Blogging seemed to return at the start of the year. The lockdown diaries of Chinese citizens penned in their homes in Wuhan and then across the country were eagerly translated and shared – imagine going through this bizarre and frightening experience! Then the same happened with citizen reports from Lombardy. And then, it was happening in English –speaking countries and across the entire globe, and the little resurgence that had happened just disappeared. The picture here is the second of two letters I have received from the government since the start of the pandemic – the first, which I did not entirely follow, dictated that I not leave my apartment, not come into close contact with my partner, and rely on supermarket deliveries for all ‘essentials’. This second is a little less draconian, but the reason that we had it at all is because of an enormous failure of systems of outsourcing; local governments and the National Health Service were overlooked in the construction of track and trace systems in favour of clearly parasitic companies which are skilled at bidding for contracts and little else – Deloitte, Serco. Platforms too, of a kind; the ‘test and trace app’ that everyone has been encouraged to download was notoriously one of the least effective of the various inept public health efforts.

One can forgive the weed smokers of the world for their deep conviction that this is all a conspiracy – the coronavirus has created a sort of platform Gleichschaltung, where many of us now have lives that literally revolve around Amazon, Netflix, social media, Zoom, Deliveroo and not much else, with their workers exposed to the worst so as to bring goods to the doors of those ‘shielding’ and those on ‘furlough’, to name the two most obvious new concepts. Jeff Bezos’ wealth is now at a level beyond human mathematical understanding. The ‘shielding’ system allows people to leave for essential hospital appointments; and my ‘essential’ here is the eight-weekly drip of immunosuppressants I get for Crohn’s disease. The app we use for this is Zipcar, a car rental platform, as the ‘shielding letter’ warns against public transport. My girlfriend, who can drive, uses the app, on her smartphone, to drive me to the PFI hospital on the M25 where I have been treated for the last 15 years. These journeys have become very familiar – grinding through the city to the outskirts, joining the motorway at Eltham in a series of cuttings and overpasses, then sailing through Bexley to Dartford. The last time this happened the Serco guard at the hospital refused to let me in, because I had not received an admissions code sent to the smartphone I do not own. Anticipating this, the ward staff had put my name on a printed list, but nobody had told the guard about it. He noticed the analogue list by his side eventually – but for a time, as I stood in the rain unable to get into the hospital, it seemed as if the rule had become – no smartphone, no treatment. Resistance, or even avoidance, is futile.