Andy Richardson: 'You get used to anything, sooner or later it just becomes your life'
There are many months to endure before Covid-19 passes.
Social distancing, immunisation and herd immunity will be key weapons in a lengthy fight. But while we must be patient to avoid spreading the disease, we are already deep enough into this to pick out a handful of heroes.
Like the governor in the USA who saw it coming and walked into a wall of unpopularity to keep people safe. While The Donald – that’s Trump, not Duck, though at times they are interchangeable – told us we’d be through this by Easter and while BoJo boasted about shaking hands with a Covid-19 patient and then unsurprisingly went down with a dose; one man was heading in the opposite direction.
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Governor Mike DeWine was following the science and closing down events before his state had reported a single case of Covid-19. One shut down disappointed 60,000 people and cost $53 million to call off.
He was branded a sky-is-falling doom monger – but his policies mean Ohio has a significantly lower death rate than others. While the USA is on a worse trajectory than Spain, Italy or Iran; the unpopular De Wine has saved hundreds, probably thousands, of lives. He was led by science. So when our Government holds its daily press conference – rough theme, ignore questions about inadequate testing – isn’t it time they faced questions from science and health reporters?
In his 1995 song, Straight Time, Bruce Springsteen sang the lyric: “You get used to anything, sooner or later it just becomes your life.” And that’s true for the vast numbers of people home schooling their kids. Reasonably intelligent parents who thought kids had it easy now wonder how to help complete a 2D Shapes I Spy when they have no idea. In home schooling, rule one is this: it’s the kids teaching the adults.
Workers who complete a 45-second commute from a bedroom to the living room wrongly imagined home-working was a euphemism for ‘wearing pyjamas all day’. How things change. Now they are back to shirts and ties as they create new routines.
A few industries are going their own way, like football and aviation. Easy Jet bosses have furloughed staff while picking up £177 million in bonuses. And millionaire footballers are picking up their huge salaries while non-playing staff with mortgages are laid off. Let that sink in. These are the things that people will remember.
