Isolation VI:When Death Came To Town.

Death has ridden into town. It didn't ride in on a black horse, it didn't appear on a beach in a long black cloak and challenge us to a game of chess, and it didn't knock menacingly on our window in the wee small hours and coax us outside in our final pajamas. Instead, it arrived in the form of 'droplets'. What could sound more innocent than droplets? What next? A deadly virus that is transmitted through bubblebath? Ginger beer? Lemon drizzle cake?

These droplets of death were more likely carried into your life, into your town, by your nearest and dearest, your friends and family, than by the strange and exotic foreign bogeymen so many of us have been whipped up into fearing, hating, blaming, othering, and, ultimately, excluding over the last few years. This is a global crisis and that's because we live on a fucking globe. Not in small fenced off, impenetrable, nations. We can continue to compete with or demonise our neighbours but it'll make things worse. Not better. We might not, now, be able to spend time in rooms with each other but we certainly need to work together against this. A medical breakthrough and/or an essential vaccine could come from any country. It certainly shouldn't be confined to being used in that one country.

Since my last Isolation blog (on Saturday) the global death toll has risen from 28,250 to over 34,000, Italy has become the first nation to register over 10,000 deaths, Spain has now seen over 6,800 die, France and the US are sneaking up behind China and Iran on the list with over 2,500 deaths each, and here in the UK the current death toll is 1,228. Brazil and Turkey are the latest members of the 100 club. Unlike the one on Wardour Street, it's not a club anyone wants to be part of.

In America, Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and generally considered that country's leading expert on infectious diseases, has warned his compatriots to expect an eventual American death toll somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000. 

A bitter pill to swallow, but now is not the time for emotional placebos. With Johnson, Hancock, and Whitty now quarantined, it's fallen to the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Jenny Harries, to deliver the English press briefing. Like Fauci, she's not beating about the bush, suggesting a six month lockdown may be required in the UK. It's not what anyone wants to hear but it was refreshing in its honesty and admirable in its lack of sugaring the pill. She said it could be longer, she said it could be shorter, she said nobody knows. One thing I've felt for a long time is if you don't know the answer to something - don't bullshit. Be honest and admit it.

Everyone keeps saying this is a surreal time. But it's not. It's real, and it's getting more painfully real all the time. One piece of artwork I saw relating to it, however, did border on the surreal. Cold War Steve's Boschian diorama (that tops this piece) suggests that we have found the artist for this crisis. I wrote to him, on Twitter, a little tipsy, to say that he is to coronavirus what Picasso was to the Spanish Civil War or Goya to the Peninsular War. High praise indeed and one that his reply, 'Oof thank you' followed by a smiling emoji, suggested he was both touched and slightly embarrassed by.

But look at it. It's amazing. It contains multitudes and it's inspired me to stop heading up these blogs with pictures of coronavirus itself and replace them with works of art. Six blogs in and it's time for a new chapter and a gradual change, or evolution, in tone. I'll still be doing my best to point out positives, crumbs of comfort really, but I'll also be pointing the finger at that new tribe of people the Internet has decided to call covidiots.

Former world champion boxer Billy Joe Saunders may be a middleweight in the fight game but when it comes to intellect and morality he's the lightest of lightweights - and a nasty bastard too. Making a prank phone call to Delta Airlines to say he was aware of people on one of their flights carrying the virus was idiotic in the extreme but posting an online video giving men instructions on how to beat their female partners during isolation if they're giving too much 'mouth' possibly marked a new low in a long and excruciatingly painful history of sports stars acting like absolute twats.

More well meaning, but nonetheless incredibly stupid and irresponsible, was the lady in Russia interviewed in a crowded cathedral who believed it was not possible to catch Covid-19 in a holy building because God would not allow it. If that was true it would make God an absolute bastard, But, of course, it's no more true you can't catch it in cathedrals than it is you can't catch it in Wetherspoons.

I've long felt this destructive wave of populist political (and medical) denial was built on the foundations of religious denial. Religions, and religious institutes, have been allowed to lie for centuries now and anyone who questions them, say Richard Dawkins, is painted as the nasty, angry player in this hugely one sided game. The worst example of a politician aping the styles of the fire and brimstone preachers is, of course, the world's most dangerous idiot (and most idiotic danger) Donald Trump.

