The lockdown that many of us expected and indeed feared is now upon us. The government has ordered all non-essential businesses and shops to close along with children’s playgrounds and other places where people may be tempted to gather. Where I am on the Welsh Marches people seem to be obeying the rules strictly but in other areas, such as London, adherence to the new restrictions is at best patchy from what I can gather. This is something that should cause the government concern as London is one of the major epicentres for infections from the Chinese Covid19 virus. The sort of ‘openness’ to the world as encouraged by London’s mayor Sadiq Khan has created the perfect environment for infections of this sort to spread. Unlike where I live, London has become a place dominated by siloised ghettos where there is little of the sort of spirit of togetherness or a feeling of ‘we are all in this together’ which saw Londoners survive the Nazi bombing blitz.

With so many people living so close together and a massive ingress and egress of people daily, London is the place where novel diseases can spread quickly. Factor in the issues of large concentrations of people who are immunocompromised that live in London, there are 38,000 Londoners with HIVn along with the fact there are more people in some boroughs with Tuberculosis (a disease that was once almost completely eradicated from the UK) than are found in third world hell holes like Iraq and Rwanda, then there is the chance of a perfect storm. I truly believe that Chinese Covid19 is a virus that can be beaten, we are after all much more scientifically better off than those who were dealing with the 1918 flu pandemic, but if Chinese Covid19 is going to go bad anywhere, it will go bad in either London or the other Covid19 hotspot which is the West Midlands.

Its quite possible that my wife and I have already contracted and recovered from Chinese Covid19. We took a work related trip to London in early February and had to use Khan’s mobile Petri dish (the London Underground) to get around and we both came back feeling really awful, my wife worse than me. She had to be put on a short course of steroids after having breathing difficulties from some cause that her doctor could not fathom out what it was. It was not a standard chest infection because there was no copious production of mucus and the doctor was baffled as to the cause. I think that now we know what ailed us and it was most likely Chinese Covid19. If I am correct in my assumption that what we’ve had is the Covid19 virus then it means that this virus has been present in London since mid January at least.

The government has quite rightly ordered all places of worship to close however many religious groups were starting to restrict services and attendance prior to this order. The Church of England and the Catholic church were voluntarily imposing social distancing restrictions and Britain’s Jewish community which has a high proportion of educated medical people within it who are very aware of the dangers of novel diseases, started to lock down at least a few weeks back. Jewish organisations cancelled communal events and instituted teleworking for those working in Jewish organisations. Reform and Liberal Jews have moved religious services online. Orthodox Jews have also instituted their own restrictions and Sabbath services have retreated to the home and kept strictly within families rather than taking place in a synagogue. I would like to take the opportunity to remind Haredi Jews that this virus is not any respecter or boundaries and you are just as liable as others to contract this disease so please scale back your events, even if it does mean not carrying out a Mitzvah (commandment). In my view the Eternal One wants us to live by the commandments not die because of them. To them I say ‘choose life so that you may live’ and keep to your homes.

Some Islamic mosques and mosque organisations have I understand been behaving well and have, before the government order, voluntarily either restricted their numbers, asked their congregations to do different prayers at home rather than the normal congregational ones and were forbidding wudu or ritual washing at mosques. These are sensible precautions to take and even though I despise the ideology of Islam I have to give credit to those mosques and Islamic religious leaders who have seen the writing on the wall regarding Covid19 and who have acted accordingly.

Unfortunately there are some mosques and Islamic religious leaders who are not behaving responsibly. According to a report on the Islamic 5Pillarz website, on this most recent Friday, 50% of mosques remained open as normal. However, this is the first Friday that restrictions on gatherings has occurred so before I pass judgement on conduct I will wait and see if this situation changes or stays the same on subsequent Fridays. It could be that restrictions on gatherings had not properly bitten last Friday and the situation may be very different next Friday and we may see the vast majority of mosques closing their doors.

