Twitter @Jeggit
Except for perhaps readers in Scotland, no one on planet Earth right now needs to be told about COVID-19 and the global public health emergency it has caused. Since late last year, when a new strain of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was first identified in the central Chinese province of Hubei, the disease has claimed the lives of a staggering 1.1 million people worldwide - roughly the same number of people murdered at the Auschwitz- Birkenau extermination camp between May 1940 and January 1945. And this comparison with the Holocaust is not made without good reason. The pandemic nightmare we are all living through at the moment, and will continue to suffer through for the foreseeable future, is the greatest crisis the world has faced since the Second World War. Britain’s ability to cope has not been tested like this since the Blitz, and just over the water the Irish government has acknowledged this to be the single greatest threat the country has faced since the War of Independence and the foundation of the state.