Coronavirus has become the go-to excuse for just about anything that goes wrong and it is ridiculous suggests Matthew Steeples
“Coronavirus” and a shrug is now the equivalent of “leaves on the line.” Used when anything at all goes wrong in this weird new era, this unfortunately completely overused response to any situation has become beyond irritating.
When I telephoned a car hire firm yesterday to simply extended a booking in France, I was told that under new rules because of “coronavirus,” I would have to go to a specific office in St Tropez. I got there and found it “closed due to coronavirus.”
Sent next to another location at a private airport by a call centre operative, I was told there that they could not help as they’d reduced their operation “due to coronavirus.”
Though I eventually sorted the problem by going to yet another location many miles away, this situation is far from rare. When any mishap occurs right now, people just pin it on coronavirus in spite of the fact that many problems have utterly nothing to do with such.
The likes of Marks & Spencer and Pizza Express are operations that have failed to move with the times, yet they blame their decline on a pandemic rather than their bad management. It’s the easy way out and it’s become the go-to get out clause.
Equally, crazy people are spreading messages that coronavirus is a creation of billionaires seeking to profit from us – one society sort ludicrously told me that it was “made” by Bill Gates whilst another, claiming in all seriousness it to be fact, announced that Barrack Obama had put it on a plane and sent it around the world. Here in coronavirus we have a new bonkers and sadly it has also brought with it the phrase “the new normal” also. The sooner such (and the virus itself) disappears into the ether, the better.
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