The War (Against The Virus) Is Not Over!

We were told we were fighting a war, against the virus,

from the relative safety of our homes.

Only the doctors and nurses, and care staff in the care homes were in the front line,

Oh, and quite a few bus drivers in the early days before we knew what this virus was!

We thought we’d won the war, the cases were right down in the summer.

A few skirmishes of track and trace to mop the enemy up and it would be all over.

Then we could start to rebuild our ravaged world, in a better way.

 

Restore the economy,

Resurrect the small businesses,

before they have been drowned for too long.

Bring our world into harmony as the lockdown showed us it might be possible.

But kick starting the old economy,

firing up the production and getting the planes to fly us again all around the world to the holiday destinations of our continuing dreams.

We can’t get enough, we just can’t get enough can we?

We’re never satisfied and never will be.

We want to talk to our friends, neighbors, and families over the garden fence,

invite them into our rooms,

have cups of tea and coffee with them.

 

Send the children back to schools where they belong,

restore everything that we have known.

Put the world back into the same normality that we came from.

Send the older teens on to university, to follow the footsteps of previous generations.

Open their minds and make them the fodder for the thriving businesses of the future, chasing the potential clients, and pinching business off their rivals.

Fight for the customers, new wars of conquest, back and forth,

capitalism’s less than bloody battles,

littered with the inner corpses of mental illness and homelessness,

marital disharmony, and abuse,

not to mention rising drug abuse in many places,

as the dissatisfied find momentary solace in cages which will trap them for many years of their lives.

 

The scientists and epidemiologists, the medics and even government ministers warned of a second wave,

of dangers which could still take place,

of inevitabilities, as the cooler seasons come upon us,

as we breathe in enclosed spaces, and become casual about the dangers of the return of the virus.

Most of us, I think, could hardly believe a second wave could really happen when we had so thoroughly beaten the virus everywhere by summer,

except in the States where they came out of lockdown too soon.

Well it’s arrived!

In a blink we slid from victory over the beast, to a Tet offensive.

It’s all around us, surrounding us, creeping up on us where we least expected,

Its in our kids, but they don’t seem to be coming down with it too bad.

It spread quickly in our ‘could not wait to socialize’ student populations, and presumably all of the young in those age groups.

If they’re fighting a war, it seems they’re losing it already.

The average age of a superspreader it seems is 19, 0r maybe 18,

(although by all accounts there’s a much older one in the White House,

who fought the disease off himself,

just with a little help from his friends,

and a few expensive drugs, at the hospital!).

Just like the big chief in the White House, they won’t follow orders.

Thankfully they did when it mattered in the Second World War,

but not now, when there’s so much less discipline, and everyone, even their elders, seem to question everything.

Even the scientists can’t be believed it seems,

and every generation feels free to question the government.

Today in the 21^st century, blaming and criticizing, they are our favourite games!