.

Hope everyone on port-70 is keeping well, keeping distant and staying
secure as well in livelihoods etc. Look out for your people and your
self.

[1] https://www.webdirections.org/blog/the-website-obesity-crisis/
[2] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/conscripting-surveillance-capitalism-to-fight-covid-19.txt