Jonny Wilkinson: Sore throats, hot days and coronavirus ... what next?

Thermal imaging scanners at Chinese railway stations use CCTV cameras to scan passengers entering the stations for fever. These passengers are then pulled aside and checked for the coronavirus.

A DIFFERENT LIGHT

It's been hot and it looks like it's getting hotter. Winter seems an eternity away, along with chilly mornings and winter aliments. Why then, do I seem to be surrounded by ailments at the moment, both internationally and domestically?

The coronavirus has triggered grave international concern at the World Health Organisation, which at the time of writing this was grappling with the predicament of whether or not to declare it a global epidemic.

Cases of the viruses are growing exponentially, as the death toll rises. I've never been a big fan of Corona beer, insipid, diluted, promoting itself with the superfluous theatre of a slice of lime or lemon being stuffed down it's bottle neck.

Google Trends reveals a spike in searches "Coronavirus beer", "Corona virus beer" and "Virus corona beer" in the last few days. Who would have thought?

Domestically one of our family woke up last Friday morning complaining of a sore stomach. By the time I got home various gastro related symptoms had taken centre stage.

Leftover rice was blamed - apparently a common source of food poisoning due to a bacterium; Bacillus Cereus. Not a happy pup.

That afternoon my daughter took our mokopuna to the doctor for a snotty nose, where she hi-jacked the consultation and asked the doctor to look at her throat. A diagnosis was quickly made she had something like tonsillitis, apparently her infection may have been in need of draining.

That night we had our granddaughter over to facilitate our daughter's convalescence. That night my wife had a bad night's sleep playing musical beds, our one was too hot and overcrowded with our moko.

She went to the spare bed which broke and then to the couch. In the morning she woke with the sorest throat in history, nothing could compete with it. She was grim, all three of them were grim. It's never fun being crook, particularly over a long weekend.

The heat seems to be the real kicker. The mid summer 28C+ days peaking the peaks of a fever and curdling the waves of nausea to new heights of miserableness. I seem to be relatively healthy for once. My dodgy neck, IBS and rigor mortis like spasms paling in comparison.

I'm lucky, or am I? Will the other shoe drop? Will I wake up with acute tonsillitis, campylobacter and Devil's Grip? Who knows? You have to enjoy long weekends and summer heat the best you can.

Winter is coming.

• Jonny Wilkinson is the CEO of Tiaho Trust - Disability A Matter of Perception, a Whangarei based disability advocacy organisation.