Three takeaways from the COVID-19 crisis
2020 has brought out the worst in almost everyone. But is it all doom and gloom?
CW: mental health, depressive/anxiety disorders, pandemic; TW: suicide, loss
The year so far has taught us a lot: about how ill-prepared not only ‘The West’, but in actual fact the whole world, was for a virus crisis; about how quickly politicians weaponise and worship health crises (Trump repeatedly calling it the “Chinese virus”, and now cancelling funding for the WHO; Farage thinking but not saying the golden words, ‘political correctness gone mad’, when he ranted that we’ve gone too far and he should be allowed to walk his dog, with its lead in one hand and a Camel in the other, like an upstanding British citizen; and slightly further away from the forces of evil, S. Khan — apparently forgetting his role as a member of the (nominal) opposition — revealing his cards as TfL CEO first, Tory mouthpiece second). In actual fact, the lattermost is really a symptom of the ease with which authoritarianism, bureaucracy, and paternalism — usually latent — are actually the beating heart of our beloved United Kingdom.
The BBC, for example, who usually at least pretend to be objective, have, (as many have already noticed) returned — like good robots — to factory settings, no longer even bothering to keep up the façade that they have any editorial integrity. This descent into propaganda machine was quick, but not instant. It started when R. Sunak delivered his budget, for which the BBC headline was “Chancellor pumps billions into economy to combat coronavirus”. Presumably similar headlines were gracing the front pages in other equally free presses. Just imagine: “Putin saves Russia’s economy overnight”; “Crown Prince bin Salman saves world”; “Erdoğan finds a cure for coronavirus”. Since then, Aunty Beeb has descended further and further into absolute monotony — interleafing stories of particularly shocking or sad deaths with helpful, and increasingly sophisticated, infographics of how to maintain basic hygiene. (But not, for example, consistently providing a daily death toll or, more usefully, publishing the percentage increase for the day, the three-daily average, etc.).
As before, many have commented that the Beeb are probably extremely scared of losing the licence fee, hence the retrogression. But the more threatening possibility is that they are simply returning to their origins: as a mouthpiece. Certainly, they seem to think they are what they were in WW2, mere facilitators to Churchill//- I mean Boris — the Great’s fireside chats.
On the other hand, the police service (usually much clumsier than the BBC) are trying their best for first place; I needn’t even touch upon the stories of the invasion of personal privacy bordering on illegality, or the countless bêtises which include, but are not limited to: dyeing lakes black, fining people for being in their cars (but not the Scots Chief Medical Officer for defying her own advice), &c, &c. Nor do I need to begin on the already covered topic which is the repulsive way in which the Tories have used “save the NHS” as part of their triple tricolon, as a command: as if the NHS needed saving from anyone except the Tories and the people who voted them in.
The second telling takeaway is how much people — neurotypical people — who, not 6 months ago, would happily have told anyone with a depressive or anxiety disorder to “man up” if they were struggling — are now staring karma in the face. I daren’t say it says anything about “our society”, but it says something about these individuals: that as soon as they have to queue a little longer to get into a supermarket, or that their favourite imported cheeses are out of stock, they are ready to fold. This is neither Schadenfreude nor to undermine the real and tangible struggles that people are going through, not least buying essentials. But, a few observations, if I may. Six months ago people might have used the word ‘depressed’ to describe the feeling one has when Netflix crashes or the phrase ‘I’m going to kill myself’ in response to an empty ice cream section in Sainsbury’s. Now, darkly, they might really mean either, though of course there are neither GPs nor hospitals to address either. It’s ironic that in the age of the mental health crisis among the young — by which I mean the never-worked-a-day-in-their-life, snowflake, student, Corbynista, liberal metropolitan elite, avo-on-toast-eating, flat-white-drinking, generation — we are about to enter a real, true, and I predict deadly, mental health crisis.
The other nasty manifestation of British mannerisms has been the hitherto unspeakable: manners. When we used to tut and tch at people who jumped queues, flaunted the God-ordained rules about personal space, &c., we now thank God that even the government has given us an excuse to publicly shame and shout at people who go the wrong way round a supermarket, ignore the not-so-clearly demarcated 2 metre haloes that surround us, and — most refreshing of all for the British psyche — an excuse for racial abuse, be it towards east Asian people or, even more delightful for the Brits: ‘can you not follow the arrows on the floor?’ metonymically stands in for the age-old and time-honoured racist phrase, ‘can you not read English?’. Particularly vicious in this return to our national psyche as it was one hundred years ago is the parallel with the practice of white feathering, as so many — presumably equally mindless — members of the public did in order to shame people who probably did not deserve to be shamed thus.
Has anything remotely positive come from this exposé of the ugliest and bitterest habits of the British mind (not to mention this hideous illness)? Well, perhaps: our universities (and penchant for research) are still alive and well, as proven by the already quite lively research being undertaken in London, Edinburgh, Oxford, Liverpool, and beyond. Perhaps the saddest and most revealing truth is that, as J. Corbyn hands over the reins, the “magic money tree” for which he was flogged in the 2019 election campaign really does exist. It seems that — as we prepare (handouts and bailouts included) for a £?bn or £?tn hit to the economy, including but not limited to unemployment, business collapse, inflated healthcare costs, etc. — the Tories’ project over the 2002nd decade, “cutting the deficit”, truly was ideological at a time when, for the national purse at least, money was never an issue.
