Peadar de Burca. One Hundred Years Of Darkness

The experts don’t think this will be the case and neither do I. Social distancing is already working. At the present rate, cases of COVID-19 should be down to a trickle by early summer. There will not however, be a quick switch back life as we knew it. That world is gone. But you knew that already, didn’t you? You may not have said it aloud, but you thought it. There’s going to be another wave of COVID-19 in the coming winter, and as much as I hate to say it, a series of mini-pandemics in different points around the world over the next year. Travel and tourism aren’t going to come alive again until there is a viable vaccine. By which stage the hospitality and entertainment industries will be as dead as disco. Cinemas and restaurants are already in much the same state as a horse with a broken leg, with Netflix and home-dining standing in for the farmer with the loaded gun. There’s going to be a massive reevaluation of property. Are bosses going to pay top dollar for commercial rents when they now realise that 80% of their workforce can do the same job at home? If proximity to one’s job is no longer a key factor in where you live, then cheaper homes in smaller villages become attractive – providing there is adequate wifi.

This is all medium to long term forecasting, as is the idea of our data being digitally captured and publicised under the pretext of predicting where infection outbreaks will take place next. Many are worried about the creeping authoritarianism that will come in the wake of COVID-19. Don’t worry, you don’t have to wait. It’s here already. Victor Orban decided to go full-dictatorial by using this state of emergency to rule by decree without any clear time limit and with special measures to include jail terms for spreading misinformation. What does he have planned next I wonder? A series of giant bronze statues of his friends and family erected around Hungary’s borders? An ice-pick in the back of George Soros’ head? Or maybe he’ll follow the lead of his political bedfellows in Poland and manipulate electoral law so his candidate will be the only one able to mobilize a campaign? You see readers, this is what is really waiting for you on the other side of the pandemic; dystopia. Kaczynski and his cohort of lurking fiends have done some awful things in their time, but to use a pandemic as a means of a power-grab has to rank as the slimiest, most cowardly, utterly degenerate act of the century. To denounce what PiS and Duda in GW is not news, but let me say this; if the Presidential election goes ahead on May 10,then the good people of Poland have only one recourse and that is to down tools and take to the streets. Not to do so would be the gravest mistake and send the wrong message; it would tell PiS that you are okay with their cheating and lying. It would tell them that, yes, they can get away with anything. It would be a clear signal that post-COVID, you are willing to accept a future which will be nothing short of one hundred years of darkness.