Not gonna lie, this week was tough. As the weather turned, so did my mood, with the first of what you might call lockdown blues setting in. But the sun has poked its head out again and the weekend has arrived. So let’s celebrate all that’s been positive this week and remember us staying put is keeping people alive.
First things first, an incredible 1 million people have recovered from the virus. For obvious reasons we’re often fixating on the reported cases of infections and the numbers who do not survive – but it’s also important to acknowledge many do come out the other side.
We’ve also heard of some incredible cases of recovery, such as from one of our readers Kayla: “My 85-year-old grandfather was taken to the hospital in Toronto because he was having trouble breathing. He tested positive for Covid and was having trouble breathing because of the pneumonia associated with it. He was in there for just shy of three weeks with oxygen tubes to support his breathing and I’m excited to report that he arrived home on Friday.
“My 81-year-old grandmother is happy to have him home and we are all thrilled that he’s recovering. I’ve been reading a lot about vulnerable people and the associate statistics so I wanted to share this with the world that there is yet another example of a vulnerable person that has recovered from Covid so that we can all be a little more hopeful. Here he is on route home with a thumbs up.”
Captain Tom Moore turned 100 this week! He’s now raised £32 million for the NHS after initially only aiming to raise £1000 through doing laps of his garden.
He also became the oldest person to have a number one last week with single You’ll Never Walk Alone, a collaboration with Michael Ball and the NHS Voices of Care Choir, received over 160,000 cards, had an RAF flyover, Royal Mail letters stamped with a birthday message, and a train named after him. Undoubtedly one of the emerging heroes of the crisis. Happy birthday Tom!
The now ritual Thursday evening #ClapForCarers is still going strong, with an extra special effort made this week to honour Captain Tom. This video round-up from the BBC really tugs at the heartstrings 😍.
Bloomberg has reported that global emissions will fall by 8% or 2.6 billion metric tons in 2020 due to the worldwide shutdown, which is the largest fall in history!
And you want to do your own bit for wildlife during lockdown, why not video call an eel? Yes, you might need to prioritise your mum but after you’ve chatted with her, make time for the eels in a Tokyo aquarium who are apparently forgetting what humans look like and hiding from their keepers 😳. Get involved with the hashtag #PleaseRememberHumans.
Tour buses that would usually be used for getting artists to gigs around the country are being used as “hotels on wheels” for NHS workers. They’re pitching up at hospital car parks to offer much-needed respite to exhausted doctors and nurses.
People living either side of the River Tyne are staging a daily isolation disco from their houses to keep people’s spirits up! There are also mini raves cropping up in Belgium, the US and Australia so people are catching on 🕺🏽.
Worried about when you might be able to get your rave on for real? Well feel reassured that an LA creative studio, Production Club, has your back with this high tech pandemic-proof raving suit called the Microshell Futuresuit.
It’s designed to allow you to party while socially distancing with features including “phone integration, beverage and vape consumption, voice communication, a subwoofer sound system, a video camera, fashion accessories, and a breathable helmet with unobscured views”. Where should we place our order please?
Children under 10 in Switzerland have been told they can now hug their grandparents! The health ministry’s infectious diseases chief said scientists had concluded that young children do not transmit the virus. Though others have sounded notes of caution on these findings.
Drive-in arts festivals are taking off in Prague. “Art parking” has cinema screenings at an old train station and live theatre and music performances. “We don’t want to stream ourselves to death,” said one of the organisers. “Live art needs a living spectator and vice versa.” Hear, hear.
The cancellation of the London Marathon was both gutting for the runners who’d trained and the charities set to lose a huge chunk of fundraising cash (last year they raised over £60million from the event).
To make up for it, athletes and regular folk from across the country participated in the #TwoPointSixChallenge, doing any task whether serious or silly connected with 26 or 2.6 and raised over £6m!
We also love this image of the 150-metre-long Golden Gate bridge in Vietnam held up by two giant concrete hands, representing the Mountain God’s hands, which won the World’s Best Photo of Architecture 2020 out of 10,000 entries.
“Architecture2020 is a spectacle about the beauty that results from the interaction between light and volumes,” said the CEO of photo-sharing app Agora who ran the competition. “The contrast between chaos and order, nature and the artificial, matter and emptiness. Particles of photons bouncing off constructed volumes portrayed by the world’s great photographers.” Indeed.
Bad news for the potato industry but good news if you live in Belgium – citizens are being called upon eat at least two portions of frites a week.
The potato industry is facing a surplus of 750K of potatoes which are at risk of rotting after demand for the national delicacy (always at least double fried with mountains of mayo) plummeted. Oh how we wish we could help out with that one.
This week we’ve been brushing up on our lockdown lingo. Some of our favs were emotional “coronacoaster,” when you’re loving lockdown one minute but suddenly desperate with anxiety the next. “Quarantinis,” those experimental cocktails mixed from whatever random booze you can find in the cupboard to be sipped at “locktail hour.”
And the “elephant in the Zoom” – the glaring issue during a video call that’s too awkward to mention, such as a participant’s terrible facial hair growth or something bizarre happening in the background. We’re still having nightmares about that one poor woman who went to the loo with her camera still on…😱
Annie Lord from Vice asserts that we should have been clapping for Connell Waldron’s chain on Thursday, “an unacknowledged key worker of this pandemic.”
Who is Connell Waldron and what is this chain you ask? You’ve obviously not binge-watched the intoxicating, angst-ridden romantic BBC drama adapted from Sally Rooney’s Normal People yet. If that’s the case, get watching and tell me honestly that little silver chain isn’t doing it for you…
Govia Thameslink Railway has teamed up with Handlebars, a bike repair service, to rescue hundreds of bikes abandoned at railway stations, fix them, and donate them to key workers for free to help them get to work during lockdown.
And apparently, at one point this week, 1 loo roll was worth more than a barrel of crude oil. Take from that what you will as a summary of 2020 so far…
What cheered you up this week?
By Sarah Bradbury. Published on #ThisMuchIKnowon 2nd May 2020.
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