We’ll meet again

Every day, a government minister stands behind a lectern, flanked by two experts, and reads out a speech about how many people have died since yesterday and what we must do to keep ourselves safe. ‘Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives’ is the government slogan. After the minister has finished his speech (there appear to be no women in government, apart from Priti Patel, who won’t be allowed a news conference ever again after her embarrassing performance yesterday), an expert shows us some graphs and then journalists ask a series of questions which often go on so long, we forget by the end how they started and the answers, depending on which minister has showed up, are bland and unenlightening. No one ever asks why the daily death totals in Britain are far higher than anything that’s happened in Italy and Spain. And we move on with our lives because it’s someone else’s family members and friends who are dying, not ours. But then everything changes, as it has for us.

For over a week now, I know people who have Covid-19 and now there are people I knew, including a close and much loved family member, who have died of it. They all had ‘underlying health issues’, as if that really matters. They were mostly, though not solely, old. And they were all taken before their time. Without Covid-19, there would be more time to spend with the ones we loved. Now, we can’t even spend time with those who grieve with us. We could not visit those with the virus, we could not even have final conversations. These are the worst of times.

There are countless thousands of people unable to be with family when we desperately want to be, some stranded in another part of the country, others not even in the same country. And we are all helpless.

It is so different from the passing of both my parents and my stepfather, where family could at least gather to comfort each other. Arranging funerals, whilst painful, was straightforward. Nothing is straightforward now. And now my senses are more alive than ever about the semi-lockdown the country is in.

For God’s sake, this stuff is real. Covid-19 is a hideous disease and it is killing people of all ages and not just those with ‘underlying health issues’. Yesterday, we learned that one of the victims was 11 years of age. If we are going to defeat this thing, we can only do it together.

To those of you caught up in, and indeed spreading, the conspiracy theories, I urge you all to only believe the truth. Only believe what can be demonstrated by evidence. 5G is not spreading Covid-19, this is not an establishment plot by governments to engage in mass killing, our semi-lockdown is not some Hitler-esque crackdown on our freedoms. If you believe this nonsense, then you are complicit in the deaths of people you don’t know and quite possibly people you do. If you have to believe the conspiracy theories and lies, then please show some respect for the families who have lost loved ones and have loved ones who have the virus and are worried sick for them. Conspiracy theories are always lies and almost always part of a far right agenda.

As I have said before, there will be no street parties when this is over. There will be too many people in mourning, never mind those millions who will lose their businesses and their jobs, for anyone to start cracking open the Champagne. It will just be relief.

Things will never be the same again. I end with the words of Her Majesty the Queen:

“We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.”