It's fun to remain calm and stay indoors

Corona Borealis? At this time of year?

No one needs to hear more about the coronavirus, and yet here I am - pumping out hot words on the only topic that can currently take up residence in my crammed skull. I'm only at the very tip of it, I daren't imagine what things are like with you, in the future. In an ideal world, you don't even know what I'm talking about - how quickly it faded from memory after the vaccines were chemtrailed across the globe by a secretive philanthropic group of skywriters. In a less ideal world, you're having to squint at the words of this article through the runny ink of a disinfectant-soaked magazine, or squinting at the crackling LCD screen of a disinfectant-dunked device.

If I was a political cartoonist, I'd encapsulate the UK corona response via a drawing of a slavering rottweiler labelled 'Eugenics' that has suddenly been let off the lead, hurtling jaws-agape towards an injured rabbit labelled "Me and my friends" while the owner, a Mr Boris Johnson (heard of him?), mugs towards the camera with a cheeky Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em "What am I like?" style grin.

One of my friends was reduced to tears by a reassuring text from their landlord now that they're functionally unemployed. Many others are crying for precisely the opposite reason. I've not cried yet, but I've had a stress headache for three days straight - so something's brewing.

I look forward to those heralding the return of the spirit of the blitz actually rolling their sleeves up and making it happen. Although I think their idea of the spirit of the blitz is just isolated Brits singing Agadoo and reciting the Two Ronnies' Four Candles sketch at each other from their balconies. The Blitz Spirit no longer refers to the far-reaching mass social and infrastructure changes put in place to protect Britain from an existential threat, but instead has been re-envisaged as a laissez faire paradise where British people went about their normal day, ignoring air raid sirens and casually dodging incendiary explosives on their way to the overflowing supermarkets. Take shelter? We don't take instructions from Europe thank you very much. I survived World War One, I think I could handle a little bomb falling directly on my head.

The coronavirus lays bare what happens if you intravenously inject stubborn triumphalism into the veins of a country that has already gone hog wild on nationalistic exceptionalism. From tops-off lager dads refusing to obey the Spanish authorities as their enjoy their booze cruise in the fourth most infected country in the world, to the consensus across the British journalistic class that publicly requesting that we not be allowed to die for the economic expediency of the rich is the most craven form of armchair intellectualism. This country was ill long before it got sick.