29th November 2020

 As Birmingham enters the highest Covid  tier on Wednesday, there are two schools of thought on the crisis. Whilst one Cabinet minister claims the NHS could be “physically overwhelmed..with every bed, every ward occupied”, others say that, in fact, the Nightingale hospitals remain empty. The general public are increasingly angry. Some say “what’s the point of hiding in a cave for months, as the lion will still be waiting outside ready to attack the minute we emerge again”. Meanwhile, business owners, ranging from Sir Philip Green to every corner shop, see their lives collapsing like a pack of cards. And oldies like me reflect on how we all, as kids, were urged in the ‘50s to build up our own internal immunity by confronting viruses, not by hiding away. When a child caught something, we all went to a ‘sickness party’ to catch it once, then be forever protected. You can’t keep disinfecting the whole world, whilst the economy on which we all need to survive collapses around us. Let’s hope the vaccine side effects aren’t worse than the cure.