"“How are we to live in an age of pandemics?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat

any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.

Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before CoVID-19 emerged: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways.

We had indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors: anesthetics. We have that still.

It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the microbial kingdom has added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by this novel coronavirus, let that plague when it comes find us doing sensible and human things

praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about death and destruction.

It may break our bodies (so many things can do that) but it need not dominate our minds."

With apologies to CS Lewis.