Celebrate

It’s important to point out, especially for my large worldwide audience, that not everyone in the UK has lost their shit. Plenty of people have, of course, like those who at the weekend tried to turn Weston Super Mare beach into a kind of downmarket Bondi, those who turned up in such numbers at Westonbirt Arboretum that the car parks had to be closed or the many thousands who have decided to practice self-isolation by going shopping. But it’s not everyone. Honest, guv.

Driving to various relatives today and leaving things at their doors, waving at them through closed windows and then driving off again, the streets were generally quiet. And it still feels like a post nuclear wasteland but without the damage. Most of us are doing the right thing.

Slowly, it’s beginning to register with the self-appointed indestructibles that Covid-19 is going to be in its most destructive phase of all in the coming weeks and that people they know, and are indeed related to, could well die. They will have noted that another 394 people died yesterday in Spain. In two weeks, that’s going to be the same here. It will get much worse than that. That’s why mass gatherings of young people playing football on Clifton Downs and, unbelievably, huge numbers of elderly people inspecting the trees at Westonbirt defy common sense and suggest that some people, a minority, are not taking this thing particularly seriously. It may well be they will literally kill people. Is it really that difficult to follow the medical and scientific advice for the spring and summer months?

Lockdown is coming, people, and it will come because a minority of people have made it happen by way of stupidity, ignorance and complete disregard for everyone else, from their family to their friends to people they have never met.

Contrary to popular thought, we will not get through this, not all of us anyway. As I never tire of saying, there will be no street parties when the worst is over because the cemeteries will be at maximum capacity and who would want to celebrate that?