What should particularly worry the government is that there appears to be an ‘anti closure’ attitude among some Islamic religious scholars. They believe that nobody, not even HMG, has the power to close a mosque. This is a dangerous attitude to take in the present time and not just because if increases the likelihood of Chinese Covid19 virus spreading in the Islamic community but also because such arrogance will damage the already fractured situation with regards community cohesion in the United Kingdom. I believe that if the police can walk into a pub, as they did in my area on Friday night just gone, and demand a closure for public safety, the police should be doing the same to these dangerously defiant mosques. The ordinary citizen is having their movements curtailed to an extent unprecedented in recent times and it is only right and fair that we all, without exception, follow the rules on distancing etc. It will be interesting to see just how many mosques defy the government order to close that has been given. It will be even more interesting to see if the police will enforce mosque closures or whether they will turn a blind eye to such infractions of the closure orders, just as some forces have turned a blind eye to other matters of crime and disorder that have emanated from Britain’s Islamic community. After all it is not as if certain police forces do not have form for this sort of double standard policing is it?

On the subject of these dangerously defiant mosques, 5Pillarz said.

Anti-closure scholars have justified their decision by emphasising the importance of Friday prayers in Islam, the lack of a government ban on mass gatherings, and the fact that general wider society has not shut down.

Earlier today Sheikh Haitham al-Haddad, of the Islamic Council of Europe, reiterated that he categorically disagrees with the full closure of mosques on the grounds that “no one has the right whatsoever to control the Houses of Allah.”

In a fatwa he urged Muslims to try to perform Jumu’ah as much as they can, but if they cannot find a congregation to join then they should try to establish Jumu’ah wherever they can in homes or even in parks. And if they can’t then they must pray Dhuhr instead.

It needs to be stressed at this point that Haitham al-Haddad is not exactly any sort of moderate. According to Rational Wiki, Haitham al-Haddad is the usual mixture of Jew hate and misogyny and like so many others of his ilk is a Saudi trained Imam. He has gained notoriety as head of the Leyton Sharia Council as a promoter of FGM and believes that democracy needs to be replaced with Sharia. He’s a bit of a cartoonish image of a sharia promoting shitweasel to be quite frank and I hope that more sensible minds in the Islamic community prevail. If these more sensible minds do not prevail then we may be in for some unwanted trouble either from an increased spread of Chinese Covid19 or from al-Haddad’s misguided followers. Now that the government has banned mass gatherings and the country is now in lockdown, it will be interesting to see how many mosques will follow the rules or which will follow the road of stupidity espoused by the likes of Haitham al-Haddad? I hope that science and common sense wins out over the sort of medievalist fatalism being promoted by some Islamic religious leaders.

As regards what the government is doing, I think we all have some quibbles about speed of action and especially border closures. Such border closures may not do much to prevent an epidemic that is already here, but it would be politically popular for the government to do so. It’s really really bad optics for a government to demand that those it governs go into lockdown and put normal life on hold only to see a continuation of arrivals from across the world, including from Covid19 hotspots such as China and Italy.

One thing that gives me hope is finding out that the government is not running around like headless chickens and acting reactivly and without thought. What the government appears to be doing is putting into place plans that have been formulated after a wargaming exercise back in 2013/2014 that was based on the premise that Britain would be hit by an influenza pandemic. I was heartened to see that much of what the government is doing appears to be based on the Public Health England plans that came about as as result of previous pandemic wargaming. I assume, hopefully correctly, that the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also following similar plans.

We are hunkering down here although it is somewhat stressfull with a lively five year old who really doesn’t understand why the playground, soft play centre and his school are closed. We’ve got enough food to last us a week or two and we have turned our back garden into a survival garden with crops going in. Tending to this survival garden is taking up a lot of time hence the lack of posts on here recently. Ominously the CB radio which is normally full of drivers doing the Wales to England run in order to chat to each other is dead quiet, which suggests that many of those drivers have been sent home in order to self isolate. As from tomorrow I will be listening out daily between 10 am and 11am on Channel 14 mid band on AM and anybody whose got that equipment should maybe do the same as it seems to be the defacto mid band AM calling channel.

We all have our part to play in fighting and beating this virus. Those scientists and medical researchers who are putting effort into creating a vaccine based on the ongoing and past research into coronaviruses that has been taking place since the SARS outbreak, are doing their bit. We can all do ours by taking care not to spread this disease by our own careless or thoughtless actions.