Wednesday August 19th 2020

09:00 Lois rings up the local pharmacy to check that they will be delivering her 2-monthly supply of statin pills. She also asks them if they can deliver my first ever supply of statins, but they say they haven’t received the prescription for mine yet – the nurse told me last week that they should be with the pharmacy by Monday last (17^th), i.e. 2 days ago.

When I ring my doctor’s surgery to check what has gone wrong the doctor tells me that no prescription was ever sent to the pharmacy last week, but that he would do it “right away”.

What madness!

I feel somehow a bit annoyed. I have been perhaps bounced unnecessarily into taking statins. My cholesterol reading was only 5.5, which is borderline by anyone’s standards – damn!!  

our local doctor’s surgery

11:00 I vacuum the whole house – it’s easy to let this chore slip because Lois and I have been in lockdown for a few months, and nobody visits us now - sob sob!

We used to have our U3A Danish group meetings here every second Thursday and Scilla’s U3A Old Norse meetings every other Wednesday, so there was always one or other group meeting every week, which prompted me to vacuum, to give the group members a false idea of our standards. Now it’s just Lois and me all the time, so we are tending to live like pigs again – yikes!!!!

16:00 We stop for a cup of tea and one of Lois’s delicious home-made banana muffins – yum yum!

We listen to an interesting radio programme, “More or Less”, the series that dissects the stats in the news, and tell us whether we’re being deceived or not. The presenter is the charismatic  Tim Harford.

Much of the programme tonight is about COVID-19. The programme told us last week that the stats for Coronavirus deaths in England has so far been calculated on a different basis from the other countries of the UK: anyone who  ever tested positive and later died has till now been counted as a Coronavirus death “even if they just got hit by a bus on some subsequent date”, whereas in Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland you have always had to die within 28 days of the test for it to count as a Coronavirus death.

As a result England has tended to exaggerate the numbers, while the other countries have tended to underplay them. This is because it turns out, that the most accurate reading is if you impose a 60-day limit.

This week, however, England decided to go with the 28-day limit, so as to at least we are now consistent with the other 3 countries. Also England has decided to publish all figures for their 5-day totals, which is nice: and the latest old “no limit even if you just hit by a bus” figure is 62; with the 60-day limit the figure becomes 22, and with the 28-day limit the figure becomes only 10 – and this last figure is labelled the “headline figure”.

At least we can see all the figures, which is nice.

But what are the chances of being hit by a bus? The programme was prompted to investigate this.

It turns out that 37 people were killed by a bus in 2018 in the UK, either as a pedestrian, motorist or car passenger. But can we estimate roughly how many of the approximately 42,000 people who have died following a positive coronavirus test, were actually likely to have died after being hit by a bus?

Even though British roads are among the very safest in the world, Tim says, there are still about 1800 deaths on the road annually, i.e. 1 in every 35,000 people. Around 330,000 people have received positive coronavirus results since the emergency began, so in a normal year we would expect about 10 of them to die each year in a road accident – although probably that figure will turn out to be less given the general lockdown peace and quiet - yikes!!!! 

So there may have been a handful of so-called “coronavirus” deaths that actually resulted from road accidents.

But not many, obviously.

Sheer lunacy – it’s statistics gone mad, I tell you !!!!

19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect’s weekly Bible Class on zoom.

This is the third evening in a row she has been on zoom. I’ve been beginning to feel like a bit of a “zoom widower” – it isn’t really a problem for me, apart from the fact that it means I don’t like to watch any TV programme that Lois will want to see herself at some point: which doesn’t leave much choice unfortunately - damn!

19:45 I decide to listen to the radio – the third part of an interesting drama series about the birth of the “I Love Lucy” sitcom on American TV.

I listened to the second part yesterday, and the situation they’ve arrived at so far seems to be that one of the US networks, CBS, is interested in having a TV show based around Desi and Lucille, and they have settled on the theme that Desi will play a showbizzy band leader (“Ricky Ricardo”) – ie same as his real life role, which was a band leader – while Lucille will just be an ordinary housewife, with ordinary concerns.

And as it’s the 1950’s that means Lucille’s going to have to be a bit ditsy and scatter-brained with it – oh dear! But sadly that was the only way they thought that a woman could be funny in those days - oh dear (again) !!!

On set: Lucy (left), Ricky (right) with their friends Fred and Ethel

Tonight Lucille and Desi are still haggling with CBS over the terms of the deal. Lucille doesn’t want to play the episodes in front of a live audience, which was what CBS wanted her to do – for the network it’s the cheapest way apparently.

The solution comes when Lucille and Desi decide to go through CBS Head of Programming – some guy called Hubble – the one person at CBS who doesn’t like the show. Hubble says it’s “the worst thing I’ve ever seen”. But Lucille and Desi tell him they’ll be responsible for any budget overruns if he’ll let them film the shows and retain ownership of the films afterwards.

Hubble agrees because he thinks it will benefit the network financially if Lucille and Desi pick up the bill for any overspend. And he thinks they’re crazy if they think they’ll make any money out of ownership of the films – “Nobody’s going to pay good money to see re-runs of ‘I Love Lucy’”, he said.

My god, what madness!!!  If only he could have guessed that broadcasters all over the world would be showing reruns of ‘I Love Lucy for the next 70 years! My god (again) !!!!!

21:15 Lois emerges from her Bible Class. We watch an old “Blackadder” sitcom and then we go to bed – zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!