Pining for the pandemic

Who in Britain recalls the pandemic? Those long summer days of 2020 in our back gardens sipping gin and tonics, ‘working’ from home and deciding which face mask to wear. We waited with bated breath for the weekly Covid-19 updates from our Great Leader flanked by his trusty medical and scientific colleagues Professors Witless and Unbalanced. When out Great Leader succumbed to the great plague, we were mesmerised by the seamless transition in presenting the latest evidence-based guidance to Matt ‘Groper’ Hancock. We clapped for carers as a distraction from crapping ourselves over the deadly virus and shed tears when the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine was rolled out. By the way, where is the AstraZeneca vaccine now? Suspended you say? What the heck, I took two shots of that one!

But those were the days and I’d give a whole boxful of lateral flow tests to be back there. Who doesn’t miss the ‘one way systems’ in pubs, the fragrant smell of hand gel and playing ‘Covid hockey’ as we approached other people on the pavement? Now the fear of almost certain death from China’s great gift to the world has been replaced by the likelihood of nuclear annihilation. One feels so powerless this time round. At least if we got infected and died of Covid-19 it was entirely our fault – we knew that masks were highly effective, and that vaccines were 100% safe. It was reassuring to be able to take responsibility for our own health and, we must not forget, the safety of others. But what do we do now?

Hot on the heels of Covid-19 virtue signalling (wearing masks and blocking the unvaccinated on Twitter) we have a new form of virtue signalling. I see plenty of Ukrainian flags draped from houses in my city, most likely by people who could not find Ukraine on a map. I have no idea how many Ukrainians we have living here whose spirits may be lifted by this meaningless gesture, but I do know there are Russians who are feeling alienated. And what is it about flying a Ukrainian flag that makes people feel better about themselves? If it is true, that the writing on a cigarette packet can be read from a satellite then why would anyone want to provide Vladimir Putin with a target? If the Russians were arriving on our beaches (assuming they can find one that is not crowded with illegal immigrants), I don’t think people would be flying their Ukrainian flags so prominently. In fact, if the Russians do arrive here, I am going to go out at night and hang Ukrainian flags from the houses of all the people I don’t like.

Apparently, at the behest of our glorious leaders, thousands of people have signed up to house a Ukrainian family in their spare rooms. Good luck with that. I genuinely pity the displaced people of Ukraine, but why does this suddenly become our personal responsibility? We seem to have little problem finding accommodation for people who arrive on rubber dinghies on our shores, and I don’t see anyone clambering to house any of these in their spare rooms. What’s that you say? Oh yes, apart from St Gareth of Lineker who made sure we all knew he had. This is just another massive form of virtue signalling and I can well imagine a husband arriving home from a hard day at work to hear his wife has offered their spare room: “you’ve done what?!”. I can also imagine many others who have offered their spare rooms lying awake at night thinking “what have we done?” In any case, they all know well that our Civil Service (many still working from home) are making it as hard as possible for fleeing Ukrainians to obtain visas, and only families who have named Ukrainian relatives will be permitted to house a family. The chances of anyone actually having to make up their spare bed to make way for a Ukrainian family are so remote as to seem almost non-existent; time will tell.

Our ruling classes have become infected with the ‘we must do something’ bug which, in reality, means ‘you must all do something’. This was prominent and largely the driving force behind the pandemic panic. And we have seen how easily they keep layering on obligations and virtue signalling opportunities. If this does not stop what next? Will old soldiers like me be asked to dust off our muskets and join the fray in Eastern Europe? I hear a school is refusing to provide weekend classes for Russian children; replace ‘Russian’ with ‘Muslim’ or ‘Black’ and imagine the optics on that one.

I am very good, you may say, at saying what we should not do. But what can we do to prepare for the forthcoming nuclear catastrophe? My advice is to buy a copy of On the Beach by Neville Shute and read it carefully. It is the progenitor of post-apocalyptic novels, which charts the progress of people in Australia in the wake of a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere. Some panic, some do what they can to survive. One brave chap jumps ship off the United States and stays there, regardless of the consequences. Others in Melbourne drink themselves to death. I consider Shute’s masterpiece to be more than a novel; it is a manual. When the bomb goes off, I’ll be on the beach with a gin and tonic waiting for death to engulf me. It’ll be just like the old days.

Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.