Nick Robinson: Am I a superspreader?

‘Aren’t you meant to be in quarantine?’ the man in the cloakroom queue asks. I sense that his enquiry is motivated more by concern about his wellbeing than mine. ‘Don’t worry! I’ve not got the coronavirus,’ I try to reassure him cheerily. That’ll teach me to talk about my health on the Today programme. I mentioned on air that I’d taken a precautionary test after returning from holiday in south-east Asia with a cough. Soon afterwards my guide in Phnom Penh sent a message to ask how the rest of my trip had gone. Pleased and somewhat puzzled by her solicitousness, I quickly realised that she had heard about my test and wondered whether I — or rather, she — was all right. As the rousing overture to Fidelio begins, I look around at those packed into the Opera House and start to count up the number of people I could have infected. As well as those at Covent Garden there are all the people I travelled with on the Tube. There’s the BBC staff and guests at Broadcasting House that morning. And those at the BBC’s Westminster studios the day before when I recorded my podcast. My anxiety is rising by the minute. What about the folk I met at a dozen or more places in Vietnam and Cambodia? The number of my ‘contacts’ is now in the hundreds — and perhaps thousands. My God, I conclude, I’m a superspreader. My guilt grows steadily until the first notes of Beethoven’s spine-tingling quartet bring me to my senses. I got the all-clear. I’m not ill. This virus may not have infected my body — but it has certainly infected my mind.