Classes and peer groups closing
Every day, I see more cancellations locally and from around the world. Given the situation, it is not surprising that coronavirus is shutting down the rope scene; it was only a matter of time. We hope it won’t last too long but some predictions are suggesting social distancing might be required until the end of the year. The fewer people follow instructions, the longer and worse things will be.
A voice of reason amid the panic
A came across a post which seems to be a voice of reason amid this panic. I know it’s hard to get a sense of proportion from the media but I hope you find this reassuring:
Stev Hjioff
15 March at 09:04
My views on COVID-19…I am trained as an epidemiologist and a communicable disease physician. I have also worked in predictive modelling in healthcare and in international health systems development. I am not, however, claiming to be an expert, but I would like to make a few observations…
1… it is unwise to draw parallels from one country to another. Many factors will be different from place to place, population age structure, population density, breadth of healthcare coverage, reliability and breadth of testing facilities, reliability and breadth of contact tracing capability, stage of spread when control measures were first introduced, population mobility, and many other things.
2… epidemic curves are a base case estimate and bear little comparison with real world spread. The more a disease spreads, the less reliable they become and the more complex a situation is, the less predictive they will be.
3… In the UK, the actual experts on this sort of thing are known as “Consultants in Communicable Disease Control”. In other countries, there are different arrangements. While others, such as intensive care specialists, microbiologists, virologist, mathematicians, journalists, acute physicians, behavioural psychologists have a contribution to make, they are not experts on disease spread in the community and should not be regarded (or present themselves) as such
4… Almost everything that I have seen on social media is misleading and inaccurate. Some of it is extremely dangerous. If you want high quality information, you can get it from the health ministry, public health authority or health system of the country you are in. If you don’t want to rely solely on government information, look at the official statements from reputable health orientated universities and departments. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Johns Hopkins and the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard are a good place to start. The World Health Organisation has good information, but it has to work in a range of very different countries and so may not be the most practically useful for a particular country.
5… we are not testing everybody in the world, so we can’t reliably measure death rates. A simple totting up of the numbers will be a massive overestimate. In addition to this, the way people are tested varies massively from place to place. A low number of cases could mean not much disease or not enough testing.
6… There are only two meaningful strategies for managing an emerging infection. The first is containment, where you isolate cases and trace and test their contacts. If spread within a community becomes too great, this strategy becomes ineffective. The second strategy is herd immunity. The basis of this is that when a certain proportion of people have become immune to an infection, it can no longer spread and so people who are not immune are protected. This is why we vaccinate children. Part of a herd immunity strategy is to protect people at particular risk of harm until lots of low risk people are immune, so the disease can’t spread to the vulnerable. A herd immunity strategy is not about culling the vulnerable, it is about protecting the vulnerable. This is a new infection and we are learning about it and our immune responses over time. Strategies will change and develop as knowledge grows
7… in many outbreaks, more people die (usually of things like heart attacks and strokes) because they can’t get access to healthcare than die of the infection itself. It is extremely important to make sure that health services are not overwhelmed so that people can get the help they need.
8… there are three key ways we can protect health services. Firstly we need to ensure that, if we don’t need to seek healthcare we stay away. Secondly, we “flatten the curve” to stretch out the number of people getting the infection over a longer time period, so they don’t all arrive at hospital at the same time. Finally, we need to ensure that we have enough people to staff our health and care services. If people can’t get childcare, they may not be able to work, so we must be very cautious about closing schools etc.
9… nothing is simple and every action will have risks of negative consequences that we may not initially be aware of, so if something that is obvious to you is not happening, it doesn’t necessarily mean that others are stupid or wicked, it is more likely that you are missing part of the picture…
10… social isolation can do a great deal of harm to people, particularly older people and the more vulnerable. As containment and delay measures increase it will be really important that our friends, families and neighbours are supported. If we all check in on those around us, no one will suffer unnecessarily. Now is a good time to start sharing phone numbers.
11… wash your hands
Knock-on effects
For many, it will be the knock-on effects of this pandemic, even if they are lucky enough to avoid infection. I’ve already heard from family and friends who are losing work or business. Sadly, there will be a lot of suffering, financially and emotionally. We all need to pull together to beat this.
Talking of ‘pulling together’ and ‘beating it’, our health service, the NHS, recommends sex (yes, masturbation counts) to boost the immune system and mood. So, get to it! It’s for the sake of everyone’s health! Doctors orders 😉 See? There is some good news.
I feel very sorry for all those people who cannot avoid social contact to make a living and, especially, for our brave front-line staff who have to deal with the sick. Hats off to the front-liners upon who we depend upon.
A little financial help for you
As a gesture to help those short of money or who need some encouragement to spend self-isolation time productively, we are knocking 19% off all tutorials for the next two months. In my usual dark sense of humour, the coupon code is predicably COVID-19. Just enter it at checkout on ShibariClasses. Sorry but I think it’s always better to laugh than cry if you can.
Soldiering on
Since ESINEM-Rope and ShibariClasses are on-line businesses, we will be soldiering on and trying to minimise any impact on customers, others and ourselves.
Social contact restrictions will mean we will not be shooting tutorials with third parties for the time being. However, Nina and I will be coming up with alternatives. Given these are tough times, we will try to get a few more freebies on-line.
So far, we don’t foresee any issues with ESINEM-Rope. Our main supplier has assured us that it’s business as usual and we have just received a big delivery to keep stocks up. Our local supplier just delivered a couple of days ago and we have more pastel multi-coloured bamboo rope on the way. I have also just heard that 800m of our new premium jute is en route with more following. So far, so good.
As you can see from the header image, we are taking every precaution and have constructed a new ESINEM HQ for the duration of the pandemic 😀