Numbness to death.

Fifteen hundred!

I do not know what is going to annoy me more today. There will be many candidates. Politics is sure to be up there, it always is. The only challenge in that one is working out what fucking idiot will annoy me. No doubt the item I ordered on Tuesday and is still not with the courier will also make me burst into intermittent bouts of sweariness. I’ll stub my toe, or similar, and curse the world. Then there will be the deaths, you know. Just that minor thing where fifteen hundred people died yesterday.

Let that figure sink in. Let it brew in the mental tea we are mulling together. People on Twitter have mentioned it, but this is the number of people who died on the Titanic. A ten-abreast Jumbo Jet can fly five hundred people. Imagine three of them crashing all in the same day? As you smell the mixture think about the London Hippodrome and everyone in the audience dying at once. That is still not fifteen hundred (seated) it is merely thirteen hundred.

Many have become numb to this. People have let the figures brush over them with a sense of indifference. Sure in life online and offline they will say the right things, pull the correct faces and shed the appropriate tears (Matt Hancock aside), but does anyone believe them? Honestly, close your eyes and put yourself in a situation where you have to trust these people. Hanging like Indiana Jones from a cliff, you need that hand to save your life! Do you trust them to have the hand ready and waiting? Can you imagine having to rely on these people to save your life? Because for many, that is what they have to do at this point.

Sure, people are not hanging from a cliff edge, that is easier in many ways. Hanging from that edge, you can see the threat, living in a pandemic you cant. The malignant threat of a microscopic virus haunting your every move. The invisible threat to us all, hounding us night and day, just waiting for its moment.

I am making this virus sound like it is sentient. It is as aware as your average backbench MP. That is what makes it so bad, and it is what should worry you. This virus does not care if you are rich or poor. It couldn’t give a damn if you are old or young. It laughs in the face of your fitness, and it gives the finger to your politics. Young, fit and healthy you stand a better chance, but you are not immune to it.

So wear a mask, wash your hands and maintain social fucking distancing. It is not hard, and it may save both yourself and others.