A New Coronavirus Narrative: Pushed Into The Past Tense

How the UK government and press are using war-time messaging and the past tense to get Britain back to work

It’s eight weeks into the UK lockdown and deaths in the UK are officially approaching 35,000 (not counting those who died at home or without being tested, leading some to place the death toll closer to fifty thousand). The number of deaths are usually over four hundred a day and it has been around that number for weeks, showing the UK is still battling with huge numbers of infection and death despite being on lockdown for two months. The virus is still actively spreading (almost a quarter of a million UK residents have been infected so far).

Huge numbers of front line staff have sadly lost their lives. A transport employee Belly Mujinga died after being spat at by a man claiming to have Covid-19. He did. She and a colleague, also spat at, both contracted the virus. Belly was at work, doing her job keeping transport running for those who have to get to work in other key worker roles. To date, 26 school staff have died. Bearing in mind some schools have only had a tiny fraction of students in, this is a large number of deaths. In Bristol, a school has had to close because two teachers tested positive. This has meant that all the children they came into contact with – and all their key worker families – now have to quarantine for fourteen days. 200 people are now unable to perform their jobs in health care, logistics…