Governments around the world are devoted considerable effort to the important business of finding someone else to blame all this on.
“China is our starting point”, a well-placed source said, “the public’s generally uneasy about China because they don’t know much about it. Plus, lots of them still seem to believe that communists are plotting to destroy our way of life. China’s a nice easy target.
“Then we’ll move on to foreigners – once we’ve established that the virus came from afar, it should be pretty easy to attach the responsibility to any person who’s come from even little bit afar.
“After that, we’re not so sure. We can pin the slow response on ‘the experts’. We’re trying out the ‘liberal elite’ for non-compliance, but it’s a tough path to walk – I get nervy talking about elitism elitism with the PM’s Eton and Oxford mates.”