On what feels like Day 172 of the
Corona Crisis (we're actually about a week in), we finally heard some good news from our Prime Minister.
Boris Johnson has said he is "absolutely confident" that the UK can "turn the tide" of the
coronavirus outbreak in 12 weeks.
Don't get me wrong, 12 weeks is a long time, especially if you're having to spend most of that time trapped at home with your relatives. It's a well-worn phrase, "You can pick your friends, not your family," but you don't get locked down with the people you'd pick, do you?
No one has factored into the projected death rate the number of people done in because they said, "Right, where shall we go today?" everyday during a quarantine.
There is a caveat. The Prime Minister said we could turn the tide "if" we stuck to the rules set out by the Government. Oh dear. I'm not sure we'll do that. We don't seem to be good at sticking to rules even when they are for our own good. We can't keep
BMW drivers out of the motorway lanes with a red X on them even with a wide reaching radio ad campaign.
We are a nation of people who need to be told, every time a Tube train pulls up, "Please allow passengers off the train before you board."
The platform announcers may as well be saying, "Please obey the laws of physics. Allow mass that is occupying the space that you would like to occupy to leave that space before you move your mass into it." That's how basic their request is and yet the people on the platform still try to rush onto the train.
Those people must hate it when they're trying on shoes and there's some paper stuffed down the toe end. "No, I won't take the paper out first before I put my foot in. Bring me the size 14s!"
If our future safety is dependent on our ability to follow rules, we're all in trouble.
Before the pubs were forced to close we had been advised not to go to them, but in London you could see people out drinking every evening. And if they drove there I bet they didn't even follow the arrows painted on the floor of the car park.
We've all eaten a microwaved meal that tells you it needs 4 minutes, a stirring, and another 4 minutes but we don't follow that rule. We put it on for 8 and eat a dish that's somehow too hot and too cold at the same time.
The rule is, "Do not use cotton buds in your ears." And yet we all do. Why are they making so many cotton buds if people aren't using them in their ears?
We know that speeding kills so a rule telling us to keep below a certain speed is good for us and yet a record 2.02 million speeding tickets were handed out in England and Wales last year, according to figures from collated by the Home Office.
The only rule I agree with breaking now is the one we're old on the London Underground. They have signs that say, "Always hold the handrail." No. I'd rather take my chances with gravity than pick up whatever germs these train rushing, arrow ignoring, bad microwaving, fast cotton budders have left on there.
[Audio]: Good news for hand sanitiser users.
| 📕
READ (the ebook)
| 🎧
LISTEN (to the latest podcast)
| 👀
SEE (Steve's live stand-up) - Currently cancelled. That's corona for ya