‘Covidiot’ – the best word of 2020 | Simon Carter

‘So, what did you do during the great coronavirus crisis?’ he asks his loving relatives.

‘Well, I queued at the local supermarket before the NHS workers woke up and stockpiled all the toilet rolls,’ says grandma.

‘And I decided it was a great idea to go to West Wittering beach almost a week after the whole population had been told to socially distance themselves,’ grandpa excitedly adds. ‘I invited the whole family along.’

‘Oh yeah,’ grandma adds. ‘I forgot – I also bought loads of medicines we didn’t really need as well as the 48 toilet rolls.’

‘Crikey!’ exclaims little Johnny. ‘You were a pair of total dinlos, weren’t you?’Covidiots, actually, Johnny: A superb word which perfectly illustrates the actions of all those who thought it a grand idea to flout government advice and spend a day in the sunshine – be it a West Sussex beach, the tourist trap which is Matlock Bath in Derbyshire and a haven for bikers, or numerous picturesque Welsh mountains.

I’ve said it before in this column, and I say it again. As I grow older, some people around me appear to become ever more brainless.

If stupidity were a fatal disease rather than Covid-19, then our wonderful NHS REALLY would be up against it …

Never, ever under-estimate the rank stupidity of some people, and their ability to perform quite phenomenal actions of mindlessness. Why, get this… While doctors and nurses were battling to save lives, six ambulances had their tyres punctured in Kent. As the strain on our NHS increases by the day, amid the spread of Covid-19, hashtag stupid was on the rampage in Ramsgate.

Two Iceland delivery vans were arsoned in Bristol hours after Boris Johnson told everyone to stay indoors. Hours later, #stupid torched an Asda delivery truck in Somerset. And then, as the sun shone at a weekend for the first time in months, #stupid clogged up our beauty spots as if it were a bank holiday. I repeat, all the time while our chronically under-funded NHS was trying to save countless lives.

Covidiot - surely THE word of 2020.

Clap For Carers proved our love for NHS isn’t negotiable

Wonderful to see the outpouring of emotion for our fantastic NHS workers last Thursday. But it jarred to see Tory MPs adding their congratulatory messages.

Some obviously have short memories, for it was they who cheered in the summer of 2017 in the Commons after blocking Labour’s bid to award nurses and firefighters a pay rise. And it was their party which has failed to adequately fund the NHS in the past decade.So now the hope is that, once the Covid-19 scare has disappeared, this government – and future ones too – finally wake up and realise this: there are some services in the UK that simply cannot have their funding cut. Ever.Number one, the NHS.

Socially isolated son has last laugh as he’s now key worker

It was a joke for years – how my son was ‘socially isolating’ himself most evenings. While the world went about its business, Ben would be in his bedroom playing computer games.

But now it is the general public who have to stay in while Ben spends a lot of time out of the house. For my teenage son, now 18, is a key worker – a shelf- stacker at a supermarket. With no college lectures to attend, a part-time job has morphed into virtually a full-time one.

Now Ben’s sister has been taken on by the Co-op too. S o now I am the dad of two key workers, helping this country get through a pandemic.

It’s not the NHS, of course it’s not, but I’m proud my kids are doing their bit to help in times of crisis.