OPINION: Our life under lockdown in London started the morning after our annual Burns poetry night [in January 2020] – celebrating the life of Robbie Burns - with a text message from my doctor wife’s brother.
His text revealed a fellow ophthalmologist in China sharing images of denizens from Wuhan suffering from the coronavirus, alongside – subsequently deleted – videos of security personnel evicting people from houses and stuffing them in police vans.
My wife, who is half Chinese, sat bolt upright and got to work uncovering and understanding what we now know is Covid-19. Back then she predicted everything that has happened and was condemned by her medical superiors for insisting on the wearing of face masks, the washing of hands and the implementing of social distancing. She also called for a New Zealand-style lockdown weeks before it all “kicked off”, as they like to say here.