Dear Editor-in-Chief
I saw this tweet and I found myself wondering what on earth has happened to us? Why aren’t we outraged to hear that the government won’t be putting any Covid restrictions in place unless deaths go above 1000 a week or, as was later clarified, 50,000 a year? How have we got to the stage where we shrug when we hear that 770 people lost their lives to the virus in the week ending 26 August. New Zealand have had 26 deaths! 26! In total.
Why don’t we care about what these deaths mean for families losing people they love? Why don’t we care about the doctors and nurses, already exhausted and emotionally-wrecked, having to see yet more people die and have yet more dreadful conversations with friends and families? Why aren’t we saying we’ll keep our kids at home until the government provides every classroom with ventilation?
What is going to make us angry and outraged if we barely bat an eyelid at the rising bodycount and don’t give a damn when Johnson and Sunak say things which would normally make us feel sick with disgust?
What really worries me is that we are getting progressively more uncaring and callous as a nation and we are represented by a government that cares only about power and money. We don’t care about people dying, starving, flooded or burned in faraway paces. We don’t care about refugees desperate to find somewhere safe for their families. We don’t even care that old people in care homes have been culled, effectively, and that kids are getting long Covid, possibly with life-changing long term side effects.
I heard two guys talking in my local shop this week and one said “Those old people who died probably only had a max of two years left anyway, so it’s not exactly a tragedy is it?” and the other one, instead of looking shocked, agreed and said “We’ve just got to get on with life.”
“If someone you loved had the choice of going now or in two years, what would they choose? What would YOU choose? Be with them or be without them for the next two years?” I asked.
Silence.
Are we Brits so hardened to death? Are we so bored with it all? Do we just shrug and say “Oh well…that’s the virus for you!”
And Johnson apparently says he’ll accept 50,000 deaths a year. Well. That’s mighty big of him. Why are we tolerating this monster? What will make us say enough is enough? We are turning into monsters ourselves. It scares me.
And don’t get me started on this:
Disgusted of Devon
