Covid-shaming: This is us now
I’m not sure which story is the most peculiar example of the weirdness of humans. Both are current and ongoing, and both slightly Stephen King-nightmarish.
The former-not former President of the United States, Donald Trump, looking like a steroid-bloated Oscar statuette, seems hell-bent on staying in the White House come hell or high water. I’m wondering if he plans to barricade himself in, shove mahogany chests of drawers and maple desks up against the doors and just wait it out.
Are teams of folk in hazmat suits going to rush him as he attends the breakfast buffet? Joe and Jill outside with the moving vans just strolling about in their casual moving day sweatpants and trainers, not sure how much overtime they’ll have to pay the moving guys? Will Donald slip out the back door or down some secret tunnel that leads directly to Chuck E. Cheese? Will he fly off in the Bat Helicopter with Batman at his side? Surely they won’t have to wrestle him to the ground and scramble about for the front door key to the White House as someone yells ‘‘grab the keys! Break his hand if you have to!’’.
It’s been undignified from the beginning, but Trump’s exit from the White House seems destined to resemble the last scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Meanwhile, back here at home, we are on a mission to find the subversive Covid criminals. I’m not innocent of feeling the same irrational anger.
‘‘How on earth did that stupid so-and-so go to 13 cafes, three sporting events, eight airports, 10 supermarkets, and shake hands with 45 strangers while coughing, feeling unwell, and having a fever of forty degrees?’’
The next thought … ‘‘Hunt him down. Name him. Shame him. Put him in a grey smock with a scarlet letter C and parade him through the streets. Oh wait, parading through streets bad idea. Strike the walk of shame.’’
We are vilifying people who have the Covid virus as if they wanted to get it. As if they somehow had the audacity to catch the virus by asking it out to lunch and then merrily spread it around town.
How horrid must it be for the ‘‘girl’’ and the ‘‘Defence worker’’ who must feel a bit like Julian Assange hiding in a London embassy. These people have done nothing that any of us wouldn’t do, and, I should imagine, like most of us felt fairly bulletproof at this stage. Meanwhile, they can probably vaguely hear the sounds of lynch mobs assembling with pitchforks and burning torches.
Five years ago, had we been told that a giant spoilt megalomaniac had barricaded himself in the White House, and New Zealanders off a plane that may or may not be carrying a deadly disease were being hunted down in the streets of Sydney, we would probably think it was more the plot of a very average Jack Carr novel, but no, I guess this is us now!
[I have a friend in Defence who travels between Wellington and Auckland. I am avoiding him like – excuse the reference – the plague.]
We are vilifying people who have the Covid virus as if they wanted to get it.