Serious tissues

By John Pinching

When war broke out in 1939, the people of Britain received a single, sobering broadcast from Neville Chamberlain.

He didn’t follow it up with a relentless blitz of tweets or Instagram images of him in the cockpit of a Spitfire. Communication was sporadic, and citizens went weeks without news. They remained calm.
Now, 81 years later, we are in the midst of the biggest crisis since World War II and the bombardment of coronavirus information and misinformation is constant. While the internet has succeeded in spreading sound advice, it has also been a catalyst for our darkest indulgences.
Consequently, we now live in a world where dried pasta is regarded as hard currency. For a few days, people no longer worried about money but, instead, the prospect of being penne-less. After 500 positive results people were exchanging blows over linguine – is it any wonder that testing seemed to slow down for a while? In addition, somebody somewhere mentioned that the key to survival lay in toilet roll hoarding and, once the proverbial Andrex puppy was out of the bag, all hell broke loose. Fortunately, a collective sense of humour – typically worn by the British instead of a face mask – has been the perfect antidote to pastafarianism.
Elsewhere, Boris Johnson, book-ended by his public health experts, Whitty and Vallance (not a 1980s comic double act, as the names suggest), has taken a gradual approach to the pandemic. His decision not to immediately close everything appeals directly to a sense of Britishness and a refusal to blink first.  
Whitty and Vallance have also espoused the virtues, not of using the NHS, but of not using it. Indeed, ‘home care’ is the greatest ally of the NHS, and the current coronavirus war has served to bring this message home. Patients pointlessly presenting with mild symptoms are the NHS’s greatest burden at the best of times, and everyone should now regard this as an opportunity for a cultural shift. A friend of mine has had COVID-19 already and while he experienced some rough nights in his own bed, I also have it on good authority that he was binge watching The Crown (however much he denies it).
As most of the important messages start to penetrate the deafening noise, our collective effort must be to create local super-organisms that protect our vulnerable and elderly people. For a while the world has got to get smaller – globalisation and greed must give way to a de facto national service where humanitarianism becomes the new amazon parcel. And, who knows, the contents therein may prove more satisfying.
Meanwhile, the reaction of pharma has been impressive. In the past, creating a vaccine was the work of decades, but already the magic bullet is squarely aimed at COVID-19. Don’t be surprised if the trigger is pulled by the end of this year. There will also, in all probability, be a nationwide experiment on postal testing (including retrospective tests) for the virus.

Needless to say, when a vaccine is triumphantly rolled out, the British people will stand aside and let those that need it most go first. After all, history will judge people, not by how many cans of chopped tomatoes they have, but by the content of their character.