“Wash your hands”

Turn on the TV. Read a tweet. Swipe through Instagram.

“I think we’re reaching peak!”

 

You already know what I’m talking about before I’ve even explicitly mentioned anything.

 

As we are all aware, the depth of discussion surrounding covid-19 is becoming too much to handle. This is to the point I ironically decided to write a blog. If you’re not in the mood to read another piece on this, yet again, I wouldn’t even be offended.

 

The Global North have taken the Coronavirus incredibly seriously as middle-aged white males from any class can actually catch it! This is something that even Boris Johnson has never seen before! It must be monumental! Roll your eyes at my opinion, but you know it’s true.

 

I’m not going to lie to you, I was definitely one of those dickheads that did not take this situation seriously. I believed that the media were in over its head. I believed that the statistics were too small to worry. I believed that the Global North were panicking overtime because this time something uncontrollable was affecting them!

 

Do I still believe those things? Yes, to an extent.

 

However, as I sit here, drinking red wine and acting aesthetic while writing this piece (this is also a dig at how people are glamorising self-quarantine), I’m distracting myself from the fear of what is to come in the next few months. There is a part of me that believes it will go away in the next two weeks. That the incessant news rounds, memes and stupid ‘relatable’ content will just go away. That we are not in a collective state of pure anxiety. The stereotypical fear of being in a nightmare and wanting to wake up is how the entire nation feels; we are seriously in a period of time that feels like a school snow day on crack.

It is ultimately an out of body experience because we’re being told to just… stop.

But how do we stop?

Do we halt time by panic buying toilet paper because apparently everyone is genuinely shitting themselves? Do we halt time by prolonging exams indefinitely? Do we halt time by playing monopoly while the world is ironically in a disastrous state economically?

 

Should we stay calm and collected, placing full trust in our ‘strong and stable’ Tory government? xx

I don’t f*cking think so darling

 

I would call this a hysterical moment in time. We are watching the way in which the world operates become dismantled in a matter of weeks.

…

 

Over a small period of time we have seen world political figures throw incredible resources at this virus in order to combat it. Recently, our UK Prime Minister has pledged to form a £350 billion coronavirus package. This type of commitment is incredible, but it makes me question why we have never been able to perform this commitment to other extensive and troubling issues. Why is it that political powers choose to perform inequality.? To perform institutional discrimination? To perform capitalism?

We have been taught that inequality is innate. We have been taught that institutional racism, sexism, classism and ableism are genuinely normal. However, I would argue that these things are not normal, nor innate.

Revolutionary power exists. 

Considering this, tell me why Grenfell victims are still not housed?

What I find particularly interesting is the parallel between the proclaimed severity of the coronavirus by the UK and the rest of the west compared to the way other major health epidemics are taken so lightly when they affect minority communities.

 

Tell me about the time the first pill was tested on black women and it caused cancer.

Tell me about the time that black areas in the US were infected with animal wastage.

Tell me about the fact that HIV kills the gay community.

In our ‘post-colonial era’, we have to question whether we are currently living in a progressive environment or colonialism is just wearing a tighter mask. Due to social media platforms such as twitter, minority communities have been able to create a powerful cyber space that demands change. But as demonstrated in recent events, our space is clearly reserved for us and us only, with no real commitment to anti-colonial policies or practices.

It is clear that the ‘world’ seems to be at risk, therefore the measures are extreme. Nonetheless, I whole-heartedly believe that this level of urgency could have been applied to hundreds of thousands of minority lives that have been at risk for many years.

 

…

 

On that note!

 

As many of us will be self-isolating to make sure we protect each other, I think it’s highly important that we keep doing what we’re doing as a nation. Through constantly questioning government actions, staying alert and detolling our lives!

 

In terms of how we will cope after a few weeks, well I don’t think many of us have the answer for that. But I do believe that as long as we take mental breaks by walking, talking to others and focusing on home activities the nation will stay hopeful!

 

Try not to kill your families x