The real pandemic we are facing is the pandemic of misery, hopelessness and helplessness. As a world, we have confronted the Black Death, Spanish Flu, Polio, Tuberculosis, famine, pestilence and economic depression.
We have fought wars and sent millions of our young men to die on the foreign soil of Gallipoli, the Somme and in the oceans and seas of the South Pacific. We have watched towns and communities stripped bare of their young farmers, workers and husbands. Brothers, fathers and cousins cheated of a life yet to be lived.
We have done so with a hale heart and a sure knowledge that their sacrifce for us was worthwhile; that they gave their lives in order to preserve ours. Yet here we are today murdering our economies, torturing our freedom and surrendering our ways of life for a virus.
What on earth has happened to our governments? That they have willingly sacrificed our prosperity and freedoms in order to do quite what exactly?
STOP IT?
What happened to " flatten the curve? "
The possibility of eradicating this virus is up there with " not a snowball's chance in hell. "
In fact, the way we are going, we are on the road to Hell and we are in a major economic, political and social meltdown that will see us living in cages of our own making if we do not stop this folly of lockdowns and start opening our minds to the reality that this virus is here, here to stay and it is not going anywhere.
When I reflect on how past governments have dealt with disease or war, I cannot help but wonder what has happened to commonsense? Our current leaders are, by and large, knee jerking and responding to this virus like a panicked mother who thinks that scrubbing her children, home and locking the doors to the house will keep the kids safe from germs. It is nonsense. You need to let the kids go out and play, get dirty, play in the mud, get sick and fall and scrape their knees. it is called building an immunity.
Wrapping the population in cotton wool hasn't worked in the past and it will not work now.
When someone is sick, they go to bed and get looked after. if they do not start to recover, they go to hospital but you don't lock the whole country down because a few people are sick. Think back to the First World War ... did we lock the army down because soldiers got trench foot? Did we lock down because soldiers got dysentery?
NO.
Those who were still able to get back in the trenches, kept fighting and, by God, they fought hard.
There is a lesson to be learnt here: tend to the needs of those who are ill and let the rest of us keep fighting.
Our newspapers, media and social media have little messages of hope anymore. It is as though we are being lulled into an acceptance of hopelessness, helplessness and misery.
What has happened to that spirit of hope? It has been seemingly consigned to the rubbish bin and we are supposed to accept failure. Accept defeat. Accept imprisonment.
ALL FOR OUR OWN GOOD.
Well, it is NOT for our own good. We have never been people who walk away from a fight. Hide in the cupboard under the stairs and hope that one day we can venture out in to a world worth living in... this is not the way we should live and it is not the way our governments should encourage us to live.
For God's sake, give us hope! And I am not talking about some trite jingle about ' all being in it together ' because we are not.
Never have we been more divided, more isolated and more fractured than we are today in 2020.
We need to get back to work, back to school, back to hugging, back to living and back to basics.
If you are sick, we have the care. if you are not, get back in the trenches and start fighting. Because we have a world to save.
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