All stations panic

Our fears are often not thought through, while we ignore one of the real crises

Just in case you weren’t panicking enough about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there have been growing reports about the BA.2 Omicron subvariant. The two major symptoms are dizziness and fatigue.

But let’s face it, it’s pretty much over for the Covid panic. When the world is panicking about the prospects of chemical and nuclear weapons being launched in Eastern Europe, dizziness and fatigue don’t really cut it.

We are now in the seventh consecutive year of global panic and there is no sign of any let-up on the horizon. If President Xi Jinping does move to encourage Russia to head for the

Ukraine off-ramp, it will likely to be done with a view to ensuring China is never in as vulnerable a position as

Russia currently is. It’s difficult to see how that won’t lead to a bipolar world full of anxieties for all its citizens.

The latest panic period began with Britain voting to leave the EU. (Previous panics were triggered by

9/11 and the 2008 global financial crisis.) Brexit really shouldn’t have bothered too many people beyond European borders, but thanks to an indignant Western media, much of the world was provided with front seats to the drawnout drama. This, we were told, was an existential threat to liberal democracy, led by small-minded xenophobic nationalists with a little Russian help.

Media coverage, social and mainstream, helped to create vicious divides. There was no chance of a nuanced discussion, just intolerance and name-calling on both sides.

You wouldn’t have thought it, but it wasn’t the first time a referendum had gone against the EU. Nobody accuses Norway of insularity or small-mindedness when its referendums continue to reject EU membership.

France and Denmark both voted against the establishment of an EU constitution. This triggered all manner of fancy footwork and amendments to the existing European treaties so that Brussels could achieve the outcome that had been rejected by the Danes and French.

An Irish referendum to vote on one of those amendments had to be rerun because it went against the outcome Brussels was looking for. The second vote was a success for the EU bureaucracy, though perhaps not for its democratic reputation. It wasn’t the first time the Irish had been forced to rerun an “unsuccessful” referendum.

When former eurocrat and chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier decided, last August, to run for the French presidency, chunks of his campaign read as though they’d been written by the Brexit team.

The thing is, outside Brussels and the media, there is much concern about the increasingly powerful and unaccountable bureaucracy underlying the European project. There needs to be open and nuanced discussion about this, not just panic-trashing of the critics.

The Brexit panic segued into Donald Trump’s presidential victory. With this vile character in charge of the most powerful country in the world, anything could happen. For four years we were all in a state of high alert, ready to panic at the drop of a hat.

Regrettably, what passed for political analysis during those years was a form of intolerant character assassination, not just of Trump but of the 62-million or so Americans who voted for him. Little effort was made to understand why tens of millions of decent Americans were so desperate that they saw him as their best hope. If he, or one of his ilk, make a comeback in 2024, we will continue to struggle to understand. And, we will panic.

The pandemic overlapped Trump’s final year in office, helping to ensure that the global response was characterised by panic and intolerance. In a few years’ time we might better understand what happened and what should have been done, but right now it seems governments across the globe aren’t even sure how many deaths were “caused” by Covid.

And then, Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine. A Ukrainian friend says it’s a war between Russia and the US on Ukrainian soil. (This is a description that recalls the outrageous comments by president Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland back in 2014, while discussing US plans to help shape the Ukrainian opposition.) Of course, when the Ukrainian war is resolved there will have to be a financial crisis.

Meanwhile, only the brave and levelheaded are panicking about the environment.

Only the brave and level-headed are panicking about the environment