It's the autumn equinox now. Not that we really have
'autumn' in Australia, where the seasons don't follow the European pattern,
though we pretend they do. But we certainly have a time when day and night are
balanced, and this is it.
I'm also at a point of balance in the self-isolation:
seven days done, seven days to go. Some of the tension has eased. I hear that if
symptoms are going to appear, they are most likely to appear in the first five or
six days. But that's only a probability, so I'll stick it out. Cuisine Corona
again tonight: spaghetti and tins. With vodka and orange.
 |
| In the back garden: our Callistemon viminalis in the sun |
It's the weekend, though I'd hardly know it. One day is blurring
into another and the weekend fades out. For me, the only difference is that
it's a worse time to go for a walk, as there will be more people on the streets
and in the parks. So I haven't gone out either on Saturday or Sunday. In a daring move today I stripped off and lay
out for a while in the back garden, to get some sunbeams on the skin. As air
travel is declining, there were less likely to be overflights that would see
the terrifying sight.
If I'm still symptom-free at the end of the second week,
I'll feel able to go out - for essential purposes only. Bread, not circuses. By
then I'll be fairly confident that I'm not a carrier and not likely to infect
others. But I can still become infected, at any time. For all of us, the
probability of getting infected rises as the epidemic spreads in its
exponential-growth phase. In the social arenas through which we move, the points
of danger multiply. So, while I won't be self-isolating completely (as I have
been so far), I am going to be extremely cautious.
And on that note, I have finally worked out why we are told
not to touch our faces. It was the one part of the prevention routine that
wasn't intuitively obvious.
It's a question of how infection occurs. As I understand
it, the new coronavirus is not much of a predator. It doesn't bite, and even if
it lands on us in a droplet from someone's sneeze or cough, it can't infect us
through the skin. It only gets into our body via specific portals, the moist
membranes of our noses, mouths and lungs (and possibly the eyes).
But: if the virus is in our vicinity, our busy hands are likely
to pick it up, from any surface on which the virus has invisibly landed,
including our clothes and skin. And if we then touch our face, as we often
unconsciously do - rubbing our eyes, scratching our nose, brushing against our
lips - we may actually be working for the damn virus, bringing it right to a
portal into our body. Both washing the
hands well, and stopping them touching the face, help to prevent this.
