I’m very sorry that the actor Idris Elba has been tested positive for Covid-19. The good news is that the great man is not suffering any symptoms at all and appears to be well. My question is simple: how come celebrities like Elba are getting tested and mere riff-raff like the rest of us aren’t?
Elba can now self-isolate, knowing that he definitely has the virus, but what of everyone else? I can only speak for me, but I have had Covid-19 several times in the last two days.
Whilst walking through the Mall shopping centre yesterday, I broke into a sweat and it was only when I remembered I was wearing a thick coat and it was very warm that I concluded I might not have the virus after all. And my asthma has been exceptionally bad this winter, so I have spent much of the winter with a dry cough. If I start sweating for no obvious reason and I start coughing, it could mean literally nothing. Or it could be that I’ve caught a potentially fatal disease.
The idea is that I stay at home – self-isolate, is the current term – and hope I survive. Then, I resume life, not knowing for sure whether I have had the bloody thing and, given this will be a permanent virus, fearing that as I get older it’s more likely to kill me.
The only figure to believe is the deaths one, of which we have so far had 69 in Britain. The numbers who actually have the virus bears no resemblance to the number tested positive. It’s believed to be upwards of 50,000 now and growing fast.
Do nothing and 81% of the population will have had the virus and over half a million people would die. Yet these figures are models and projections. We don’t really know. So how do we react?
We’ve reacted by testing footballers and football managers, actors and certain MPs. Not front-line workers or even lack office workers who sit in crowded rooms for hours and days upon end. In a strange way, the gross inequalities of our country are ruthlessly exposed by who gets the test and who doesn’t.
Some of us are scared of getting the virus, never mind going through the next winter not knowing if we ever had it at all. I keep hearing the science and I believe the scientists, even though the system of testing seems very odd and somehow very wrong.
Get well, Idris. You always come across as a good bloke. However, I don’t understand why you have been tested and not others.
