A morality tale

It can happen here

We must be ready for future pandemics, notes Carla Carlisle

Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall

all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye...

I Corinthians, chapter 15, verses 51–52

ALTHOUGH I grew up in a land where scripture was planted into our mouths with our first set of teeth, the language of King James is no longer on the tip of my tongue. I feel about the loss the way Julian Barnes described his lack of faith: ‘I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him.’

Still, on the bewildering journey of coronavirus, Corinthians has come back to me. Like all Biblical prediction, timing is more poetic than precise. Wise men and women—epidemiologists, economists, psychologists—predict we will all be changed, but, when it comes to ‘the twinkling of an eye’, they tend to be vague.

The ways Covid-19 will change us are as innumerable as they are inconceivable. Some changes are already in place. Working from home is no longer a privilege to be negotiated, but an institution. Avoiding the misery of commuting will cut pollution and lift happiness. It will boost the movement for faster broadband in the middle of nowhere and cut the sales of cars and petrol. If you live in the countryside, you will be amazed. If you are a car dealer or own a chain of petrol stations, you won’t be so happy, but you may have more free time.

Visits to the GP’S surgery are also being transformed. There’s even a word for it: ‘telemedicine’ means that you can book in for a video conference with your GP instead of sitting in a crowded waiting room where everyone looks worse off than you are, germs are all-pervasive and the background rattle of Radio 2 makes each visit feel more life-threatening than the symptoms that brought you there.

Old folks will no longer struggle to make the journey, but sit next to a dutiful son or daughter who can join in the call. Common ailments can be diagnosed online and prescriptions filled, re-filled and delivered. This is a small revolution that will make us calmer and healthier.

Another change now causing panic, but with the potential to be a good thing, is in the world of higher education. Our universities are now so hooked on the easy money of foreign students, especially from China, that nothing short of a global pandemic could wean them off their addiction. At Manchester University, one in eight students are Chinese; at Liverpool, it’s one in five; at University College London, more than 10% of international students are Chinese.

How did this happen? In part, the boom is due to the weak pound and America’s trade war with China. Then there’s the uncomfortable fact that a post-graduate degree in the UK is less competitive than those in China. An MA here typically lasts only a year, but brings in the lucrative fee of £30,000-plus in tuition alone. Undergraduates from non-eu countries pay triple the tuition fee, so it’s easy to see why universities are taking fewer UK students each year and using foreign students to plug their funding gaps.

With as many as 40% of Chinese students cancelling their plans to return to the UK in the fall, our universities—built by humble UK taxpayers—might spend more time on educating their homegrown students instead of hawking their degrees in the international market place.

As we wander into our tentative re-entry, Covid-19 is still unfolding as a morality tale of science, politics, economics and culture. Those of us who have emerged disease free may feel like escape artists, but there is a limit to our recklessness. Sheltering in place for a long season has made us wary of change, made us yearn for the good old days when only bank robbers and surgeons wore masks and we were unselfconscious innocents who could eat in restaurants, send children to school, go to church, see a film and use the loos in Peter Jones without feeling that the dice are loaded against us. Now we want to walk down familiar streets where everything looks exactly as we expected, only rather better.

Picking up where we left off is neither possible nor wise. If we are to deserve the world that awaits us, we will need imagination, generosity of spirit and audacity.

To deserve the world that awaits us, we will need imagination and generosity of spirit

Fear and confusion is as contagious as an alien virus

I’d like to think this means ditching HS2 and using that money to pay the bills so the next generation isn’t bled dry. That we will scrap the plans for Sizewell C. The technology is already out of date and the price tag more than £20 billion. We could use those billions to address the crisis in care homes and home care. A stark message of this pandemic is that how a society looks after its ageing population is a precise and sobering expression of its humanity.

Above all, we should now prepare for the next epidemics looming on the horizon. That doesn’t mean ‘every man for himself’ and filling the cellar with loo paper, light bulbs and cases of Sauvignon Blanc. It means making those who govern the land know that we know they were not prepared this time. They did not understand the science and their fear and confusion was as contagious as the alien virus.

Such chaos is not created in a day. It has long roots and it begins with the belief ‘it can’t happen here’. We now know it can. We are not asleep and we are all changed. When we finally look back, we may realise it was in the twinkling of an eye.