Boris: First Class or a Fool

An eerie silence has descended on the world. No vapour trails dissipating in the sky, no roar of engines as cars chug down the motorway, no abundance of tourists flooding off cruise ships.

The world has come to a standstill.

It dawned on me that I am quite literally living through history right now. In years to come, children will study the corona virus, analysing which countries responded best and why others suffered such an alarming number of deaths. We will all reminisce of the times we couldn’t embrace family, and remember how anti-bac became an invaluable item.

I wonder if we will remember the initial panic though. I wonder if we will reflect on how so many people flooded to the shops and depleted essential items that key workers then couldn’t access.

Pasta, toilet roll and flour... seriously? We are experiencing a pandemic, not a zombie apocalypse!

I wonder if we will remember that our own Prime Minister caught the virus, likely because he was not living by the rules he’d set out for the rest of us. I wonder if we will remember that Dominic Cummings similarly broke the rules that so many of us were abiding by and caused major uproar throughout the country. I wonder if we will ask the government why they didn’t lockdown sooner. Was it, perhaps, because Boris was more focused on pursuing Brexit than attending those crucial initial COBRA meetings?

I wonder if we will remember the relentless hours that NHS workers dedicated to saving lives, knowing that they were putting themselves at risk? I wonder if those same NHS workers will be rewarded for their efforts. Will they be given a pay rise? Will they be given time off? Will the families of those who have lost their children or parents because they were working on the corona virus ward be offered support? Call me a cynic, but I doubt it. I think that once we are through this everyone will let the memories of lockdown fade to the backs of their mind and fizzle out. I think the government will paint themselves as heroes for getting us through a pandemic which we never could have anticipated. Except, we could.

We saw Corona flood Italy, leaving the country in despair. We did nothing. Now, the United Kingdom finds itself a country with the second highest recording of deaths, behind the United States of America. Yes, other countries may not have given the most accurate recordings of their death tolls, but with over 40,000 deaths, the UK is not just a little worse off than other countries, it is considerably worse off.

Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion on how we have coped with coronavirus. Some will say Boris did a cracking job, others will say his policies and late lockdown cost us thousands of lives. I personally don’t have a clue because we are still fighting it. Those countries with low death tolls or releasing lockdown may have a second surge and we may have prevented that. I’m not convinced though. My gut tells me that we, a first world country with far more resources accessible than many other less developed countries, have well and truly made a mess of corona virus.

Families have experienced loss and others have had their mental health deteriorate due to the solitude of lockdown. Recordings of domestic abuse have gone through the roof and a staggering number of people have lost their jobs. So, can anyone truly say that we have dealt with this virus well?

Ultimately, time will tell, and I genuinely hope that I am wrong. However, if I’m not, I’d like to think we won’t all sit back and accept it.