By Johnny Sandelson
If we can just rewind to that moment, before I received that knock on the door of my Raffles hotel room, I ought to provide some background.
My long-term lover/partner and girlfriend, Annette, carries a Doctorate of Law, and she is the daughter of a German Maths Professor. Six weeks ago, when the first reports started arriving from Wuhan, she began what I would describe as ‘kitchen table’modelling of the forthcoming crisis.
I am not an academic. I am an entrepreneur with involvement in many businesses, from Thomas Goode, a 200 year old luxury retail brand, to Draycott, a 21 year-old care and nursing business, and also the 30 year old British Art Fair. The impact of the pandemic on these businesses is immediate and compelling. If anyone was to add together their collective years of existence, then they would definitely have witnessed similar events to these, ones we can read about in history books.
Most of the remainder of my time, and resources are spent as a property entrepreneur who latches onto the sentiment in the market. I ply a living as CEO of Auriens a company developing £2 billion of income producing real estate assets in the senior housing sector, for an investment audience of funds, who would otherwise get basically zero interest returns at the bank.
I digress.
So Annette also starts to message me each day her predictions for the next day’s Covid-19 numbers. I can’t help but notice her accuracy. Obviously I pass off her success as mine around the office, and everybody acknowledges my great wisdom in this new predictive field.
Annette’s prediction figures start to outrun government figures. I tease her that her maths has failed her, and that she has exaggerated the threat. ‘I don’t think so, it’s more likely that your government is now providing innacurate information,’ she retorts. Sure enough a few days later, and the official figures are once again matching hers.
It’s the same woman who almost two months ago without any fuss or drama, ensured we had house provisions for a failure of state infrastructure. She reminded me how we British guys might try ‘the World War Two thing – she was referring to the Spirit of the Blitz. By which she referred to the same blind optimism of Brexit strategists.
Historians say that it was actually touch and go at the Battle of Britain - it really could have gone either way. Miraculously it led to our victory, and that we assume we will always win. Sometimes we rely on this British ‘spirit’ to think that we have a higher calling, ‘a special sauce,’ for outrunning logic.
On Covid-19, Annette doesn’t believe the science advise, and she doesn’t believe the numbers, nor does she think that the virus cares about borders. Ironically, she mentions that if Germany had invented ‘ chicken pox parties’, as a mechanism to cope with this global pandemic, It would have been a great boon for the Brexiteers.
Final point on Annette, she asked me: ‘why is it that the government seems to listen to expert scientist on Covid-19, but they refused to listen to expert economists on the Brexit debate?’As if things weren’t bad enough, she then showed me the graph that really hurt. Essentially the UK has 23 per cent of the number of intensive care beds that Germany has, and about half of those of Italy, France and Spain. Our NHS is great, but strip away its European workers, and inject Covid-19, and we can expect to see Italy’s scenes of distress as merely a dress rehearsal.
Anyway, her kitchen table calculations provided me with a bleak outlook for the UK, but were also central in her logic that it was going to be fine for me to travel to Asia. ‘
statistically Singapore was managing the problem as well as anywhere in the world, now it’s probably top of the list.’ She added that if I really needed to travel for business that I should go now, because most international flights would likely be cancelled shortly. Ultimately, her opinion was that Singapore is the best place in the world to get Covid-19.’
Let’s return to that knock on my hotel bedroom door.....
Obviously I tried to disarm them: ‘Thank you for your concern, but I’ll actually stay here in the suite, and completely self-isolate”. I thought that last line would give me a little medical credibility.
Even my kids credit me with having fairly good negotiation skills: having succeeded at both significant flight upgrades, and wrangling rooms in peak season. ‘There’s no such thing at 100per cent occupancy,’ is one of my core theories.
Also, I believe decisions are not always about money, they’re mostly about timing, this can also apply to getting seats for KolNidre, and making dental appointments. I have a raft of special techniques.
So I’m ready for the challenge, except I’m now face to face with a small army of Hazmat suits, and security men who say very politely ‘Mr Sandelson, kindly collect your belongings and come with us, immediately.’ I know I’ve met my match.
In retrospect, what I should have done is grab a pillow and dressing gown, perhaps even the espresso machine, and coffee tablets, but I didn’t. I took a little soap bar which would sit beside my basin in the hospital bathroom, and foolishly, in haste, I forgot the over-sized Toblerone.
I next find myself in an ambulance to the National Center for Infectious Diseases, with an entourage to allow swift passage, and I have been awarded with a case number of 154.
Adrenaline has removed even the slightest effects of the mild flu symptoms. I’m just edgy, wide awake, and fairly frightened. I see myself as a guy who respects institutions, but heavily plays the margins, and when it comes down to it generally I know how to stay out of trouble.
A short drive later and the ambulance arrives at the hospital. There is a wait outside, high level security at the entrance. It appears to me the authorities don’t seem to know of my arrival, perhaps it’s all been a terrible mistake and I’ll be sent home?Five minutes later I’m taken, with great care, to my room on the 9th floor, not only were they expecting me, they have my name on the door, and records to hand – and there’s an incredible view from up here.
One couldn’t wish for a better looking hospital - I’ve travelled the world, this was as impressive a facility as I’ve ever seen. I paced out the room, thought about unpacking, but since there were no wardrobes, I ended up having to hang up my black tuxedo, and suit, on the disability rail in the shower room.
