Sputnik: Has the British Government closed schools too late in response to the coronavirus?
David Lindsay: The English Government, it should be said specifically, has bowed to the inevitable, closures in Scotland as well were announced earlier, and this was always going to happen, it was always wildly unlikely that anybody was going to be in school next week, and they have slightly made a fool of themselves over this.
Sputnik: Will students still be able to sit exams this year?
David Lindsay: I’m afraid we are looking at putting back people’s lives by an entire year, which is extraordinary but these are extraordinary times. There are potential alternatives based on predicted grades, based on coursework that’s already been done, though it will have to be explored, but people in some cases who were expecting to sit exams this summer in the next few weeks, are not going to do them until this time next year.
Sputnik: Could Europe have prepared better for the threat of the coronavirus?
David Lindsay: I don’t know that there is anything anybody could have done about this. We have suddenly been confronted by the fact that the world is much bigger than anything we can possibly plan for, and nature is far bigger than the little slice that human beings live on.
This is as it used to be called; a plague, it’s a pestilence, a time of the epidemic, this is where we are, it’s been going on for thousands of years, there ought to have been contingency plans to deal with it, and there haven’t been, there have been thousands of years of experience on which to build it, but ultimately when these things come, then they come.
I don’t think anybody is really thinking about Brexit at the moment, but I think that a no-deal Brexit could happen almost by a kind of default at the end of this year because nobody would have planned for anything else, as they would have been too busy dealing with the Coronavirus.
