I was mansplaining to my wife earlier this week about why we ought to be very, very concerned by the coronavirus. It wasn’t the prospect of one person in 50 dying, I said — or not just that. It was more, I said sagely, the knock-on effects. You know, if everyone self-isolates, you’re only about two missed Ocado deliveries away from starvation, looting, cannibalism etc.
‘You’re always catastrophising,’ said my wife. ‘You were like this about Trump. And Brexit. I think it’s because you spend too much time reading the news.’
‘But Trump is very bad,’ I said, because he is. ‘He could start a war.’
‘He hasn’t started a war.’
Slightly to my disappointment, Budgens had floor-to-ceiling reasonably priced hand sanitiser
‘He hasn’t yet,’ I said sulkily, before attempting to undo her deft change of subject. Coronavirus, I said. This, I mean, this could be the big one. Think of the damage to the economy.
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