Prof. Jihad Bishara, the director of the Infectious Disease Unit at Beilinson Hospital in Israel, said that some of the steps being taken to combat the coronabug around the world were very important, but the virus is not airborne, most people who are infected will recover without even knowing they were sick, the at-risk groups are known, and the global panic is unnecessary and exaggerated.

“I’ve been in this business for thirty years,” Bishara said. “I’ve been through MERS, SARS, Ebola, the first Gulf war and the second, and I don’t recall anything like this. There’s unnecessary, exaggerated panic. World leaders have to calm their people down.

 ‘So many are thinking that this virus is in the air, it’s going to attack every one of us, and whoever is attacked is going to die.” He said.

“That’s not the way it is at all. It’s not in the air. Not everyone who is infected dies; most of them will get better and won’t even know they were sick or will have a bit of extra mucus.

‘But in Israel and around the world, everybody is whipping everybody else up into panic – the leaders via the media and the wider public – who then in turn start to stress out the leaders. We’ve entered some kind of vicious cycle.”

Oh well said Sir. I have stopped watching the television news because every bulletin is the same but with different solemn-faced ‘experts’ on show. Yes, it is a bad epidemic but the world has been through such things before. The Spanish flu pandemic in the early part of the last century killed off about eighteen million people but the world survived. This one is pretty minor by comparison.

Mind you, I did like the way President Crocodile Mnangagwa calmed the people of Zimbabwe. He glibly announced that Zim would beat the virus because they have built a new crematorium.

I am sure that most Zimbabweans were comforted by those soothing words!

Yet another group of ‘experts’ have claimed that the happiest people around are those who tend allotments.

Really?

Possibly the best known tender of an allotment in this country is the self-acclaimed leek grower Mr Jeremy Corbyn, still the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition. I don’t think I have ever seen this particular pratwinkle with a smile on his face! Somehow I don’t think his leeks are making him happy.

Some good has already come from the government’s coronabug restrictions. Only five people including the priest are now allowed at weddings. Because of this, can it be possible that television viewers will not be subjected to the nuptials of Princess Beatrice with Pompous Andrew giving her away and Fergie simpering and making daft pronouncements for Hello magazine.

Or is that too much to hope for?

On a pleasanter note, the sun is shining today and my little Cotswold Valley is beginning to dry out. Daffodils and primroses are out in force and I have five glorious acres of field to wander with ‘my’ dogs. The local pub is closed but all in all, it feels good to be alive now that winter is hopefully behind us.

Well it feels good until I listen to news bulletins!