WERE you standing on your doorstep clapping last night? Do you have a rainbow in your window dedicated to the NHS and other `key workers’? Eight weeks after lockdown does it feel enough to you?
It certainly doesn’t in our house where both those things have become an integral part of lockdown life.
Perhaps it was inevitable in a political climate which appears to have surrendered utterly to the forces of populism, but life under the shadow of Covid-19 has increasingly become a world of empty gestures and meaningless slogans.
The first night that people stood and clapped at 8pm on a Thursday night was a poignant show of support for our medics who were bracing themselves to weather the coming storm – a deadly virus that had brought the entire medical system in other well-developed countries to their knees.
Those who clapped had just been confined to their homes – for how long they did not know – and banned from the simple physical human contact with loved ones which sustained them, however much they had taken it for granted.
Those they clapped for were facing terrifying uncertainty without the usual wider support system of family and friends on which they, like all human beings, rely.
Since then many of those clapping have lost those same loved ones, or their own lives – either to Covid-19 or other diseases rendered untreatable by measures brought in to manage the pandemic.
And since then many of those medics have told us that they don’t want applause – they want Personal Protective Equipment that will ensure they are giving their all doesn’t mean sacrificing their lives.
Key workers have seen the rainbows but they would rather see safe working conditions and a decent day’s pay for a hard day’s work.
And all of us have seen countries like New Zealand show us that the storm which we feared never needed to come at all.
The reason political leaders and health officials feared the NHS would be devastated by coronavirus is because they know it is already on its knees due to chronic underfunding.
When Covid-19 hit, the health service was the least prepared it has ever been, with doctors and nurses who worked during fears previous pandemics were about to break – SARS, Swine Flu, Ebola – openly saying they were infinitely more ready then.
They asked the public to do their bit and by and large we have. We have stayed at home, shielded our parents and sick relatives, self-educated our children, drawn rainbows and dutifully clapped once a week.
We have meekly carried out all the tasks assigned to us to keep us distracted and make us feel like we are doing something, when we are literally doing nothing.
And in the meantime domestic violence victims are being brutalised, the chronically ill are succumbing to treatable disease, the hungry are starving. And lives continue to be lost to Covid-19.
On Tuesday we were given our latest assignment - this time to light a candle for nurses.
I was reminded irresistibly of the furious words of African-American activist Rachel Elizabeth Cargle: “I don’t want your love and light if it doesn’t come with solidarity and action.”
I thought of her particularly because the day before I was speaking to a kind, compassionate and incredibly well-read friend who did not know that, according to official figures, black people are more than four times more likely to die from coronavirus than white people.
The Office of National Statistics found, even after taking into account age, health and disability and socio-demographic characteristics, they are still almost twice as likely as white people to die a Covid-19-related death.
Bangladeshi and Pakistani males are 1.8 times more likely to die after other pre-existing factors are accounted for.
Like pandemic modelling, it is the government’s own data. Like pandemic planning it is another failure – not one jurisdiction has included it in its Covid-19 risk factors.
So when they ask you to light a light for my family - unless you alert even one person to this data – just don’t.
