Virus.

 Thursday, the 7th of May ’26.

A simple cold

A blocked nose, a cough, regular bouts of sneezing and a horrible slime that should be spit out. A regular cold, nothing more and nothing less, leading to sleepless nights and interference in my daily routine. I won’t die from it, it will have no long-lasting effects on my general health, it’s just 48 hours of my life put on hold while some invasive virus fights it out with my bodily defence system.

I’m just the vessel that hosts this tussle.

I drink hot tea, clear my nose every 5 minutes, dress up warm but keep the house well ventilated, and wait until it passes.

We call it a cold, and yet I sweat my way through the night.

The absurdity of life, us humans thinking of ourselves as masters of the world - check - Universe even, and yet the wrong little virus entering our system can annoy us no end, some can even kill us or eventually wipe us out. We’re only as strong as the latest virus is weak.

Recently, we have all been made aware of our vulnerability by the outbreak of the ‘Hantavirus’ on board a cruise ship near Cape Verde. The Hantavirus, I’d never heard of it, they say it’s spread by inhalation or contact with the faeces of rodents, rats, mice or vole shit, to be clear. Not something you would expect to find on a cruise ship. Passengers want to get off and go home, like ‘rats leaving a sinking ship’ (sorry for the pun). The danger is that once on land, they could spread the virus, and since COVID, we have become a little touchy about people spreading viruses.

And so is life, we can make plans, make wars, make plans to find another planet we can infect with our destructive behaviour, do whatever we like, but can never be quite sure that one day the smallest of the small - a virus that gets breathed in can pop up its head and ruin all our plans.

It is hard to fight a war against a virus, Drones, missiles, atomic bombs, genocide, torture and bloodlust - all the ‘amazing talents’ we have when annihilating each other are senseless when facing up to viruses. A virus is not after land, and cannot be bribed with cryptocurrency or having a billionaire as a friend. It has one goal: reproducing itself. It doesn’t argue among itself over beliefs, religious ceremonies, or morals - rights and wrongs, it just wants to get inside our body and feed and reproduce using our life essence.

A virus is strictly neutral, doesn’t care whether you are white, black, brown, Asian, European, American or African, so why do we?

Coal miners used to have a saying, ‘down in the mine we are all black’, meaning when mining, whatever your ethnicity, everyone faced the same dangers.

So is it when it comes to viruses. Concerning viruses, we are all in the same boat (excuse another pun). Yet another reason we humans should concentrate more on helping each other out, instead of trying to wipe each other out.

So today I’ll be staying home to avoid infecting others with my little cold. And feel glad that I didn’t book a cruise this summer.

And now, Hot tea! And biscuits.