Everyone seems to be getting more and more anxious about coronovirus.  At dinner just now, I had one of my usual dribble-coughs. I get them fairly frequently:  I swallow a bit of saliva and it goes the wrong way, making me splutter a bit. Yet it’s probably  a sign of the times that my PA Alistair asked if I could be coming down with  something. Everyone seems to be getting so worked up about it. What I’m more concerned about, though, is  what could be happening while everyone is distracted by this epidemic. I just came across this Financial Times article: do you realise that we are about to get the worst pandemic in decades at the very point when the uk is leaving some of the very international bodies which could best keep it under control? And  that the Tories are jumping on this outbreak to use it to disguise some of the worst, most draconian effects of Brexit? If you think about it, this emergency is precisely what the tories needed, at precisely the right time. Of course, I’m not suggesting they somehow manufactured this crisis – I don’t go in for that conspiracy theory nonsense – but I find it sickening that these opportunistic bastards  will use this tragedy to hide the damage they are doing.