I would highly recommend this facility to the reader as the best hospital in the world. I can’t imagine a better place for someone to be ill. The temperament of staff, doctors, administrators, but what stood out was that I felt completely healthy, and having read the reports, there was no likelihood of me falling unwell.
Jet lag was kicking in, and I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. In a deep sleep twenty minutes later I was woken by a nurse and more facemasks and body suits.
One of the things you need to understand about me is my abhorrence of needles. Ever since an appalling incident thirtyyears ago, where I ended up being treated in a military hospital in Israel, I have avoided medics. Whilst others I my peer group go for annual medical check ups, I dodge the lot.
To me all treatments begin with a needle, things I avoid at all costs. My general justification, albeit a fairly weak high level one, is that I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and that my marvellous late father, who enjoyed a lot of each, lived healthily into his late eighties, so hopefully a few missed checkups won’t matter to me.
So the one thing that happens for certain in life, just as a credit card is needed to check into a hotel, is that blood is required in a hospital. It’s this realisation that I can’t avoid this intrusion which does bring me to despair. I’m now institutionalised, at the whim of the State, and I’ve lost my freedom of choice.
There are double glass sliding doors at the entrance to my room. As a nurse enters she has to wait for the first set of doors to close, and then use a security card to allow the second set of doors to open. In the middle vacuum she has to put on further attire, fresh googles and masks before she is allowed to enter my bed area. All I really need In life is a cup of tea first thing in the morning, and then espressos at thirty minute intervals throughout the day. I quickly recognise that the glass doors are a barrier to this. Also, and understandably, given the dangers of diabetes, there’s a zero sugar policy in the hospital.
So, against my will, I began the process of caffeine and sugar withdrawal. I know from experience that these will lead to fatigue and irritation, experienced as a holiday prank a few years earlier whilst a house guest in a villa in the South of France. The host, in partnership with my kids, had substituted my coffee intake to decaf. This had led me into a trance like state for a week, before the kids worried about my new personality, relented and ended the rout.
So the hospital now bought me headaches, driven more by a coffee and sugar withdrawal, as I still had no Covid-19 symptoms. By day 2 in solitary confinement , already I was starting to think I needed to mark my imprisonment with lines on the wall. This is no Shawshank, but the double glass doors, and no open windows did create a slightly menacing and claustrophobic environment.
So the rules are carefully explained to me. I am to take a Covid-19 test everyday, a small nasal intrusion, mild discomfort , and if on two consecutive days I get a negative result, then I’ll be released. The trouble is that new information is seeping in that this virus can stay within my system, still ‘shedding’ the disease , for up to two weeks .
Yesterday, a rather devastating article lands on my phone, my only device. The Lancet has reported one Chinese man who had kept shedding for 37 days. I wept on reading this.
So Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were similar. My jet lag kept me resting in the mornings, business calls kept me busy through afternoons. The third part of Hilary Mantel trilogy kept me from loneliness at night.
It’s odd, because a lot of my business is done by phone, yet nobody ever really asked where I was, or what were my circumstances. If they had known I was in hospital pyjamas-pacing my 120 square foot room it might have changed their view of our call. To me, it’s irrelevant. I’m as effective working as ever, perhaps more so actually as I’m very focused and there is no distraction on the horizon.
Mostly it’s just the quiet noise of an air conditioning machine. Think of being on a long-haul flight for 12 hours. Your relief when you disembark - regardless of where you’ve been sitting, the one common observation is the speed by which we all disembark, and walk with gusto to Immigration. And yet, I haven’t landed, it’s been three days , I’m starting to suffer a form of cabin fever. I start reading techniques used by submariners to overcome it. The excitement and adrenaline have passed, there’s no end in sight.
Given the enormous physical bother for the medics to enter my room, most of the communications is done by phone. I receive very regular calls checking on me... ‘sore throat Mr Jonathan?’they ask. ‘Nope,’ I reply. ‘Shortness of breath?’ ‘Nope,’ I reply. I’m not a medical student, but I can tell they’ve a checklist.
The low point, a sobering moment of Wednesday, was the senior doctor who
informed me that the true symptoms would likely kick in over the weekend. Imagine sitting in a car on the motorway being told there is a pile up around the bend, but you can’t use your brakes.
With every breath, I’m monitoring for signs of lung failure, there’s nothing like 24 hour a day isolation to focus your mind on your breathing. I’m seeking out every tiny impediment, but intruth I’ve never felt physically stronger.
There are endless messages coming in from well-meaning colleagues and friends, wishing me a speedy recovery. It’s difficult to explain from a hospital that I’m not unwell.
Nobody is listening to me, everybody ends every phone call with ‘get well soon.’ It’s so crazy , I’ve become a lightning rod to Coronavirus , a personality with the disease. My futile response that the disease might be called a virus, and might be killing some around the world, but for the vast magnitude of infected citizens, of whom I am a tiny statistic, it carries no more suffering than a mild hangover. Thousands of people die eachday from malaria , smoking and obesity, yet corona virus rightly has stolen the headlines.
The hospital food is horrible. It felt good when I was offered an alternative menu and changed from the English diet to the Malay menu, but it appears to be the same chef! Something called fishy porridge arrived. However, I am now losing weight, a long term plan, if I’m ever released, at least I’ll be able to wear my Tom Ford blazer again in the Spring.
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