facing facts

 Jan 25th 2020: 

My (non-medical) brother who lives in Hong Kong was celebrating Chinese New Year with friends. There had been some fuss over there after China had an outbreak of a Coronavirus in the city of Wuhan. They were saying that this particular virus had been spread to humans from the consuming of bats from a marketplace. Who even does that?? There had been some person to person transmission, and Hong Kong being so close to China wasn’t taking too many chances. They had lived through the SARS in 2002-2004 (another coronavirus) and were seeming fearful of this being the same, or maybe even worse. They are used to wearing face masks in Asia just going out on a normal day (high smog, fear of virus transmission).  We often see visitors from Asia  walking in London with their masks on - maybe they know something we don't all this time.  My brother sent me a photo at work today of him and his friend in face masks whilst out. Brushing off the concerns in Hong Kong, I playfully sent back a photo of me and my nurse ahead of prepping for surgery this morning, and typed “welcome to my world”.