CoVID-19 Diary – week 18
Things feel like they’re back to normal and I have to admit there is something comforting about that. Its good to see kids playing in the park and people enjoying the prom. Of course it does help with the sun shining. Having the prom to myself felt good but a break from the normal always is. The real problem here is that everything isn’t back to normal. If a terrorist group had commandeered the Midland hotel and posted snipers on the roof the prom would be deserted even if the terrorists couldn’t be seen.
Seeing as British deaths at the hands of terrorists this year could probably be counted in single digits compared with 60k at the hands of Covid-19 we might need to calibrate our concerns. I’m not saying people without masks should be thought of as potential terrorists but some will be useful idiots in terms of spreading the virus. So getting back to the real problem: we just don’t know where we are with this thing and that’s got to be down to having no recognisable markers.
Matt Hancock moving the goalposts yet again this week (claiming lockdown actually began on March 16th) is so characteristic of how the government has approached the pandemic. And after Michael Gove was photographed coming out of Pret a Manger the government announced that we wouldn’t have to wear masks in takeaways. While some of the regulations are obviously sensible its not clear where the demarkation between sensible and convenient is. Daily deaths are still in the hundreds yet the easing of the lockdown is proceeding at a pace and is obviously not being informed by the science.
I think its a fair assumption that once we’ve got into what appears to be a post Covid period the outbreaks will be put down to natural causes — after all the flu casualties don’t get blamed on governments. They are part of the cycle. Outside of the nationwide lockdown it will become increasingly dificult to point a finger because the crisis will be so fragmented. And without that focus it will become increasingly difficult to discipline the population. Even now its the minority of passengers on buses who are wearing masks even though they are mandatory. You can’t really point to someone because you don’t know if they are exempt so its down to the bus drivers but its not the responsibility of drivers to police the rule. The alternative would be to have transport police randomly stepping onto buses but that’s a slippery slope.
It occured to me to call this ground zero and start again but that airbrushes out all the pain and trauma we’ve been through this year and gives the government a pass which would allow it to carry on in its slap-dash methods as well as it be unjust. But we can’t even realistically define this as a mid-point as we only have the beginning to measure against. When Zara Sultana challenged Hancock he rewrote history thus making any credible assessment impossible. Planning the future with any reliability is dependant on an honest assessment of how we got here. Another indicator that the situation is hopeless is Dominic Cummings holding on to his post with the chance of that changing next to zero. The one constant we have is that the government can get away just about anything if they can ride public opinion for a few weeks.
Ultimately it all comes down to actions on the ground and Dominic getting away with murder or Matt arguing the toss doesn’t take PPE away from a hospital or check a bus for compliance — at least in the now. Ironically what they rely on is public outrage. If its a measure of what is important then if it disappears within a month the indication is that it wasn’t. The more the outrage, the more they can get away with and as the lies increase the less traction the truth has. And its not just that an erosion of accountability means they can get away with what is outragious, even if they decide to enact sensible policies transparently from now on they are still faced with the foundation they are building on either being shoddy or non-existent.
This government is not going to collapse and, anyway, there is no credible alternative. We can only conclude that we are screwed. There is no viable way forward from here. None of the mechanisms used in the past to get out of this kind of mess fit the bill. As the saying goes: “if I were you I wouldn’t start from here”.
I heard someone say he would rather be on a bus that broke down than one that broke up. I would normally agree with him but as of now I would go for the latter. The bus needs reassembling or we need to make the decision to walk. It can’t be fixed. Our nation can’t be fixed. Our history can’t be fixed. Its time to man the lifeboats, knock the deckchairs, ship furniture and band instruments together as makeshift rafts. Send first class to the back of the queue and prepare for many casualties. Forget back to normal, its back to basics. We are not in the middle of anything, we are at the end of something. We need to be good enders if we are to see anything like a half decent new beginning.