I find it hard to panic. I know I should, but running about weeping and wailing, renting my garments and tearing out the hair, is so embarrassing. And if others panic in my presence I shall no doubt discretely remove myself from the situation and go try and work up a decent level of anxiety by contemplating working for DHL and having to make parachute jumps with a delivery of elephants. Even with my aversion to panic, I encourage you to go for it, much as in the last dregs of extra time a football manager might urge a weary team facing a solid defence that nothing short of a few broken legs and gouged eyes can penetrate.

I fear that cheery optimism and positive spin is ruining my chances of another thirty years of declining health and encroaching impoverishment. Though I was rather hoping to spend these twilight years proving the bastards wrong, and reaping such rewards as might enable a visit to a secret laboratory where a complete body refit could take place and thus enable me the overindulgence and arrogance of the youthful success that I miserably missed. However short of graduating into the ranks of the illuminati and shape shifting lizards that David Icke warns us about, I did fancy a wintry bout of recognition and the consequent air of contempt for the endless stream of sycophants beating their way to my door to worship at my ancient feet. I imagine grunting a grizzled appreciation of patronising nursing staff delivering a cake with a hundred and ten candles to my shriveled chair bound self to supply tabloid TV with a filler at the end of the news, just before the sports roundup.

I am sick of all these positive messages being hurled about with abandon. All this we shall overcome, kumbaya, this too shall pass, chin up, cheerio, we’ll meet again nonsense, is dampening the urge to climb into a bunker and take pot shots at anyone venturing nearby failing to spray scalding hot disinfectant on their hazmat suit before delivering the take out vindaloo. Do you not know that despite the odds of catching the plague being equivalent to getting mowed down by a texting van driver, the death rate is coming out at 1 in 10 and that 1 seems to come out of people who’s description is remarkably familiar whenever I am confronted with a mirror, cracked and mildewed or not. Whoever designed this weapon of mass destruction, aimed it solely at my mass!

One might on reviewing the positive side of things contemplate how in retreat from plague ridden London, Shakespeare wrote one of his most depressing plays, King Lear, except he probably didn’t because it was obvious that the theatres were closed and the audience dropping off. No wonder he died young possibly of alcoholism. There was no streaming services to pick up the slack in his career, which I am sure would have faired better and produced a lot more if the plague was not a constant buzz killer. Granted that these merry healthy England plays might have been cheap comedies to finance his extravagant life style and penchant for rent boys, for such is the corruption of too much fame and money, but would we all not prefer a trivial life of fun and frivolity than one made profound by that dreadful fellow Death who makes fools of wisemen, cowards of the valiant, and not much better of those whose hearts might be in the right place, but who’s grey cells are indifferent to reason?

The truth is that for all of Shakespeare’s life, England was given to outbreaks of plague and he barely made it out of Stratford where 25% of the town died the year he was born. There must have been quite a few little budding Shakespeares who found themselves in lime pits squelched beneath the last audience of Much Ado About Nothing.

Conversations overheard among the partying millennials and populist politicians of the 17th Century: Oh look at yon cvte littel family of rats scvttering amidst the grovndlings. To think some people say clearing all the shit from the lavatories is a healthy obsession, when it is obvious jvdging by the presence of yon Rats that where there’s mvck there’s life! Take off that stvpid mask, yov’re frightening the children and it matters not, because most of vs only get a little plagvified, rather than the nasty dose that wipes ovt excessive peasants who keep wage rates down.

This is not an opportunity for anything! Unless you are selling facemasks and ventilators, then I assume you are phoning up preachers, priests, rabbis, imams and all manner of hully gully chaps to advise how the godless are being much smite and that the godly should gather in great numbers and hug each other. Scriptures I am sure can be quoted and the ticket to heaven duly purchased.

Such supernaturally protected bods probably make up a dangerous proportion of the heroes keeping the sewers clear, the water freely flowing, and a good bandwidth for the Internet transmission of mild amusements and uplifting FaceBook postings. Which is jolly decent of them, though I fear that as the mildly infected brush it all off as some conspiracy inculcated by whichever bête noire one prefers, one well meaning righteous might blow into the bag as they pack the survival kits for us ancients resting on a pension fund. We might be happily destroying the environment and surplus to the requirements of the millennials and vegans who find all our attitudes offensive if only in a microscopic way, but all my money is being donated to a Fracking Company if I so much as cough on my way to the off licence let alone the intensive care unit. You have been warned. Apre moi, le deluge de pollution!

I would also hate to think how I might be brought down by my wife carelessly forgetting to wipe down the Johnny Walker and Fags that I kicked her out to get from one of the half washed and holy. Her guilt at having contaminated me through careless soap application, would deeply wound her soul and be faint reward for a life time’s devotion to ensuring my idleness and ease. So, it behoves you to panic. Remember that coughs and sneezes spread diseases. Lift buttons need disinfecting. Floors need scrubbing. Bannisters and handrails require 60% alcohol wiped and not merely sprayed over them. Decks need swabbing. And hands need to be scrubbed, scraped, and covered in single use plastic gloves. In fact, a case can be made for everyone being dressed in latex and put through a car wash every day at least three times. I know this can be done. I have seen a number of Rap artists making videos demonstrating how this works with the aid of some nubile angels of mercy.

Once you are all rubbered up, then perhaps I might walk amongst you again without fear. So PANIC! I want none of your lax, party on attitudes. I want none of your silver lining nonsense. I want you to get good and scared and scrub this world raw and as fit for the unheroic as for the heroes.