Coronavirus at Bedtime.

Fans of Dr Who will immediately recognise Coronavirus is an alien invasion. Its intergalactic advantage is that none of us can remember what we did in the last two weeks except of course if you were on a cruise. But there’s no doubt about it, Coronavirus is out to infect all of us given the chance. It’s strange to realise that such a dumb life form can have the malicious intent of a Bond villain but basically, it’s us or them. They can’t survive without us and, as they see it, a few humans deceasing prematurely is a small price to pay. So it’s our capacity to organise ourselves against their capacity to sneak across handshakes and sneezes that immediately disappear into the fog of history. And we mix and move like never before. I mean if we were all required to walk for a month things would be a lot simpler, and, in the vein of more helpful suggestions, if we were all issued with a forehead patch that changed colour when we were the least bit feverish. Identified carriers could hand in their phone to show where they’d been. But as we’re told simple things like not shaking hands, sneezing into tissues etc are the best ways of stopping transmission; if only we would think about it at the time, not the next time we watch the news! And why oh why doesn’t the government post a precise case by case map of the UK posted daily showing new ones dark blue and fading out to older ones? This ‘at a glance’ information will galvanise people at real risk to take precautions. With 4 in the whole of Wales and 51 in London it’s obvious who needs to wash hands most. And when a new one appears at 52 Tally Bont Street, Aberystwyth, who’s visited there from, say London? With the public mind informed it can organise itself but our government, seeing us as children, only placates us, assumes it knows better and keeps us in the dark assuming we’ll throw a tantrum like a two-year-old. As with all our other problems our PM’s advice to cabinet has been, “Tell them a bedtime story.”