The Irony of an Antagonistic Lecture

Today, after the first (the second swiftly following the first, with eery predictability of what follows next) casualties from the Swedish Covid-19 swathe of the now pandemic proportions of this global disease, Chinese authorities issued a stern warning with much more resemble of a rebuke, claiming first that Swedish countermeasures were belated, insufficient and clearly marred by indecisiveness, second a (possibly even more rebuking) call to the European Union to chastise its member state. Having followed this - as we may sternly call it - health crisis since inception, China being the author written on its premier Swedish victim and so far the one to recover, I cannot but sternly agree with the claim.

Why, you may ask? Apart from the somewhat contradictory and clearly discomforting (as one might expect, if not from a figure of authority lending his voice to a stunned public when outlining a plan and measures for which they have supposedly been trained for years, if not decades) representatives of competent authorities, which went from claiming the pathogen had reached Sweden but once the impossible (and arguably inevitable) had been confirmed, had also been confined to an apartment in Jönköping for eventual, if not immediate destruction inside the host who had brought it there. Then, after a month and furious debate fanned by the flames outside the realm, the swiftly emerging crisis and Iran and the calls - whether prejudiced or, as we may presume now, only concerned or perhaps even rightly so -  for an Iranian airliner to be halted or at least isolated, then for temporary guests in Italy, a known path for a previous as well as pervious pathogen even in the minds of the most uneducated, to be tested upon reentering the kingdom now supposedly salvaged, and amidst promises of preparations, more alarming promises from authorities more or less not in position of power that such plans were insufficient or would at least not be imposed to the extent required, we have now to stare into a bloodbath of sanguinary proportions, and the unerring plausibility of an economic downturn as rippling as that we have emerged from only so seemingly unscathed. 

To suggest this is a calamity necessitating national unity - the call to which is, in my view, so over-estimated, even in "peacetime" - seems somewhat dubious. But surely we who are most vulnerable - having stocked among the least equipment per capita and, for all the excitingly advanced high-tech quarantine units perfectly fitted to keep the lid on a strain of ebola, should it appear at Arlanda or Malmö (or in Ystad, or Jokkmokk) should attempt to limit the spread by comprehensive and largely mandatory measures. "Distancing" is a myth, for it does not contain any more sense than that people already know; hand-washing need reminders, of course, but so was the case already, and particularly in care facilities (where strict quarantine procedures should be ready for a lockdown decision, not needing government approval, in an event such as this). Information itself cannot be enough. And, as one must need fan the flames of another viral strain already prevalent rather than ignoring it, we ought of course put a particular eye to the conditions in densely-inhabited "problem areas", where this virus of 2020 is all but certain to fester more comfortably. 

All of the measures so far taken speak of impotency: Authorities would - rightly, if one believes in the supremacy of elected officials - 

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