Always look on the bright side of life

A Thames River police patrol tug has been going up and down broadcasting a message to all Londoners. No, not "Get back into your houses" or "You'll be arrested if you remain on the streets", but "Always look on the bright side of life", the jolly little ditty sung by Eric Idle in Monty Python. Now that's a community service I like, well done chaps. We need a lot more of this over the next few weeks. The apocalyptic statistics being trotted out every hour by well-meaning but doom-laden ministers, doctors and TV presenters, have helped create the picture that we are all going to be stricken with coronavirus and that our lives are going to be ruined by an economic crash. And every time someone famous gets the virus, such as Prince Charles, announced today, we all think to oursleves, "If someone as privileged as him can get it, we are all doomed." Well, after the jolly boating song by the Thames River police - give them medals - I think it's time to find some silver linings in the black clouds hovering over everyone. The most optimistic story I have read today appeared in The Times, and it was about a research unit in Oxford University which has looked at the statistics and done its own modelling and come up with a startling conclusion: that maybe coronavirus has actually been around in the UK - and thus perhaps elsewhere in Europe and the United States - since January and that huge numbers of people have already had it but without realising it because the symptoms were mild and felt like a cold or flu. And if that's the case, then maybe 50 per cent of the population is aready immune from the virus because it has gone through their bodies without them noticing. AND, if that assumption is true, it means this nationwide social distancing is not really necessary. But the only way this can be proved is if the government starts a mass anti-body testing programme which seems unlikely. The governments here in UK and certainly in the US as well haven't got any kind of mass testing going on at all and they appear to be incable of launching one. Unlike in South Korea where nationwde testing has been carried out with highly effective results. I hope Boris and co will look at this Oxford University research and react to it by starting testing on a huge scale. But don't tell Trump because he will order all businesses to get back to work immediately and start calling the coronavirus a hoax aimed at ruining the US economy. The Oxford University research should be taken seriously because it offers a glimmer of hope for us all instead of having to listen every day to gloom and doom. Always look on the bright side of life!!