Myths & Legends About The Lurgy

WHEN does the scaremongering end and the truth begin?

Should we laugh off this latest attack on our mortality, maintain decent hygiene as a matter of course and get on with our lives, or lock the doors, hunker down with a good supply of food and medicines and twitch the net curtain while riding things out?

A regular reader of these pages may well be able to predict the Sautter response.

The Corona Virus or whatever else you want to call it, should be treated with respect. It is an obvious world health issue and should be treated as such. Having said that, once the sound opinion of qualified experts has been sought, we really should concentrate on living our lives as normally as possible. And the recent bonanza of online and published nonsense isn’t very edifying to our national psyche and general levels of common sense.

If you’re a reasonable human being – which, if you’re a Sautter customer, you’re already guaranteed to be – you have high standards of personal hygiene and have some respect and consideration for others. That means washing your hands properly and making sure that if you have a cold or otherwise you do your best not to pass it on. End of.

As long as we all do this, there’s no more point worrying about the Corona virus than fretting as to whether the next Storm Deidre or whatever it might be called, is going to blow the roof of your house. Let us be very clear. If a storm’s coming with your roof’s name on it – there’s very little point in you worrying about for six weeks beforehand.

The same applies to this latest ‘pandemic’ to strike the world’s population. How does it help, pray tell, for the newspapers to scream frightening what ifs? How does it help if we wonder about what might happen if the worst comes to pass and schools shut, sports matches are abandoned, concert halls silenced and travel itineraries confounded? Leave the planning, strategy, future proofing and worrying to those best equipped to know about and deal with it.

Take sensible precautions, as per prevailing medical advice – and get on with your life! That means keeping the economy ticking over by shopping at your usual places and not going mad buying up gas masks, cans of spam and enough hand sanitiser to cleanse the Caribbean of all known life.

The only Corona virus we’ve had recently is the one which makes you dither and pontificate about which cigar you’re going to smoke next. Will it be the Montecristo Media Corona? Or the H. Upmann Petit Corona? It’s a problem indeed worthy of worldwide sensationalism.

Wash your hands, carry a small container of sanitiser and a packet of tissues and get on with your daily life. Drop by and have a Corona with us. You won’t regret it.