Meirion Court confronts its vulnerability
The grim statistics Sam Smithers had shared painted a dire picture. Tension filled the room, as if everyone was holding their breath, waiting for more bad news. “What about herd immunity?” the General called out, quoting Boris' latest idea. “Surely, as more people become immune or vaccinated, the proportion of people falling sick will fall. Once we get to a certain level, it will fizzle out.”
Jane Devereux’s gentle voice interrupted the silence. “It looks as if we are still a long way from that point, Sir Henry,” she said in a whisper that carried the weight of experience. “In the meantime, Covid could become a rerun of the cholera epidemic that swept through India when I was a child. Hundreds of thousands dying of preventable dehydration. Hospitals overwhelmed. Order collapsed. A whole civilisation on the brink of disaster. My parents had no hesitation. They put me on the first boat home when I was four.”
A voluntary lockdown
“Thank you, Jane. Few of us would have first-hand experience of cholera, but we have all probably had a bout of flu at some time in our lives,” Sam resumed. “Nasty but mostly survivable. Yet, few will remember that in 1919, a particularly nasty variant killed millions of young people all around the world, more than all those who died in the Great War. Most of its victims were the same age as the soldiers returning from the trenches.”
He leaned forward on his white stick. “The type of Coronavirus we are dealing with appears to target the elderly. Chinese scientists define this group as the over 55s. They have also found that the older or more disabled you are, the more vulnerable you would be. Without a proper crackdown, a facility like ours could be …. especially exposed.”
Frank spoke next. The retired Literature Professor gathered his papers and switched on the large screen TV. With a few clicks, he uploaded a series of news clips. “Armed police guarding supermarket entrances, a deserted cityscape in the Far East,” he intoned. “This is not Hollywood, not a screenwriter’s dream,” he declared, his high-pitched voice resonating with conviction. “These scenes were shot in China, Japan, and South Korea, all in the last few days. Empty streets in Guangzhou … deserted schools in Kobe … armed patrols in Seoul.”
“These aren’t just disparate data points, my friends,” Frank continued, his passion igniting the room. “It’s a script being written in real time. And it’s one we’ve read before, in a thousand science fiction movies.” He gestured emphatically, emphasising the magnitude of these developments. The images of lockdown flickered on the screen, a stark juxtaposition to the easy come, easy go normality of our present lives.