Earth Notes: Coronacast for March 2020

Hi, I'm Damon Hart-Davis, and this is an Earth Notes mini podcast episode for 21st March 2020.

Here in London, as many places elsewhere, we're in a fair degree of lockdown, with pubs and schools closed, public transport reduced, and distancing measures in place. All to try to suppress the spread of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 [SARS-coronavirus-2].

[00:30]

It's a lovely sunny day today, and I've just been out for a walk in the cemetery next door, keeping my distance from other people. I did pass a friend on the street and we chatted for a while at a couple of metres' distance. (I confess to nipping to the corner shop to buy some crisps, but I kept interaction minimal and I think hygienic.)

I may have already had my run-in with the bug, possibly catching it at Futurebuild while on stand*. I did 7 days' self-isolation just in case. Then, when the rules changed, my family was dragged in alongside me for a few days. They were just out in time for the likely last day of school before summer.

Tomorrow is Mothers' Day, so we aim to order take-away from our favourite local Italian place, supporting them and having some good food.

I already bought in a bunch of beer from my favourite local brewery, purely to support them in their hour of need. Not because of the hops.

[01:23]

The Radbot business is functioning since we all basically work from home and we've just closed a funding round, but we have to expect sales and further investment to be hard. Never mind lots of day-to-day logistics...

I don't think that my heat storage project counts as 'essential', so it will be paused for a while. Which is a shame, since we'd have filled it up on a couple of recent days.

Older family members seem OK and/or are going to stay with slightly younger relatives for a while, to avoid some risks and lots of boredom.

We cancelled a visit to one, and its not clear if a trip that we've booked to the south coast with the other will need to be cancelled too. Nor am I sure that we'll be making it to the south of France this summer, however green our transport would be.

[02:05]

We'll survive, but the world is likely to be quite different in the eighteen months that a vaccine will take to become widely available.

I hope that people realise that some of their more carbon-intensive habits broken over the next few months can simply be jettisoned. Let's see.

There's more on my "Earth Notes" Web site at Earth.Org.UK.