OK, HERE goes. This is my second attempt at the column for this week – the first, I’ve just thrown in the bin.
I’d love you to think this is the normal routine for me – that I spend hours torturously wringing out each sentence – but that would be a lie. Most weeks I sit down and type out what’s in my head. It’s as much transcription as composition.
“We’ve noticed”, I hear you shout.
This week is different; it’s never been so different. We’ve woken up in a dystopian reality, where how we work and socialise has changed for the foreseeable future.
The column I dumped was a sanctimonious, virtue-signalling rant in which I attempted to offset my anxiety by blaming others. While such rants give momentary feelings of self-righteous indignation, they solve nothing. Worse, they leave you feeling powerless and increase anxiety.
You don’t need me to tell you that the government’s handling of this pandemic has been characterised by doing too little and acting too late. It’s a disgrace our front-line health workers aren’t being tested and the fact they’re still short of personal protection equipment (PPE) is completely unacceptable.
For the past two weeks, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has used distribution problems as the excuse for the shortage of PPE; I mean, seriously? I ordered a book from Amazon last week and it arrived four days later.
So here’s an idea Mr Hancock: if you can’t distribute essential PPE equipment to health workers, get Amazon to do it.
I’m off again. Of course it’s self-delusional to believe my opinion on the government’s handling of Covid-19 matters. If, by some miracle, Boris Johnson or his boss, Dominic Cummings, happened across this column, would they give a damn what a stand-up comic from Belfast thought of their policies? Hell they would.
So instead of screaming into the void, I’d like to share with you a few insights I’ve found useful. I’m not going to lecture – there’s been enough of that. I’m presuming you’re adults, well able to make up your own minds and be responsible for your actions. Never before has personal responsibility been so important, as it will literally mean the difference between life and death.
Firstly, I found it helpful to alter how I thought about the virus. Instead of spending fruitless hours worrying about getting infected, I decided to act as if I’d already contracted Covid-19. Two positives flowed from this shift in outlook. Firstly, the anxiety I felt about catching it evaporated but, more importantly, thinking I was already infected altered my behaviour, ensuring I didn’t pass it on by adhering to social distancing.
Social distancing is no longer just about saving our own lives, it’s also about saving the lives of those we could infect. Our personal interactions must decrease if we’re to have any chance of supressing this virus to a level where the NHS can cope with the inevitable influx of patients needing ICU beds.
As we traverse the next few months, we’ll have to adapt and adjust most aspects of our lives and so my second tip is to be more circumspect about where you get your news. I noticed a direct correlation between the amount of news I was consuming and my levels of anxiety.
I’m not suggesting you bury your head in the sand, rather be aware of the source and quality of the information you’re taking in. If there was a time for quality over quantity, this is it.
I’ve limited myself to one television newscast a day combined with reading this paper and one national broadsheet. While social media may be the emerging information technology, it has a long way to go before it will ever usurp traditional news media.
This newspaper offers a checked and carefully moderated conduit of information. Even this column is checked at least twice for inaccuracies or mistakes; you won’t read rumour or conspiracy theory – it simply wouldn’t be allowed.
My final tip is this: stop being selfish b******s. Sorry, there’s no other way to put it. This pandemic has exposed the best and worst in humanity. Coming off 12-hour shifts, our health workers find empty shelves in supermarkets due to panic buying. And here’s the thing: there’s no need – no need at all; it’s just selfish people greedily looking after number one.
This virus recognises no national, cultural, religious or social borders; we have no chance of fighting it unless we come together and act for the common good.
