A guide to coronavirus hoarding

We have now got past the absurd stage of glaring in a reproachful manner at Chinese people on the tube. Coronavirus is disrupting sporting events, so this rather mild-mannered little bug has acquired crisis cachet and we must all take it very seriously. Lots of us will die of it, apparently — in this country some 500,000, according to one estimate. Almost certainly older people with under-lying medical conditions, i.e. the very people who voted for Brexit and ensured Labour’s red wall was dismantled in December. If this worst-case scenario does actually happen, expect the Remainers to demand a rerun of that referendum.

Health professionals will be able to enumerate for you the stages of Covid-19 as it goes to work on the human body. My interest is in the stages that the British human psyche goes through thanks to the labours of this formidably pronged little monkey.

Stage one seemed to be a mildly jingoistic contempt — ‘Ha, that’s what you get if you eat bats, you mad bastards’, and ‘Why do all illnesses come from China?’ — plus a vague commitment not to spend Easter in Wuhan.