Life in the time of coronavirus

  
March 15th, 2020

     Search my memory as best I can, yesterday was the worst Saturday afternoon of my life. There was no football match to go to and none to listen to on the radio. There was a dystopian void as I gazed into the middle distance at a loss as to know what would fill the emptiness of my life. It was all so incomprehensible. I had never known anything like it. Football had been postponed indefinitely because of the coronavirus pandemic and the havoc the latter has caused is even more incomprehensible to all of us. 

    

      Life as we have known it has been indefinitely postponed. Human beings the world over are in a state of panic. Nothing like this has ever happened before or if it has we didn't all know about it at the same time. 

       The wifie* and I were out shopping early this afternoon. You can do that nowadays. Sunday is just as loud as all the other days now. When in the mid-1950s as a boy living in Dundee Sundays were quiet days, some went to Kirk, some went for a stroll in the park but most sat in front of the television to watch ITV the new channel which had split the BBC's monopoly. ITV screened programmes on Sunday afternoon! Well, I never! when it first happened it created quite a social splash but we did still talk about other things.

   
     Today my wife and I have only talked about the coronavirus and its impact. Indeed when she and I went out to the Asda supermarket in Paignton to purchase some essential items, (which we failed to do because of the mass purchasing frenzy brought on by the fallout from the current crisis), the virus was all that people were talking about. Even other topics of conversation are in the context of their relationship to the virus. It is as if we cannot allow ourselves to think of anything else. A mass hysteria has overtaken the human world. If something like the coronavirus ever happened in the past the news of it passed more slowly but now everyone can know about it immediately. 

           
      It is to be hoped that the human imagination is such that the time will not be long in coming when our thoughts are directed to issues other than the coronavirus but for the time being the collective psyche of our community is at a loss as to how to deal with it. It is too difficult to assimilate at the speed we receive information. There are scientists but they have no definitive answers. There are politicians but their foresight as ever is not even as good as ours.

   
      I've read today that people like me  - someone over 70 years old - will soon be required to put ourselves into exile from our fellow human beings because we are more prone to contracting the virus and developing life threatening diseases from it: diseases which are expensive to treat. We are seen as a threat to our fellow human beings. We are viewed as lesser human beings : untermensch I believe the Nazis called them.

  
      I think most people who like me, are over 70 years of age have the guts to change and perhaps to sacrifice their lives that a younger person should live but I for one would prefer to be trusted to do it of my own volition and not because some smart Alecs order me to do so. They say they've listened to the panacea they call 'science' and we are seduced. Yet, Science is not entirely objective, it is as subjective as any human inquiry. There are huge areas of the physical and psychological qualities of life on our planet that scientists do not, or have not, chosen to research. It may be that these potential fields for research are of little interest to the profit makers.

   
      Human beings are not solitary creatures. Before birth we are contained inside another and from birth we are dependent on a relationship with another and, later on, further relationships with others and this continues through life. Few would wish to die alone,  either physically, or emotionally.

"No man is an Ilande intire of itself; every man

is a peece of the Continent, a part of the Maine..

....any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in Mankinde;"

Meditation XVII

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

John Donne, 1624

* Old respectful Scots word 

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