Coronavirus marks an epoch. Life will never be the same again, but it will go on
Millennium Bridge in London 17 March 2020.
London will never be the same again. This week, a door closed behind us and an era came to an end. Looking back, the capital of yesterday was a Land of Cockaigne. Now the pubs and restaurants, the theatres and cinemas, the entire panoply of hospitality and entertainment are closing down. The bustling metropolis has fallen silent. The social distancing necessitated by the dictatorship of coronavirus puts Cromwell’s Commonwealth in the shade.
Until Monday it was still possible to hope that we might somehow mitigate the ravages of the pandemic. But the Prime Minister put paid to such dwindling dreams of dodging the bullet. The rapid spread of Covid-19 meant that draconian measures which, just a week ago, he had hoped to phase in gradually would be required immediately. Stocks, shares and the pound plummeted, as markets absorbed the recessionary impact of the virus.
Don’t believe what you read in the papers: Britain is not “in lockdown”, an American phrase beloved of Hollywood but alien to these shores. In keeping with our hallowed tradition of the rule of law that goes back to Magna Carta, we have not forced our people (like the French) to carry a piece of paper giving us permission to go to the corner shop for our baguette. And yet we are temporarily renouncing a great part of our freedom. As Boris Johnson put it: “I don’t think there has really been anything like it in peacetime.”
His strategy was first improvised, then reversed and now accelerated. This is not where anyone thought we would be even a week ago. Millions of people face destitution. The only trade that will flourish is crime, especially now that the police have given notice that they will only investigate incidents that are life-threatening. Emmanuel Macron may think he can defy the laws of economics by decreeing that no French firm will go bankrupt because of coronavirus, but this is whistling in the wind. Nor are we about to follow Singapore by handing out cheques for £1,000 to every citizen. Here, the best that anyone hopes for is a widening of sick pay provisions to embrace the gig economy, plus the official closure of pubs, restaurants, other businesses and theatre productions so that they can claim compensation from insurance. Is that too much to ask?
The hardest hit of all will be the nine million oldies, or senior citizens as we used to call them in politer days. Confined to barracks except for walking the dog or, as a special treat, a trip to the supermarket. No family visits or treats, not so much as a hug, a kiss or even a handshake. This cruel and unusual exclusion from social life of the elderly, who crave company more than most, has been made unavoidable by the perils of the pandemic. As a society, we will have to come up with new ways of alleviating the loneliness of the long distance pensioners. Online connections have become a matter of life and death. Whatever became of those promises, under David Cameron and then Boris Johnson, to upgrade Britain’s broadband? Somehow, they never got round to it; and now not even the television, a lifeline for the older generations, will work without it.
Life is already changing before our eyes. Gloves have made a comeback, we greet with a namaste or a wave, washing hands at every opportunity is mandatory. Men are finding the new hygiene more onerous than women, who can’t see what the fuss is about. Children are still at school but are more boisterous than usual, sensing as they do that the world has been turned upside down and adult authority is visibly tottering. Yet the normal activities available to boys and girls have also been drastically reduced. What will they do without the theme parks and pleasure palaces, the leisure and sports facilities? Visits to the countryside have yet to be banned, but how many youngsters will volunteer for that?
And what of love in this coldest, most clinical of climates? The world to which we have just bid farewell was madly promiscuous yet oddly inhibited, the latter being a consequence of the former. Suddenly, relations between the sexes have been frozen by social distancing.
Two outcomes are possible (and are not entirely incompatible). On the one hand, the victory of the virtual relationship over the flesh and blood one is now complete. Social media has finally usurped the role of personal contact. On the other hand, the casual experimentation that had become common, if not compulsory, is now prohibited on doctor’s orders. At a stroke, Covid-19 has forced the Tinder generation, the gods of ghosting, to rediscover the art of wooing. This has to be good news for romantics.
Coronavirus is a catastrophe: there is no sugaring the placebo that, in the absence of a cure or even a vaccine, is all we have. But human beings find a silver lining in every cloud, however noxious. Life will go on, even if external conditions force us to abandon the hedonistic lifestyle of the pre-coronavirus period that is now at an end. Above all, the inner life, the life of the mind and the heart, may flourish as never before. From Dante and Shakespeare to Newton and Einstein, the most creative among us have often done their best work while languishing in prison, banished into exile, or secluded by plague.
“The worst is not,” says Edgar in King Lear, “So long as I can say ‘This is the worst.’” This year, it is true, could hardly have begun in a more inauspicious manner, but it may yet end better than we can yet imagine. While there is life, there is not only hope, but happiness.
