How do we face coronavirus? Common decency is our only hope | Suzanne Moore
Whether you're a catastrophist or a conspiracy theorist, everyone has their own way of coping with the pandemic. But what we really need is solidarity and honesty
How do you feel? I'm not asking if you have a temperature and a cough. What I mean is: how do you feel in yourself? How are you coping emotionally? I ask because, since we have all become amateur and (frankly, quite crap) epidemiologists, we have been ignoring what really matters. Because so much of what happens next in the coronavirus crisis depends on our emotional responses.
I was ill last week, and pretty much self-isolated. Easy enough for me - it's something I have done for 20 years anyway as a freelance writer. But when I did go out, I saw restaurants that were packed with people, and chatted on the bus to a 76-year-old who was full of beans, despite having just come out of hospital, having had pneumonia. She was not going to stop living her life, she told me, and she wouldn't be doing anything she was being advised to do. No self-isolation for her.
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