Crack open the beer, it’s only ‘project fear’

What is the matter with these people, do they all have a death wish?

In the wake of recent record numbers of COVID19 cases in the Maltese Islands we are being told not to panic by our esteemed PM. According to him: “The Malta strain of COVID is just a mild one, nothing to worry about.” Then, in addition to that idiot, some mandarin in the tourism industry has been banging on about something he called “project fear”.

Yes mate, you are right, it is – or should be – driven by fear. I’m told, by someone who really knows, that to die, slowly in hospital, hooked up to a load of life prolonging apparatus, is not something to aspire to.

I believe the tourism guy is called somebody Zahra, dear, oh dear! Is he losing so much money during this aborted summer season that he has to encourage us all to act like lemmings and chuck ourselves into the abyss, so that he – and his cohorts in the tourism industry – can pretend the season 2020 is “business as usual”?

Well I’ve got news for him: It ain’t! Business is far from usual. Health

Minister Chris Fearne could not have been clearer when he stressed this when announcing the immediate closure of all bars and clubs, plus the compulsory wearing of masks in all public places.

Yes I know, he should have done this weeks ago. It certainly does have the smell of stable door closure about it. But at least somebody within the powers-that-be is acting – unlike Zahra and our sporty PM. I feel there was something of the Dominic Cummings about Bobby’s recent Sicily trip. Never mind, I’m sure the chickens will come home to roost one day; even if by then even those birds will be COVID positive.

I’m no expert and I’m not yet in the advanced geriatric bracket, but I would no more think of attending the sort of party that helped to spawn the latest hike in COVID cases than I would sky dive without a parachute over the Antarctic Ice sheet.

It’s a pity – and I write as a rare example of that almost extinct breed “the floating voter” I had high hopes of the near-new PM when he got the job. Well OK maybe not high hopes, but hopes anyway. I should have known better; anybody closely associated with his predecessor, the guy voted the most corrupt on the planet, would obviously merely give the term “good governance” spurious lip service.

Instead I have been mildly amused to see how some of the ministers in the ex-capo’s cabinet have been ducking and weaving to try to distance themselves from him and all his nefarious shenanigans.

It did make me wonder how he would have treated the COVID19 pandemic. Not very differently to the way his successor has gone about it, I reckon. After all, so far… there’s very little difference in their administrations. I heard our nearly-new PM described the other day as “Muscat with muscles”.

I think if somebody described me that way, I’d be bloody well suicidal.

Roll on the COVID vaccine, there are a score of local entrepreneurs out there who just can’t wait to make a killing, business-wise.