It was around this time in October of 2016 when I came face to face with the possibility that I might die. For it had been nearly a whole year since I had been stricken with a debilitating cough, heart palpitations, and arrhythmia.

During this period I was in and out of A&E. Many mornings I awoke unable to breathe. Months and months passed and I began to despair. Things looked bleak. For it seemed that my respiratory condition might be permanent. I began to lose hope and started thinking about my death.

Then I gritted my masked face, took a deep breath through my air ventilation unit, and sold my beloved boat.

Depressing as it was, it nonetheless seemed to trigger my slow recovery. After many months away from the canal and a few days spent by the seaside in Hastings, I was resurrected. All that lovely salt air replenished me inside and out. I later learned that I had caught whooping cough and it was exacerbated by mold in my boat. I was lucky to have survived.

But the physical horror of being unable to breathe burrowed deep into my psyche. So when stories of a new mysterious respiratory virus first came out of Wuhan, I chewed every little bit of information voraciously. There's nothing that focuses your intellect and judgment as much as a brush with your own mortality.

My affair with the grim reaper made me an expert on the types and efficacy of masks. I wore my N99 mask to and from my gig at the "Troubador" on the 31st of January 2020. By then I was fairly certain that;

The Novel coronavirus is airborne and aerosolized.
The incubation period is up to two weeks.
It stays on surfaces much longer than ordinary viruses.
It stays suspended in unventilated air for hours.
Indoors is more dangerous than outdoors.
UV lights kill it.
Air-conditioning is bad.
Vitamin D, Zinc, Sauerkraut and Quercetin helps.
Hydroxychloroquine helps.
Remdesivir is rubbish.
The exponential R-rate of spread is scarier than the death rate.
Masks protect others when worn indoors.
There may never be immunity.
People drop dead unexpectedly from a "Cytokine Storm".
Some don't seem to recover (what's now called "Long Covid").

I also knew that some in my social circles would say that it's fake.

But if the government picture was skewed, the strident texts, tweets, and messages of my conspiracy leaning mates inspired even less confidence.

So who to trust? My experience says that in any crisis the early information is most pure and reliable. It's the cream at the top of the milk or the news before it hits the political spin. For me, it's the early Wuhan data which seems to offer the best predictors. Indeed what puzzles me, is why the WHO and government are just starting to figure out what I knew way back in January?

Is it just me or does it seem that the larger the organization and the fewer hands at the top, the more corrupt and incompetent the decisions are? Is it a coincidence that those smaller Asian countries that ignored the WHO advice and issued their citizens with free masks suffered far fewer deaths and yet never had to lockdown?

Well, I reckon it's time for We the people to bypass government and have our own intelligent discussion. For it doesn't matter whether you believe the rumors of a man-made virus or not. The point is not whether Covid19 was made in a lab - but that it could have been. If not this time, then the next. We have the technology to do so. Indeed the genie is out of the bottle.

Welcome to the age of Biowarfare. There's no point looking back. It looks like Covid19 is here to stay (in western countries anyway).

So what can we do going forward? Can we "live" with #Covid19?