Now there are two different things going on. For us and those we happen to meet or chat with (zoom, WhatsApp, email, phone, chance passings-by when we go to the shop for food), things have calmed down. The positives of our predicament are the main topic of conversation: how lucky WE are to live in spacious houses, with gardens, or with nice walks nearby; how lovely the weather is; how we are well (so far, touch wood), and feeling fine. Just fine. The mad panic has subsided. There are more things on the shelves in the supermarkets, and Tesco at least has instituted a sort of chicane for going in and coming out, and they’re wiping down the handles of the trollies and baskets. The timing of who shops when has been accepted (more or less) by the local people, according to Facebook and Twitter, though there are still outraged reactions from some who dislike the behaviour of others - standing too close, coming in to shop in family groups, being selfish…… So, it is calmer, quieter, more accepting.
At the same time, the political temperature on Twitter and FB has intensified. People are talking about how long Boris can stay in post, how tired he looks, how utterly criminally incompetent the government has been, how chaotic, confused, contradictory, and ineffective their decisions have been. Amazingly there is a noticeable tiny tiny thread in support of the Prime Minister, but others say this comes from bots. Even the rightwing press are headlining how awful the government has been in handling this: the Daily Telegraph, Sun, Express etc full of outrage and criticism.
It is (sort of) possible to make comparisons with other countries. I have seen people saying they regret voting for Brexit, they’ve changed their minds, they see how we need the EU now. There are outraged comments about how some police forces have overstepped their authority… and a new set of guidelines issued to stop them being so officious… tasers at the ready in one notorious case. Explaining and encouraging are to be their new watchwords.
Even more frightening, we are seeing people’s accounts of how their relatives or friends have died. Some were denied access to ICU care. The dying were left alone. No family beside them. A doctor says how upset he was seeing a book with a book mark in it, a watch left ticking on the bedside. Those dying are of all ages. Many say: ‘this was not just a statistic. It was my dad/uncle/neighbour….’. We see see TV clips of huge spaces being arranged as hospitals, or maybe morgues. There are angry discussions about how ‘we’ are doing compared to other similar countries. Germany seems to have a more fragrant reputation than most… Trump in America is facing a similar wave of criticism - his hand-shaking, ‘back-to-work’ slogans, turn-arounds, emphasis on business over people - is sounding more and more sour to his people.
The ignorance and lack of understanding at government level continues to amaze: how useful any particular test is, how many protective kits an NHS worker needs, where the kits are coming from (30? when the announced need is 30,000), and when. More people are talking about the lies which flow from No 10, as lies. There is some discussion about the failure of Labour to offer any opposition, and that leads inevitably to a discussion about the fitness of J Corbyn and thence to how he was royally shafted and smeared by the press for so long… so no change there. Journalists (well, ok, Robert Peston) seem to be even more ignorant than children about what’s going on…. how is he held in such esteem when he really does not know what he’s talking about and tries to mansplain to a professor of biochemistry…?
(NB - here in Faversham the Repair Cafe has about 15 volunteers making protective clothing for NHS workers at home…. and asking for more. They are fundraising to pay for material which is so far underwritten personally by the Repair Cafe organiser Rosemary de Vos). This is a measure of the government’s failure - that ONE ordinary (though remarkable) woman is basically organising and paying for protective clothing for hospital workers in Kent.
So - calm on the surface, seething rage and change underneath.
For me, this has an existential quality, where time and danger seem to coalesce in a new formation. We all HOPE we are not going to get this illness. We don’t know if we’ve already had it. We don’t CLEARLY know if getting it confers immunity. We have no access to tests to see if we’ve had it already, or have it now. We are FRIGHTENED about the dying. We are not confident that the government knows what it’s doing, or has acted soon enough, or even cares. We have underlying fears and anger about Brexit, about HS2 (cutting down ancient woodlands whether people like it or not), about the Russian Report… about Dominic Cummings the unaccountable, where he is, what’s done. Sickening. Sartre called his novel Nausea. And we can see why. To me, there is a distinct feel of Auschwitz about this… we’re all in the same prison camp, and none of us knows who’s heading to that shower block. That, of course, is not the fault of the politicians, but it’s a sort of speeded-up sense of mortality. So few people have the structure or reassurance of religion now, but we all contemplate our deaths, individually, isolated in our houses, wondering if, and when…….
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