Earth Notes: Coronacast for March 2020

Updated 2024-02-19.
A snapshot of the world as seen from EOU HQ, while the UK hunkered down to beat the bug. #podcast #coronavirus #lockdown2020
148s "coronacast" Uploaded . Downloads:
Transcript:

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].

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.

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.

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.

2020-03-30: * the temporary NHS Nightingale Hospital is being built at ExCeL, where I possibly caught my Covid-19 (if that's what I had) at Futurebuild.

Show Notes

There were a few production snafus as I was trying to get this thing done quickly. For one thing, I should give Audacity a few seconds to get going when starting (re-)recording, else early sound is not captured. I am always learning!

Some Ambient Soundscapes Including Lockdown

Some ambient sound clips, including some captured during lockdown:

Postscript and Timeline

The heat storage project ended up being delayed about two years...

See the 16WW Coronalog for the timeline of events after this episode.