Sod this for a game of soldiers

Phone for the fish knives, Norman 

As cook is a little unnerved

Way back in the dim mists of time when I was but eleven years old a visitation of the influence, as the medievals called it, bestrode the world taking with it several millions, including some 30,000 in the UK. The so-called Hong Kong flu came, it saw, it conquered and then it disappeared. Did the world grind to a halt? Did they cancel everything? Did they lock up everyone? Did they threaten you with criminal sanctions if you sat in the park for a few minutes? No, of course not, life and death and Wimbledon and yes, even the Olympics went on as normal and hardly anybody mentioned it at all. I bet hardly anyone even remembers it. I only vaguely recall folk saying the usual "There's a lot of it about" but then they say that every year. Certainly there was no panic, no stupidity, no collapse of the NHS.
Today however a madness has spread quicker than the damn virus; thanks to the malevolent internet, stupid press campaigns, weak and vain politicians, corrupt governments (in particular China, a murderous gangster state on the brink of economic collapse), a bizarre credibility given to the Oracle of Imperial College London ("Half a million dead if no action taken, a quarter million if some action taken, maybe twenty thousand if you lockdown and crash the economy" , then after a week it became "maybe 5,000 or so and many would have died anyway" ... the moral as I constantly say is never mistake a model for anything other than an expensive guess).
Symptoms of the madness are a lack of clarity, of perspective, a complete loss of sang froid, panic driven self-incarceration, a withdrawal, nay a collapse, of normal social intercourse and civic life. The damage to the world economy is possibly greater than that of the depression of the 1930s and we all now how that turned out. All those silly things that you have done, social distancing, meticulous hand washing, hoarding of toilet rolls (what was that all about?), hiding in the bathroom for ten days ... all utterly pointless. The virus will get you whatever you do indeed it's quite possible you've already had it weeks ago and not even noticed.
So how do we get ourselves out of this tangled web? What's the end game? Do we sit here and watching repeats of football matches until July or whenever the Fat Controller is fit enough and back from paternity leave and suffer businesses large and small going to the wall just to "Save our NHS"? ... or do we grow a pair (such a fine expression!) and say enough of this stinking crap, we're out of here. Sod the lock down! Stuff your faulty repressive laws! Let's get back to living a life worth living and back to work and save our economy what's left of it.