It’s not that I wish to detract from the seriousness
of serious subjects. But, coronavirus – or Covid 19 - is just a very polite tap
on the shoulder. It is the hors d’oeuvre to the heavy sit-down 8 course banquet.
It is a delicate overture to a deceptively long dark opera, it's foreplay.
Unlike the UK pop press I just like some perspective.
On the one hand I’ve written many times about the
fact that we are ignoring the things that are going to (and are in the process
of) destroying the way we like to live. Or just live.
And yes – I have form on this - check out a very old
post Armageddon Will Not Be Televised
But while focus is on celebrity nonsense, royal
nonsense, and column inch after column inch is taken up by stories that are
virus-like in their proliferation and destructiveness, we somehow daintily
side-step the stuff that matters. At the
same time as whipping up hysteria about things that are big enough to worry us but
not so big that we can’t ‘worry safely’ we ignore tragedies under our noses. And tragedies that could escalate into something far worse than covid-19.
So while my last letter published in The Independent
went like this -
Dear Editor,
Any new undocumented
virus is going to send shock waves around the world but the media-fuelled
hysteria over coronavirus is almost medieval in its disproportion. Coupled with
the increase in ridiculous posts about our remaining hard-core royals being portrayed
as latter-day Waltons – Britain is starting to feel like a cheap, badly
produced soap opera.
Let us for balance
pick out one interesting stat regarding premature deaths.
Each year – just in
the UK – it is estimated that up to 40,000 premature deaths are linked to
pollution.
Pollution is not an
unknown quantity. Pollution is not something we are powerless to control.
Why don’t we care
about that?
What happened to our sense of proportion?
I’m not suggesting that we should not be paying
attention to Coronavirus.
We should simply realise that as Cummings/Johnson
administration negligently experimenting with the lives of around 70 million
Britons is simply pointing us in completely the wrong direction. As is the
Trump/Miller abomination across the pond.
Whether its border walls or HS2,
blaming Mexicans or Muslims, failing to produce tax returns or details of
holidays in the Caribbean, building
bridges from Scotland to Ireland over WWII munitions dumps or Space Force - the
real problems are out there.
Festering away in a refugee camp with roughly 1.7
millon abandoned refugees on the Turkish Syrian border perhaps or in a migrant camp in
Greece or in a human trafficking shed in Libya – a disease more deadly than Coronavirus or an ideology more destructive than ISIS may be festering in the misery among the abandoned.
So, while I ask for perspective on covid-19 –
don’t mistake the reason. I just don’t think this is THE ONE. Coronavirus is a
tap on the shoulder. If we don’t turn around and pay attention very soon the
next one will be a hobnail boot in the face.
*
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