Mouths plopped open... the clown had got serious
Shortly after 5pm yesterday an eerie silence fell over the No 10 briefing room. out of nowhere the Prime Minister had just lobbed a sobering thought for the nation to digest.
‘I must level with you,’ he said awkwardly, staring down at his haphazard collection of notes. ‘Many families, many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.’
Among the gathered throng, lower mouths plopped open. Alarmed glances were exchanged. Feet shuffled awkwardly. For once, the man we rely on for light relief had all the spark and levity of an undertaker. the clown had got serious.
to borrow a term from the Prime Minister’s own personal collection of colourful exclamations: yowzers!
Boris and the boffins were back in Downing Street yesterday. Same room, same lecterns, same facial expressions of mild concern.
on this occasion the Prime Minister had a stark message to deliver, but there was no sugar coating this time.
the coronavirus, he announced, is the worst public-health crisis the country had faced for a generation. As bad as seasonal flu? Fuhgeddaboudit. this is far, far worse. We are now in the grips of a pandemic. the PM’s speech was less fluent than usual. At times he stuttered nervously. Banter and bonhomie were absent.
occasionally, he ran his hands tetchily through his hair. Sagging black bags under his eyes suggested several restless nights’ sleep. Perhaps it’s me, but he appears to have aged these past weeks.
Can anyone blame him? half the world seems to be clamouring for the UK to go into some sort of panicked, apocalyptic selfenforced lockdown. For now, however, the PM was sticking resolutely to his guns.
Stay at home. that was the main message. If you have a cough or feel a sniffle coming on, batten down the hatches.
At some point it could be that if even one person in a home is unwell, the entire household could be advised to stay put. ‘I want to signal now that this is coming down the track,’ he warned.
HE did all he could to sound determined and upbeat. ‘the country will get through this epidemic, just as it got through tougher experiences before,’ he said. he urged people to ‘look for each other and commit to the national effort’.
the Government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance had brought along a squiggly graph to illustrate the way the number of
cases will rise and fall over time. The curvature of the graph this formed resembled, the PM suggested, a Mexican sombrero hat. From where I sat, I thought it looked more like a moo-cow’s udder.
Alarmingly, the moment when infections are predicted to reach their peak could still be some 14 weeks away. Eek!
Thankfully chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty was a picture of cool. Of course he was. So little ruffles this man. If Dennis Lillee bowled him a bouncer he’d probably grin back at him and ask for another. He was wearing the same badly arranged burgundy tie he’s been sporting nearly all this week. Is it his lucky tie? We must hope so.
The Prof announced we were at the end of the ‘contain’ period. We were now on to ‘delay’. Each week we can delay the virus’s spread will give the NHS much-needed breathing space. He reiterated his belief that shutting down schools would be pointless. Schoolkids must absolutely hate him.
BORIS conceded that he was considering banning sporting events. ‘The scientific advice is, this has little effect on the spread,’ he said, ‘but it does place a burden on other public services.’ No sport? You could almost hear a collective sigh of disappointment around the country.
Someone asked if Boris was concerned about his own health after one of his health ministers, Nadine Dorries, recently confirmed she had tested positive for the virus.
And who would take over if he did get ill? Boris emitted a tiny cackle. He pledged to keep washing his hands and moved on swiftly.
Whitty signed off in typically upbeat style by insisting they were learning more about the virus as time went on. ‘Our understanding of this virus increases week on week,’ he chirped, sounding mildly excited about it all. Boris, meanwhile, attempted a small rallying cry. ‘Let us squash that sombrero!’ he yelled, in a reference to that graph that had all the cheer of a weatherman’s rainfall projections. For a moment, that made us smile. But only for a moment.