• IT is encouraging that weeks into the coronavirus outbreak, the number of commuters seeking refuge behind face masks is barely above normal levels, (there are always one or two earnest folk wearing them even in the best of times.)

In my lifetime I have witnessed a number of epidemics. Indeed I once unwittingly cleared a busy shop by remarking casually that I had just been to a country where (unbeknownst to me) there had been a cholera epidemic.

On another occasion all the sugar vanished from supermarket shelves. And then there was the time that (bafflingly) you couldn’t get toilet paper for love or money.

The epidemics I’m referring to involved mass hysteria. Be alert to it. It’s catching. Keep calm and run like hell!

CT MARKS,
NW1