This is the 1,4001st post at Eyewear, btw. Hamilton's take on the BBC poetry season seems dead-on - the media is often the problem, not the poetry. How media luvvies tip-toe around poetry is how people get scared off.
July 15th has the right to consider itself smack dab in the middle of summer. High summer should be a time to relax - the fish are jumping. Instead, today's news is grimmer than day-old Eyewear. Depending on who you listen to, as reported by the BBC or The Guardian, death rates for previously healthy people are expected to amount to a) 25% of all cases or b) 20% of all cases. Worse, death rates are expected to be up to "1 in 200" of all who "seek medical advice from their doctor".
That rate seems higher than the current death rate of 0.28 per million the UK is experiencing at the moment, until one considers that most people don't have swine flu (yet). This 1:200 death rate means 5,000 for every million cases. Given that the government is predicting that 20% of the UK will (at a minimum) contract the H1N1 virus, and even before assuming the virus may mutate, that means, at a conservative estimate, 10 million Britons will get the flu. That's 50,000 deaths. Put another way, that's 10,000 deaths of otherwise young, healthy people, between the ages of 5 and 65, who, had this pandemic not happened, would've stayed alive, all things being equal. Since a predominant number of these are likely to be teenagers and twentysomethings, we're looking at maybe 6,000 young British people dying in the next 6 months.
The government clearly anticipates this - it is planning to cancel elective surgery this autumn, and to fast-track autopsies. Given that seasonal flu normally kills, in the UK, 5-7,000 people annually, this is, despite what some say, an alarming scenario.
Hopefully, the vaccinations can begin in October or November, which might manage (since there will only be enough for 50% of the population in 2009) to cut the death rate to 25,000 by Christmas. Unions are beginning to debate access to the vaccine - clearly, health care workers need it asap; but then, so do the police, and the army; and, I would argue, those also on the frontline - emergency workers. Lastly, teachers, who meet more viruses than anyone else but doctors, publicans, priests and news vendors, should be given access. Also, of course, children, the aged, diabetics, asthmatics, and those with other immune-system problems. In short - almost everyone but BBC executives, rock stars and real estate agents, will be legitimately vying for the first jab. Tough decisions ahead, and it may be something of a "post code lottery". Priests are suggesting we avoid Holy Water, so we know it is serious. I continue to be cautiously concerned.
The news that Tony Blair is the UK candidate for the position of EU president is a revolting development. Blair single-handedly made Labour both electable and unacceptable, spinning a rotten coalition of Guardian and Telegraph readers, that tried to fuse a social justice agenda with Tory takes on war, justice, banking, and privatisation of various sectors of society - in the process making Labour the most draconian, war-mongering, and pro-business government the UK has seen since, or before, Thatcher. Blair's cringe-worthy lies on weapons of mass destruction and dalliance with Bush-Cheney (themselves now staring at a smoking gun back at Langley that makes the Bourne movies plausibly undeniable) make him the least-likely convert to Catholicism since Symons. He is a dreadful politician and a duplicitous weirdo who grimaces artifice. He must not be allowed to run and ruin the EU.
The Hay Festival is working with Oxfam to bring writers to Oxfam shops across the UK during the Oxfam Bookfest Fortnight. I am glad to see this idea, which I long championed, coming to fruition - the development of a truly national literay series linking all the many shops and volunteers of Oxfam.
I myself, as the Oxfam GB Poet-in-residence, will be a guest of the fest. On Monday, 13th July, I will be appearing, as part of the Hay Oxfam events, at 91 Marylebone High Street, from 6.30-7.30 pm, in conversation with Paul Blezard, to discuss poetry and poetics, pop culture and pandemics. To book, email Martin at oxfammarylebone at hotmail dot come or call 02074873570.
The next night (14th July) sees seven fine poets, most from Paris, reading at the same venue, from 7-9 pm, including the new Nthposition acting poetry editor, Rufo Quintavalle, and the editor of Tears in the Fence, David Caddy.
And yes, that is Bill Nighy pricing books as a volunteer in the same shop all our reading events have been at since 2004, in Marylebone!
Six years ago, it all seemed so clear. I was against the Iraq invasion, and so were many (most?) American, Canadian, British, Irish, and Australian poets, from what I could tell. Anthologies, poems, events, and marches, ensued. The invasion happened anyway. The revolution was e-booked. Now, Western forces are dying daily, in relatively high numbers, and the public is beginning to ask questions. I'm a member of that public, not above it, and am asking the questions too. I tend to adore Barack Obama - he is so effortlessly stylish, apparently decent, and, within reason, left-leaning for an American leader - but he has made this campaign in Afghanistan his own. Curiously, there's been little poetic response to this war against the Taliban in the "Af-Pak" region, either from the soldiers on the ground, or the people back home who are sending them there, or underwriting their deaths with their support. What do the poets think about this? Does that matter? What is to be done? I am currently - and no doubt unwisely - on the fence about this, unable to yet make up my mind. For Eyewear, that may be a sign of maturation.
This article usefully, and frighteningly, relays how the swine flu virus can bind to either the respiratory system, or the intestinal tracks, in humans, and, if it binds higher, kill quickly through pneumonia, if the immune system reacts too strongly with inflammation. The current claims, to keep us calm, are that this is mild, but the latest science is that the virus can, and likely will, mutate and kill quickly (the 1918 version killed young people in hours, not days). London is now Swine Flu Central. This is a terrifying pandemic at the early stages, and, each step of the way, it has leaped to the next level, exactly as predicted. I for one remain concerned.
I've guest-blogged for the Oxfam Bookfest blog, today, on the over-valuation (maybe) of The Great British Novel.
