Dear LPG,

I am no politician and perhaps being stuck at home for so long has got my mind doing a little overtime, but this thought occurred to me recently.

 We are all used to hearing about the different crises on the news and reading about them in the newspapers, but this virus seems to have been with us for so long.  It started as something that was happening somewhere else in the world but soon became something that has affected every corner of it.  

I think that the fact that we are all stuck in our homes has made the whole experience even more intense and, for those who have not been ill, or are recovering, the time is passing really slowly, but I am amazed at the fact that there is still so much conflicting news about this issue.

We have known about it since the beginning of the year but it became more real in the UK in mid-March.  We heard that we older people were the most vulnerable together with people living with illness, but we are now hearing about so many younger people who are affected.  Every country has its own ideas about masks and their effectiveness, advice about the symptoms, and what to do if you think that you may be affected, appear to differ so much.  The whole issue about when it is right to go out, and when it is not, has also thrown up so many questions.

I understand that even though it is one virus, it is likely to affect people in different countries a little differently because of climate and culture differences, but I thought this was essentially a world-wide illness which is affecting us all now, although it started in China, but one thing that bothers me is that so many governments seem to have learned little from the countries that were first affected.

Throughout the centuries it is true that the world’s many governments have always had trouble agreeing about anything, but I thought that someone or something that threatened the whole world would change our perspective, and that a few lessons would have been learned from this experience.  While no one can predict when it will end, I thought that it would take a world enemy to unite the people who govern the different countries of our planet.  I find it truly worrying that there are still so many basic aspects of this world predicament that it appears that our governments can’t agree on, and even more worrying that so many governments are unable to agree amongst themselves.

There is no doubt that this virus is perhaps the biggest natural phenomenon so far.  It has truly rocked the world but I am left wondering if our world governments will ever agree on anything?

GK, Brockley.