Trump's latest piece of utter fuckwittery is to boast that the ratings of his press conferences are as high as the finale of the Bachelor or a Monday night football game. It was bad enough when he treated the presidency as a TV reality show. Now he's treating the pandemic in the same way you have to think that Fauci's estimated death toll may be way too conservative. Trump is living proof that elevated idiocy kills.

He makes Boris Johnson look good and, it pains me (again) to say this but, compared to Trump, Johnson is good. To make out Johnson has been an excellent leader, as some have, at this time is simply wrong. His party have underfunded the NHS, demotivated and belittled NHS staff, they didn't take the coronavirus seriously enough until much too late, and they still don't have anywhere near enough ventilators, masks, or hospital beds for either NHS staff or patients.The forty new hospitals and £350,000,000 promised each week to the NHS as a result of Brexit have, of course, not materialised either but did anyone really think they ever would?

At the same time, I'm not joining in with the conspiracy theorists who are claiming Johnson hasn't even got coronavirus (he'd lie about almost anything but even I don't think he'd lie about that) and I'm certainly not getting behind people who think we need a change of government. The public appetite for general elections was at an all time low before this happened. It's not going to happen so shut up about it.

Perhaps the most surprising thing I heard this week was Boris Johnson on television saying  "there really is such a thing as society". Johnson knows his political history so it'll have been a very intentional reference to another Tory PM, Margaret Thatcher's, 1987 comment that "there is no such thing as society". Johnson is drawing a line in the sand between himself and Thatcher and he knows that there are plenty of people out there who will recognise that.

I intensely dislike Boris Johnson's lies, his (previous) disregard for evidence, and his employment of the kind of dog whistle politics that have given such a voice to xenophobes but I wonder if this could be the moment when he changes and starts to become a PM for the whole country and not just rich Tory voters. More likely he's just bluffing and bullshitting again but, for now, there's a tiny bit of hope that there's some humanity beneath that carapace of charlatanism that, bizarrely, has proven such a crude and effective political tool.

Humour has been keeping my spirits high, as have regular calls with Mum and Dad, a long chat on the phone with Shep and, best of all, Ian's brilliant Zoom/Kahoot! quiz (see pic at end of this report) which passed away four hours (not all of it quizzing) on Saturday night so thanks to Darren, Cheryl, Tony, Alex, Grace, Izzie, Jo, Max, Carole, Dylan, Tina, Neil, Rob, Naomi, Maya, Zachary, Adam, Teresa, Miriam, Poppy, Peter, and the star of the night (despite not getting a single question right) Arlow. Can't wait for the next one.

Music, as always, is helping. Over the last few days I've been picked up by New Order (listening to the album Movement as I write this), Evelyn 'Champagne' King, The Rotary Fifth, Rio Da Yung OG, and, quite surprisingly, Elastica and Fleetwood Mac. I've been feeling strangely calm and I've not felt unwell at all. The only doctor I've dealt with is Dr Oetker (in the form of a quattro formaggio pizza) and I've got serious doubts about his medical qualifications.

I've been suggested so many podcasts, articles to read, films to watch etc; that I can barely even start them but how lovely that people are, mostly, trying to help each other stay strong. In London, it's well established that most people barely know who their neighbours are and, with one or two exceptions, that's true for me. But on my rare forays to the shops I've chatted to severalk neighbours (from a distance) and they've all been asking how am I and if there's anything they can do to help.

Most of us are unable to match James McAvoy's wonderful donation of £275,000 to an NHS crowdfunding app but I genuinely believe that a lot of people have been waiting for a time when to be kind was seen as the right thing. We've been living in times where, increasingly, lying, bullying, and shouting people down has been rewarded. It's given us Trump, Bolsonaro, and Johnson and further down the food chain thousands of jumped up little middle management bullies. It's felt to me, for the last few years, that the world's been slowly turning itself upside down. I'm not mad enough to say this is the world straightening itself out but it is true that we can use this situation to reassess our priorities. If you're still not for greater co-operation between people, between friends, between families, and between nations then you've not read the memo properly. You'll make this situation even worse than it is - and this situation is as grave as anything any of us have experienced.

Make no mistake, death is in town and death ain't leaving town for a while yet. But when death rode into town another stranger rode in in tandem. An old friend we'd almost forgotten. Kindness. Kindness is in town too. Kindness across the country, kindness across the continent, and kindness across the world. When this is done, let's remember that kindness was our friend during this crisis, let's remember who was kind to us and others, and let's carry on being kind. That's my ambition. If yours is to top the finale of The Bachelor in the ratings you've misread the situation.