I come from a family so utilitarian that in a past life we were probably early Protestant missionaries. We were never frilly with each other’s feelings but one thing my mother particularly instilled in us from a young age was kindness towards others and a desire to help.

One of my earliest memories is of her telling me that if I were ever to see someone sitting alone, I should go and play with them. She said that no one should have to spend their breaks alone and that everyone was beautiful in their own way. I would spend my breaks looking to see if everyone had a friend and approaching people who didn’t or who looked upset. My friends would probably be the first to say that not much has changed in that department.

The thing that strikes me most about this virus which has literally taken over the world is not the fear of sickness but rather, the lack of care that people have shown each other ever since there was a whiff of the pandemic reaching our shores. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a scathing article about how people were pillaging supermarkets, but last week things have gotten far more serious with people actually coming out and saying that they don’t care if our elderly people are negatively affected because we are overpopulated anyway, and others boasting about going to Gozo for their quarantine period. This is beyond the realms of the disgusting. The numbers are rising almost hourly, leaving a strain both on an already tired health system as well as upon a people who have exhausted themselves with hysteria.

Let us take this opportunity tocome together as a community and be better

Every day I receive messages from people who are deeply worried about the situation, and with neighbours like these, who can blame them? We all want to protect those we love and it’s only a matter of time before a very real witch-hunt starts and the mob starts dragging dissenters into the street. The location of the first family to contract the virus was leaked within hours and a teenage girl has been relentlessly attacked for her misplaced comments about staying quarantined.

It’s time to face up to the facts: if we continue to shuttle between work and school and not close our borders entirely for the next few weeks, the chances that we will escape this without a single visit from the grim reaper are going to be very slim. It’s bad enough that we didn’t stop flights to Italy three weeks ago, but to continue to allow things to go on as they are would be entirely ludicrous and wholly irresponsible.

Regardless of what your own personal beliefs are about the virus and how young and fit you are, you should feel that it is your duty to help protect the weak and vulnerable. This is not going to be achieved by you stealing all the hand sanitisers from hospital; nor is it going to happen if you treat your quarantine period like an extended holiday. Going out on a drunken night is not going to make much of a difference to your life in the long run, but you inadvertently passing on an illness to someone’s grandma and inadvertently killing her, will.

It shouldn’t have taken the prime minister’s threat to slap fines on people for leaving the house when they know they shouldn’t be, for us to do right thing. Let us take this opportunity to come together as a community and be better: let’s be those children in the playground who don’t want anyone to sit alone.