Last Monday, there appeared across the front pages of most national newspapers a picture of Greenwich park, bustling with Londoners enjoying a crisp, quickening spring day. The problem was, they weren’t supposed to be there. Or rather, they weren't observing the government protocol on social distancing. Although not actually touching each other, crowds at the Royal Observatory concentrated in spots that afforded them the best views of our iconic cityscape. Elbows may have brushed on narrow paths winding up and down the hill, and thrill-seeking cyclists, leant forwards on their handlebars for maximum velocity, scattered disoriented pedestrians into circumscribed space that was not theirs to enter.
Now, I understand the outrage that scenes like those captured in Greenwich park last weekend might cause. Even if each frolicking individual were sticking assiduously to their own two meters of personal space, the notion of a park full of springtime revellers does not sit well with the gravity of the crisis that confronts us. Members of the public need to take greater responsibility, for the sake of those who are most at risk from potential infection.
Covid19 is a combination of insentient protein and will not be perturbed or checked in its progress by shows of public defiance. Going out to socialise in groups of friends ‘in spite of it all’ is at the present moment an incredibly antisocial gesture. Although some face difficult and possibly dangerous situations self-isolating at home, and every effort should be made to deal with these distressing instances, the call for us to assume personal responsibility is, on the whole, absolutely reasonable.
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In making an individualised morality tale of this, however -- as the Prime Minister did on Monday -- the government sought to wash its hands of responsibility. But half-way interested observers can’t help but have noticed the public health advice coming our way over the last month has been badly muddled, each new item often directly contradicting what had been the official line only days before. Where ‘best practice’ examples of state-led efforts to contain the virus have been clear (notably in South Korea and Germany), Britain’s disoriented political leaders have stalled and prevaricated.
That Number Ten appears initially to have underestimated the scale of the crisis is obvious. In the space of a couple of short weeks, the official line has gone from Keep Calm, Carry On and ‘take it on the chin’ (and maybe wash your hands a bit more); to ‘probably avoid the pub, but we’re not going to enforce anything’; to more recent social isolation and distancing ‘advice’, and our current state of ‘lockdown’. Early talk of ‘herd immunity’ tactics, intended to limit damage to the national economy, showed a disregard for vulnerable groups that we regard, in light of Imperial College modelling, as utterly unconscionable.
Throughout the last week, London-based NHS staff have been traveling to their places of work, alongside other essential workers, such as supermarket workers. While public transport services have been vastly reduced to discourage all but absolutely necessary travel, the issue is that demonstrably non-essential workers have also been asked to keep coming to work too. While the government failed either to define ‘essential’ work, or to strictly enforce workplace closures, tens of thousands of people who should have been working from home were instead crammed into carriages on the Central Line, alongside doctors and nurses. It is fair enough to feel anger at the open-air revellers in Greenwich park and elsewhere, but it is these images of over-full train carriages that must provoke greatest outrage. If not, we surely have our individual and collective indignation badly mis-calibrated.
Johnson himself tested positive for the virus on Thursday, a symbolic testament to his mishandling of the crisis. In the space of three weeks, the PM has gone from hearty handshakes with confirmed Coronavirus patients (Johnson scoffed at the idea that this was socially irresponsible) to chastising Londoners for going to the park. He is being exposed, despite a recent volte face in light of scientific scrutiny, as a woefully ill-equipped and inappropriate national leader at this time. The at least superficial air of competence displayed by chancellor Rishi Sunak confirms that this is a role that Johnson is unfit to play.
It also bears repeating that medium- and long-term preparations for the spread of Covid19 in the UK appear to have been virtually non-existent. The virus’s potential impact has been known since January - it has not ‘crept up’ on us. Countries like Germany and South Korea highlight, empirically, the most effective strategies for mitigating its very worst harms, yet only now are acutely at-risk front-line NHS staff being promised tests they have been calling for for weeks. At a time when their contribution to public life is universally applauded, they still lack adequate safety equipment. Moreover, the UK lags behind other countries in our supply of ventilators, so fundamental to treating the most serious cases of the virus.
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If, as some argue, science fiction has value in providing us with an alien perspective from which we can appreciate the contingency of our present social and political landscapes, then we are truly living in a science fiction moment. Glib as it might sound, we are at the outpost of the next century, and one can only hope that the current crisis provides an impetus to halt what has been a devastating scaling back of the infrastructure of public life over the last generation.
Thinking through the meduim- to long-term implications of the coronavirus pandemic is profoundly disorienting – but it won’t serve anyone well to bury our heads, even in the short term. In macabre fashion, the virus hammers home that there is, in fact, such a thing as society. As Judith Butler puts it, “vulnerability traverses and conditions social relations” that are always fragile, but without which our being in the world becomes impossible. We are all united in this essential, intractable vulnerability, and we all depend on fundamental forms of solidarity that don’t end when we leave our front doors.
There shouldn't, and indeed will not, be a return to ‘normality’ when this crisis is over. The coronavirus pandemic spotlights the worst effects of systematic disinvestment, our public health infrastructure undercooked after a decade of austerity. But this disinvestment has happened across the board. It is up to members of the public to agitate, in months and years to come, for a change that refuses to fetishize competition, brutality and self-reliance, and instead emphasises a universal ethic of solidarity and care, acknowledging the interdependency of embodied human life.
https://tossobservations.wordpress.com/2020/03/29/an-outpost-of-the-next-century/