Gavin Francis (2021) Intensive Care. A GP, a Community & a Pandemic

Gavin Francis is an Edinburgh GP with around 4000 patients on his books. He also works as a locum on the Scottish Islands. Harris springs to mind. I’ve read (and reviewed) his first book, Island Dreams. (‘Islands can be a testing ground’ as can Covid-19)? He mirrors Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Years:

‘the best physic against the plague is to run away from it’.

We’ve become overfamiliar with the term ‘essential worker’, face masks and Covid testing it seems from a different century.

Yet, it was only a few years ago. 31^st December 2019. Chinese authorities (after a delay) alerted the World Health Organisation about a virulent new strain of coronavirus (corona refers to the crown-like structure under a microscope) from a street market in Wuhan Province.

Beginning, Part I: Escalation: January, February, March, April: Peak.

Middle, Part II: May, June, July: Respite.

End, Part III: Respite, Autumn-Winter: Reinfection. Spring-Summer: Recovery.

The last party we went to before Covid was Charlie Mac’s sixtieth in Dalmuir Bowling Club. I remember saying to my mate Charlies was a bastard, cause he still had all his hair and looked thirty. The music was too loud! He’d a band on and then a singer who was brilliant. But to be fair the buffet was great.

Barry Brennan was my first Covid funeral. That meant standing outside our local and clapping We clapped the wrong coffin. Barry didn’t die from Covid.

Then there was Dona Moran’s online. Everybody liked Dona. We couldn’t go to her funeral either.

Then there was Dianna. Neither of these were directly related to Covid.

Tam Donnachie.

Then there was wee Jimmy. And is wife Teresa. Both gone now.  Non-Covid.

Kenny Sweeney and his wife, who was a barmaid in the a pub I drank in, both died from Covid. He didn’t take the immunisation because she did and it hadn’t worked (as far as he was concerned) and so I was told.

The women whose husband drove a bus. I didn’t know her or her husband, but she told me about it.

Class mattered. Age mattered. Culture mattered.

Groundless conspiracy theories took root and blossomed. Remember the moron’s moron Trump, the US President advising his followers to inject themselves with disinfectant. He was, of course, talked over and talked down. Not before some people had taken his advice (not many).

My mate Laughing Boy tried to explain to me why he wouldn’t take the vaccine. Francis explains it better.

‘Healthism’.

My body. My life. I exercise and eat healthy.

None of that being true for Laughing Boy being a binge-eating fat baldy fuck. But the direction of travel is similar. In the hidden antechamber of his mind, he eats healthily and doesn’t drink a bottle of gin in one sitting.

Anyway, his body. His choice. He lives for making bad choices. I’m pretty good at that too. But I’m no fucking stupid. Well, I might be. But I accept all vaccines have risks, which are outlined. But I trust our medical profession as do most others. We were the fastest rollout in the world. All of us  (apart from Laughing Boy) queuing up to get inoculated against a virus none of us had heard about a year ago.  NHS is quasi-religious in our culture.

Poverty and deprivation doubles your chance of death from coronavirus. Ignorance kills you. And not only you. Other not like you.

‘Your patient is your mirror, therefore look with

                sympathy;

…life is what you are for and why you are here’.

Notes.

 Covid-19 Stats (UK, 2020)

• Total deaths by end of 2020: Over 75,000
• Peak daily deaths (April 2020): 1,000+
• Mental health impact: 1 in 5 adults experienced depression (ONS, 2020)

“The infection was propagated insensibly, and by such persons as were not visibly infected…” — quoting Daniel Defoe