Covid#5 - Be kind to each other

The news today has been full of people’s shock at others who apparently aren’t following the social distancing rules.  For many, the past weekend was sunny – that one that feels like the start of spring when ordinarily, everyone wants to get out in the sunshine to mark the end of the long, grey, cold, wet winter.  It coincided with Mother’s Day too.  Accordingly, news reports have aired footage of families walking together through parks, across the moors and along seafronts.  Alongside this, they’ve shown slow-moving rush-hour traffic moving through city centres and commuters pressed together in Underground trains, all implying that for many people, little has changed.  This has provoked an indignant, appalled reaction from many.  The Health Secretary called these people ‘selfish’ and in his latest tv rant, self-appointed spokesman for the nation, Piers Morgan questioned what is wrong with these people.

It's right to be concerned.  If we don’t distance ourselves from each other, we’re putting ourselves at risk, we’re putting the people we love and live with at risk, we’re putting people we don’t know at risk and we’re potentially adding unnecessary strain to the hardworking NHS at its most challenging time.

I don’t think we should be too hard on each other, however.

Some people have adapted incredibly well to these new circumstances and restrictions but it shouldn’t surprise us that it’s been harder for others.  Coronavirus has arrived and spread so quickly; on one hand, this should be a warning to everyone but on the other, it’s meant that we’ve had limited time to process the dangers and the warnings and to utterly change our ways of life as we’re expected.  If your community’s not yet been directly affected, it can all still seem very unreal too.  It’s not that you think you’ll escape it or that you don’t care; it’s just that you think you may have another day or two and you want to make the most of it.  Neither is it in the British mindset to react so dramatically to a crisis.  Traditionally, we’re expected to adopt the ‘blitz-spirit’ and to keep calm and carry on with a stiff upper lip.  Retreating to our homes by ourselves and stopping everything is not the British way.  In other times, we’d frown at people who did that.

Let’s generously give people the benefit of the doubt.  Those people who were shown on the news walking in the sunshine yesterday may never have intended to mingle with crowds and never thought they were going to be televised.  Many of them were probably out only with the people they live with and they probably did their best to keep a distance from others, in spite of how they were portrayed on television.  It may have been naïve of them but they may have regretted it too.  This morning’s commuters may feel they have no choice but to continue going to work and whilst trains are still running, they may think that it’s fine to travel on them.

This is just one example of the muddled messages we’re getting: it’s not safe to travel by train but we’ll keep them running anyway.  Last week, the same politicians who today call people selfish were emphasising the importance of building herd immunity.  Some people – especially the young and healthy – could be forgiven for concluding a week ago that the best thing they could do for themselves and wider society was to catch Covid19 sooner rather than later and become one of an immune army.  Now, they’re told to avoid the virus at all cost.  

This diagram's everywhere today:

It's serious advice and I know this is cynical, but I wonder how we'd feel about this diagram if Boris put it on the side of a bus.  People's attitudes in this crisis might also reflect their trust in politicians.  Personally, I wouldn’t choose to have Boris lead me to shelter in a rainstorm, let alone have him lead the nation through an emergency of this magnitude.  I don’t think it should surprise us that people are dubious about advice from him and other politicians, no matter how many experts they surround themselves with. 

As this virus takes hold, we shouldn’t forget that viral message that followed Caroline Flack’s untimely death: Be kind to each other.