CHARLES GRAHAM - How to cope with our darkest hour since WWII

This was the week that the penny dropped.

Coronavirus and Covid-19 were already well established in the public’s memory banks. But up until the weekend they were often someone else’s nuisance, with widespread media coverage repeatedly dismissed as overkill or greeted with groans, much in the same way as the word “Brexit” had been for the previous three years.

But Monday evening’s Prime Ministerial news briefing, with its litany of unprecedented restrictions on the public, businesses and events, put the nation on red alert. There hasn’t been anything quite like it since Neville Chamberlain put us on a war footing in 1939.

So far-reaching are the measures and the potential damage to both health and the economy that precious few of us will be unaffected.

There has been a bewilderingly large amount of information to digest, most of it negative (the grounding of jets will have a positive impact on the environment, but that’s about it).

I’m finding it difficult to pick which devastating consequence to worry about and keep me awake at night next!

My first sympathies, though, lie with the elderly and otherwise medically vulnerable who are most at risk from succumbing to this virus.

They are trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea: on the one hand appreciating that they need to self-isolate for their own protection, but also dreading that solitude which could go on for months.

I know quite a few people who help the elderly in their spare time: going for papers, collecting groceries and providing a bit of home care out of sheer kind-heartedness. Unfortunately many of them are over 70 themselves and so that takes them out of the frame as far as community assistance is concerned: just when there’s a need to help far larger numbers of people (ie loads of folk who feel as fit as a flea as well as those with medical issues) than normal.

My highly active mum (82) is already tied in knots about the prospect of her summer going down the swanny (“how can I cope without going to the gym each morning?” she asked the other day) and her network of friends over in Yorkshire are all in a similar age bracket.

And Alan Cunliffe, the 83-year-old Whelley widower who was stuck in Tenerife when Covid-19 struck there and has since had to spend another fortnight cooped up at home, was predicting to me that self-isolation will drive some pensioners “round the twist and finish others off.”

It’s a distressing thought and it is the duty of all fitter younger people to minimise this impact, but self-isolation of the vulnerable is, the experts say, the lesser of two evils and we have to accept that.

At the other end of the age spectrum we have schoolchildren.

Now I must declare a vested interest in wanting to see our educational institutions kept open.

My son, who has worked damned hard towards his A-levels, now only has around 90 days before they are due to finish.

He needs high grades to get where he wants to go and is on tenter hooks that a) classes might be disbanded for the remaining weeks of the academic year and the remaining coursework just sent in a big bundle to chew over at home; and b) the exams might be postponed which would either throw next year’s plans into chaos and mean the end of gruelling revision isn’t just three months away after all. There is also the worry that he might go down with the bug just as he’s due to sit the exams.

But from a wider perspective, I still believe the pros of keeping schools open are greater than the cons wherever possible.

Clearly if there aren’t enough teachers well enough to run classes or the virus is detected there, then they will have to close (albeit temporarily).

Indeed The Deanery High has had to send home all its years 8, 9 and 10 pupils this week due to a shortage not only of teachers but also toilet rolls and hand sanitiser.

But having a blanket directive to shut every school until the summer break, however, could have massive consequences, especially families where the children are under 14 and not able to stay home alone.

What are the parents of younger ones supposed to do then? Abandon work to play babysitter for weeks, thus having a bad, knock-on effect on their employers (supermarket chains have voiced particularly concern in this area) and their own jobs?

It’s all right if you’re wealthy because you can afford to pay for a minder, but those people will be in a small minority.

And the default free child-minders of recent years - the good old grandparents - will in some cases be off limits because they are self-isolating. And you wouldn’t want to put your children with them because they might fatally infect them.

So many businesses too are going to be negatively affected by this crisis, some to a lethal degree. One economic expert described this as a “vortex of decline” into which many firms were being sucked and from which some will not re-emerge.

It’s hard to dismiss this as doom-mongering. Already some firms are putting up the shutters; the streets, even in the rush hour, are uncannily light of traffic; events are being cancelled right, left and centre; and the Government is urging people not to visit pubs and restaurants.

I was delighted to hear the huge packet of measures the new Chancellor Rishi Sunak to help businesses - a whopping £330bn in loans plus no business rates for the retail and hospitality industry.

But some people are still asking if it’s enough and also asking for financial help for renters and those in the so-called gig economy. And it might prove a big ask for some of this firms to pay these loans back.

Some enterprising businesses are taking their services to the doorstep in order to preserve custom. Well done to butcher’s shops Reynolds’s in Parbold and England’s in Pemberton for launching home deliveries and to Italian restaurant The Olive Garden for turning takeaway for the first time.

But that doesn’t work for all kinds of enterprises and some businesses rely on other businesses performing well in order to function themselves.

The lesson in all this is that we have to trust and listen to the experts.

Tough as the weeks ahead will be, the stricter we are with ourselves now, the sooner the pandemic will surely pass (although how we’ll know if it’s truly over when we aren’t testing everybody anymore I’m not sure).

Idly flouting the rules, which may soon become laws, out of boredom, frustration or incredulity (yes, some people think this is all a big conspiracy concocted by international governments and the media for some inexplicable reason) will only prolong the misery, deepen economic despair and cause more deaths.

But those able-bodied of us also have a duty to help those in need as best we can. Take a leaf out of the book of Standish where the local community group has teamed up with local councillors of different political hues to set up a volunteer service for the elderly coupled to a 24-hour helpline.

Dunkirk spirit will see us through.