Britons will be glad to know that you can beat Corona with tea

by | Everything Else, Independent Lifestyle, Lockdown Life

The phrase “All I know is that I know nothing” has probably never been more true than right now, with the world hit by this virus that is sweeping through population after population and has brought the entire world to a standstill.

And because it’s so new, of course, we know almost nothing about it – at least nothing for certain. But as the weeks pass, as statistics grow painfully out of the mass of data, of the somewhat morbid tally of infections / deaths / recoveries; so theories turn into likelihoods: and while some of these likelihoods will be revealed as untruths and tossed aside onto the scrapheap of history, others will grow to be incontrovertible facts.

Incontrovertible facts

This isn’t one of those. This is somewhere on the scale between “I saw a Facebook post and it said that…” and “My mum’s neighbour’s sister-in-law works as a nurse and they were told that…”

We know certain things well enough to be able to call them facts: that Covid-19 is mainly transferred from person to person via microdroplets; that these droplets are most often transferred through speech (and only second through sneezing and coughing), and that Trump is possibly the worst possible person to be in charge of a country in the grip of a pandemic.

And the other thing we know is that Covid-19 lodges itself in our throats – especially if they are dry – and from there are breathed into the lungs.

Keep it warm and wet

The best way, apparently, to prevent this is to make sure that you ingest warm liquid, ideally every fifteen minutes, to keep your throat warm (apparently Covid doesn’t like that) and wet.

Cuppa vs. Cataclysm

Which is why (you wondered when I’d finally get to it, didn’t you?) it seems obvious – to me at least – that the great British cup of tea – which, I’ve heard tell, got us* through two world wars and both the building up and dismantling of an Empire – seems the absolutely perfect protection against being infected with the corona virus. Yes, a cup of tea every half hour or so – to be sipped at regularly – might just be the best thing to help us survive this cataclysm too.

Perhaps God is an Englishman, after all?

*…and when I say ‘us’, I think we both know who I mean…

Next week: why drinking whiskey all day might be the second best survival mechanism after the great British cup of tea.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

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