Something rather wonderful is happening in our new Pontius Pilate world of hand-washing. Bear with me, because first we need to go quickly back to the beginning.
Back to Huda Kattan, Cameron Dallas, Kayla Itsines, Selina Gomes.
Me neither. However, in the respective fields of make-up (29 million followers), ‘personality’ (21 million), personal training (10.5 million) and song (144 million), these are the planet’s top influencers. Just google any one of them with ‘personal wealth’ in the same search bar, and you will get the point, which is that you, my friend, and me, are in the wrong jobs.
Social media has given us many things, one of which is the availability of on-tap advice on any area of our lives about which we are unsure, by people who are paid a bob or two by big companies to tell us what things we need to buy to release us from our deep sense of personal failure. Good on them. I have no criticism. I just wish that I had thought of it first. Roger Morgan-Grenville (12 followers), influencing people on cricket, insects and seabirds.
But the air right now is alive with the sound of worms not just turning, but performing hand-brake skids. The New Corona virus may not have brought us much to celebrate, but it has ushered out, temporarily at least, the era of vacuous style over substance, and ushered in its place a new era of actually quite wanting to know what is going on.
The real people are back. Men and women in sensible suits and shoes, undemonstratively telling us what plans they are making to keep us safe, and what they would like us to do to contribute to our own general welfare. Comfortable in their own skin, if not completely so in front of a camera, they talk about the very things that will keep us well, and I love them all.
You sense that the sheer ghastliness of an underperforming tweet is not a life-changing shock for them, and that they are motivated by the routine assembly of fact and evidence rather than worrying about what they are going to wear in tomorrow morning’s all-important V-log.
And it is not just them, but the army of other suits behind them: the scientists, lab workers, planners, forecasters, medics and, yes, politicians, who are burning the midnight oil protecting us. The brave WHO researchers who are diving in to the worst-infected areas, the doctors who went from safe provinces into Wuhan, and the whole vast, unsung army of health workers.
My own blog was going to be about my new bee book, that officially pokes its little head above ground in the morning, but to hell with that.
This one is for every single wonderful person out there who is doing their bit to keep me and you safe, and help us not to be anxious.
May they keep safe, too.
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