Peter Rhodes on predicting a pandemic, watching a demolition and the stories behind the headlines

People have been flouting Government guidelines by turning up to watch the demolition of a big office block in Dudley. This may tell us something about the state of free entertainment in the borough. I am reminded of my family's remote little village in the Yorkshire Dales which was so deprived of things to do that people would traipse three miles to the butcher's in the nearest town to gaze in awe at the bacon slicer.

As an act of charity, I have spared Fleet Street's sub-editors the arduous task of dreaming up yet more bash-the-Government headlines for the coming week. The first tests on Covid-19 patients have begun, using antibodies and existing drugs. If these therapies work, the headline is: “Miracle cure – why did bungling Government wait so long?” And if the treatments don't work: “Bungling Government killed my 'guinea-pig' gran.” Get the idea?

It always pays to read the story behind a headline. The classic yarn is of a man who with his bare hands killed a pitbull terrier as it attacked a toddler in a Scottish town. For its first edition the local newspaper carried the headline: “Hero saves toddler from devil dog.” Later it emerged that the hero was a tourist from Wolverhampton. For later editions the headline was. “Englishman kills family pet.”

Meanwhile, the Guardian claims there is “a growing belief among hospital management in the capital that the Nightingale (hospital), built to great acclaim over just nine days, was becoming a 'white elephant'.” What is any government supposed to do? If you don't build a new hospital for the worst-case scenario it's complacency. If you do build a new hospital for the worst-case scenario it's a white elephant.

Very few people were warning about a pandemic before it happened. But it seems I was, although I admit I was surprised to unearth it while trawling idly through my archives recently.

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote about the huge number of alleged global threats which, over the decades, had scared us witless. My list included: global communism, alien invasion, nuclear proliferation, mad-cow disease, Aids, biological warfare - and what I called "the Coming Pandemic."

I also suggested that climate change and plastic pollution, such fashionable fears a year ago, might prove to be "the 100 per cent genuine article, the unavoidable horrors that, after so many false alarms, will engulf our planet and wipe out Homo sapiens." I ended with: "If they are not, you can be assured that a year or so from now another even worse apocalypse will be unveiled." All done entirely without a crystal ball.

After my recent item on pop-up adverts, this one suddenly appeared: “Seniors love relief sock.” Moving swiftly on . . .