Well, who could have anticipated the events of 2020? The world has changed so rapidly, and incomprehensibly, in just ten short months!
“The new normal?” Can I even remember the “old normal?” The year began with Lesley and I moving to a new home – Tall Chimneys, Wilmslow, Cheshire. Coinciding with the emergence of a NOVEL disease, COVID-19.
I could not have imagined how events would unfold over the early months of 2020. The incompetence and ignorance of global leaders, was there for all to see. This was only the start of the terror which our world was about to endure!
Unfolding, like a Spielberg movie, horror and fear successively gripped the leaders of nations. They become transfixed, like elderly ladies, staring at the the lights on a Bingo board, as the death count grew.
People’s sense of horror, catalysed by the unbelievable bumblings and indifferences of so many nation’s leaders!
As the extraordinary, daily statistics emerged, together with the incredulous and scandalous briefings, people began to die in their 1000s!
One a day, then 10, soon it was a 100 a day! Quickly surpassed as 300 and then 500 a day, died! The numbers grew, as we watched, unable to comprehend the speed at which this disease ravaged the lives of unsuspecting families?
Like an audience, at an evening in the theatre, we watched the horrors of this NOVEL virus confound and crush the derisory defences offered by countries around the world.
The UK seemed to ‘lag’ behind Italy, Spain and Germany. As the invisible spectre of the COVID virus swept across Europe, decimating towns and cities and then countries. Surely, we’ll learn from their inadequate efforts to combat this killer?
No, we didn’t! We couldn’t even use the evidence of their paltry efforts to combat this virus. “Shall we try a herd immunity approach?”
“No, not that, came the cry!” “OK we’ll blunder and botch our approach and ignore the science because the £ is more important than the value placed on people’s lives!
… and so, the lies, dishonesty and ineptitude grew daily, bettered only by the numbers who contracted and sadly died, daily, from this global pandemic.
This behaviour was tantamount to a world-wide annihilation of the sick, vulnerable and disabled and yet some countries seem to ‘crack the strategy’ and keep the death rates. “How”, I asked myself, “how are they doing this?”
Mark Geraghty 