I am trying to stay positive during this Covid-19 lockdown. Rationing my media use, not trying to blame this disaster on politicians, and not looking too far into the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But where do we go from here? Social distancing \u2013 ISO \u2013 is\nan effective way to slow the spread of the virus and flatten the curve. Some\ncountries have done it amazingly well and have relatively low fatalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The virus isn\u2019t going anywhere, though. I\u2019m no expert, but\nfrom what I read it seems that if the controls on social interaction are\nloosened, cases go up, and with them fatalities. We don\u2019t have immunity, unless\nwe have been infected, and then we don\u2019t know how much immunity we have. Free\nto roam, the virus will spread through populations until a certain proportion\nhave been infected, survived and have some residual immunity. But this doesn\u2019t\nlook like a nice prospect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s only possible to lift ISO if there\u2019s mass testing and then tracing of any cases. Or if there\u2019s a vaccine, but that\u2019s perhaps a year away. This isn\u2019t going to happen yet. The best we can hope for in the short term is a slight relaxation of the current rules. Politicians are talking of \u2018lives versus livelihoods\u2019: if people become too poor and social spending is slashed, then that has a mortality rate attached to it and decisions may be made in a utilitarian sort of which costs more lives decision.I\u2019ll be honest here: I can\u2019t see my normal life of travelling around the world\u2019s wine regions resuming any time soon. I\u2019d be surprised if I can fly before September, but if you offered me this now I\u2019d snap your hand off. [Having said this, I\u2019m thinking very carefully about my travels and I\u2019m not going back to the insane life I had before. I need to travel, but much less than I\u2019ve been doing for the last four years. But I am a wanderer. \u2018Not all who wander are lost<\/a>.\u2019]<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s no quick return for normal. Where does this leave\nsports, such as rugby and football (soccer)? I can\u2019t see them returning with\nfans in stadia for a very long time. You can\u2019t have any measure of social\ndistancing with a crowd of 40 000 people packed into a stadium. And as for the\nsuggestion of playing behind closed doors? This might work to get some games\nplayed, but it would be close to unwatchable on TV. Without the live crowd\nthere is no occasion. The spectacle is dead. This could be the end of sport. At\nleast, for quite a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the hospitality industry? It\u2019s also hard to see busy\nrestaurants and bars observing any sort of meaningful social distancing. And if\nthey aren\u2019t busy, they won\u2019t make the sort of money they need to stay afloat.\nIt\u2019s so encouraging to see attempts to support local hospitality at the current\ntime: we are going to need to keep doing this if we are to have restaurants\nstill. I feel a sense of loss for all my friends whose work has evaporated in this\nindustry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The end of wine? Not just yet. But part of the appeal of\nwine is context, sharing it with others. Going out and buying wine in bars and\nrestaurants. Drinking together. Wine in isolation can give some pleasure and\nconsolation, but stripped of some of its meaningful context, I can see it\nsuffering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am trying to stay positive during this Covid-19 lockdown. Rationing my media use, not trying to blame this disaster on politicians, and not looking too far into the future….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24527,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24525\/revisions\/24527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}