- Yonden Lhatoo takes it personally after a British co-worker tests positive for Covid-19, and pins it on a negligent prime minister for his arrogance, indifference and indolence in responding to a global public health crisis
A British colleague whom I'm very fond of tested positive for Covid-19 on the same day that Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted he had contracted the coronavirus.
She had just returned to Hong Kong after a two-week visit to London and Birmingham, and was midway through her mandatory self-quarantine in her little flat when she received the bad news.
Tracing her own movements and keeping in mind that she took social-distancing precautions to the extent of isolating herself from her own family in Britain, she reckons she must have caught the bug either during train journeys in her home country or while flying in those steaming, disease-incubation chambers previously known as planes.
When we last met more than three weeks ago, I cautioned her against travelling to a country that was doing hardly anything to protect its citizens from a scourge engulfing the entire planet. That was when some of us in this stricken region were shaking our heads in dismay at the appalling display of indifference and indolence on the part of some major Western governments in response to the pandemic, and warning that countries like the US would become the new epicentres.
Well, here we are now, with the US topping the global charts with more than 101,000 infections, and Britain not only doubling its own cases and deaths every couple of days, but also earning the dubious distinction of having at the helm the first world leader to confirm a coronavirus diagnosis.
That's right, Bojo himself is now down with the disease that has sickened well over half a million people worldwide, after spending months joking about, dismissing and downplaying the enormity of the catastrophe his country is facing.
This is the same man who was boasting, until recently, about swanning around "shaking hands with everybody", including Covid-19 patients, and making wisecracks about naming an emergency campaign to manufacture life-saving ventilators as "Operation Last Gasp".
No wonder he's been dubbed Britain's own super-spreader, now that his health secretary has also tested positive and his chief medical officer has retreated into self-isolation with symptoms.
Don't forget Bojo's asinine plan to let up to 80 per cent of the population contract the coronavirus first and then rely on some sort of "herd immunity" built up by the masses to provide collective protection.
"Perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures," he postulated, but gave up the ridiculous notion when the experts helped him realise it could overwhelm the national health system and cause up to a quarter of a million deaths.
Now, taking it himself on the double chin, he says he has "mild symptoms" that include "a temperature and a persistent cough", the latter being non-evident throughout the video he posted to his official Twitter account informing the public he would self-isolate and work from home.
Relatively healthy at 55 years of age, with the best medical personnel and facilities at his service to ensure his speedy recovery, Bojo will be fine, rest assured. But can the same be said for the millions of British citizens whose lives he has put at risk with his arrogance and nonchalance?
I doubt you'll ever read this, ensconced in your ivory tower, but Mr Prime Minister, you, sir, are a reckless menace. You made your own bed to lie in, and that's all on you. But you also made the bed my poor colleague is lying in, and that's on you, too.
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The only saving grace in this fiasco is that she is in good hands now in Hong Kong, a city that knows how to look after its own. What a monumental tragedy that many, many other British citizens don't have any such option.
Yonden Lhatoo is the chief news editor at the Post
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