Catch COVID-19 and Carry On

By Mark Sadler

When some of my friends in other countries ask me why Great Britain has one of the highest COVID-19 death tallies in the world, I cannot help but feel a swelling of national pride in my English chest. Once more, our scaled-down empire is punching well above its weight.

So, what is our secret? Well, what if I were to tell you that it's all down to the same jovial, make do and mend spirit that carried our ancestors through two world wars: That Anglian breed of irrepressible pluck, that can only be contained underneath a flat cap, worn in tandem within a voluminous pair of trousers, similar to the kind that my great-grandfather was born in, and sported his entire life.

Call me a sentimental old fool if you want. Can I help it if I hear an on-hold music rendition of William Blake's Jerusalem, whenever I think of our heroic healthcare professionals, working on the front lines of the pandemic with inadequate, or non-existent, personal protective equipment, repelling wave after wave of COVID-19 with nothing more than endless choruses of And When They Ask Us, from the musical Oh, What A Lovely War.

My English heart literally grows three sizes, and then bursts in a cloud of Union Jack confetti, when I receive word of National Health Service staff being threatened with disciplinary action, if they fail to “Keep Mum” regarding the absence of essential medical supplies and apparatus. We can't have these head-shaking doomsayers, chipping away at the public morale during a time of national crisis, now can we?

What better way to lift flagging spirits than with a catchy slogan on a poster? For example: “Catch COVID-19 and Carry On” with its iconic accompanying image of a small child dragging the bodies of their parents to a waiting plague cart.

Who among us can say that we have not been stirred into a reckless act of potential self-sacrifice by the handsome moustache and authoritative stare of Lord Kitchener, as he points from posters in the windows of our nation's well-populated funeral parlours, proclaiming: “I want you... to breed herd immunity.”

During the early weeks of the pandemic, our nation's brave pensioners were marshalled into a headlong charge towards the invading virus, later dying in their thousands so that others might develop a resistance. This selfless act was nothing less than the passing of the baton from the sons and daughters of the greatest generation, to a generation who were unclear on what a baton is used for exactly, and who have decided, since then, that it must be some kind of old-fashioned selfie stick.

All across Britain, bold volunteers, with no experience of flying World War Two-era fighter aircraft, are climbing into the cockpits of Spitfires and engaging COVID-19 in aerial dogfights above the picturesque white cliffs of Dover. While below, Dame Vera Lynn waves from the doorway of the rose-covered cottage, where she crochets floral face masks to make up for the shortfall in our hospital intensive care units. 

Beyond our shores, on the sparkling, sapphire-blue waters of the English Channel, our mighty fishing fleet sails to the rescue of the white blood cells who fought a courageous, but futile, battle against the virus on French soil, and who are now stranded in Dieppe.

Every Thursday, at 8pm, we emerge from our homes to clap for our medical carers, in the process crushing god only knows how much COVID-19 between our applauding palms. Everybody is well aware now, that the best way to eliminate the virus is to pulverize it like a mosquito.

When long chains of triangular bunting are filtered through the hands of our neighbours, and suspended from house to house, up and down our streets, in a zig-zag pattern, it feels like we are sharing more than just the residual COVID-19 living on our bare skin. We are relearning how to be a community. One that dry-coughs in unison.

Let's be honest: Do we really need a genuine commitment to mass COVID-19 testing? After all, it was mass-testing, in the form of school exams, that created the generation of experts who our government has been studiously ignoring since January. Those of us who didn't attend Eton learned everything that we needed to know about epidemiology from the school of hard knocks and, with the exception of the many people who died, it never did us any harm.

As of today, us proud remaining Brits stand unbowed all across our green and pleasant land, parts of which have had to be quarantined and repurposed as temporary cemeteries. By forgoing the luxury of living grandparents, and dialling the course of our great nation backwards to a simpler time of rickets and measles, the UK has socially distanced itself from the COVID-19 outbreak by a good seven or eight decades.