Where would you live
IWROTE that if we had a lockdown I’d like to read the Bible, and sure enough, we have a lockdown.
But I’m afraid I haven’t read the Bible. I haven’t even got a Bible. Though I do know how it starts: In the beginning was the word. I have no idea what that means.
Nevertheless, like everyone else, I know a few biblical stories, including one where the Devil offers Christ the world. I’d like to do the same to you. The whole wide world, dear reader, is yours.
All you have to do is choose the bit of it you would like to be living in right now. Take your time and think carefully.
While you’re thinking, let me remind you of the meaning of pandemic. It derives from the Greek word for all and the Greek word for people. All peoples have got this virus. They’ve got it in Siberia. They’ve got in Fiji. They’ve got it in the windrattled Falklands. If anywhere claims not to have it either they haven’t looked or they’re lying. So, where in the world would you like to go?
Perhaps you’d choose the richest and most powerful country, the one that should be in the best position to defend itself, the United States of America. But then again, perhaps not.
The US already has more identified cases of Covid19 than anywhere else, and it is a copperbottomed certainty that it has millions more unidentified cases. At present more than a thousand Americans are dying a day, about half of them in New York. But in time all American cities will become New York. The virus is too firmly established. It can be slowed but it can’t be stopped. It will roll through everywhere. Only a vaccine can stop it. We’re unlikely to get a vaccine this year.
And the US has Trump. Trump is not to blame for the virus but he is entirely to blame for his country’s slow response to it. He’s trying to shift that blame — on to China, or the media, or the governors, or, as usual, and astonishingly, Obama — but it’s entirely his.
The US is paying the price for electing a malignant narcissist who is literally incapable of caring about anyone but himself or of accepting responsibility for anything.
So where else? Dear old Europe, perhaps? I suspect not.
The virus swept through the continental landmass before its countries closed their borders. Everywhere’s got it. And though they’ve acted earlier and more wisely than the US and will thus make the epidemic more manageable, by flattening the curve they are also stretching it out. It’ll be a while yet in Europe and there will always be the danger of a resurgence.
India then? Oh dear me no. In the slums of Delhi and Mumbai the poor live 10 to a room. The notion of social distancing is a joke in poor taste. When the virus takes hold in the slums, the hospitals, such as they are, will be instantly overwhelmed and hundreds of thousands will die and swiftly.
At the same time millions will catch the virus and survive. So there will soon be a mass of young and hungry Indians who are immune to the virus and desperate to earn some money, while their richer compatriots will still be taking shelter. It is a recipe for rioting and looting. The army will come in. No, I would not recommend India.
China? Well, that’s up to you. Yes they stamped on the virus by dint of the rigid social control for which authoritarian regimes are renowned. But it seems they may have lied about the numbers who died — and they have taken the opportunity of the disease to increase further still their surveillance of the population. The country bristles with cameras. Pandemic or not, you are being watched.
Where’s left? Africa? Good luck with that. Russia? Have you seen their president? Australia? Have you seen their prime minister? Which leaves, well, here.
We’re a wealthy democracy with a good public health system.
We are small enough to have a sense of unity, of communal will. Our Government acted early and decisively, so we have an actual chance, not just of controlling this disease, but of eliminating it.
Of course, if we succeed we will have to guard our borders with pitchforks and zeal until such time as a vaccine is developed, but we have the huge advantage of being far out to sea and we are readily able to feed ourselves.
I can think of nowhere else on earth about which all these things are true.
As it may or may not say in the Bible, we don’t know how lucky we are.