Covid 19 reaches a peak but when will normal life be completely resumed?

Covid 19 reaches a peak but when will normal life be completely resumed?

We have now been told to remain patient, not to panic because we seem to be much closer to a point of normality and the experts keep telling us that although the breakthrough vaccine is no nearer to fruition the middle of June could mark a pivotal turning point in the immediate future of the whole globe. Covid 19 is a deadly disease pandemic, still hovering around with malicious intent but sooner or later we'll all wake up shortly with a fleet footed spring in our step and bliss in our hearts.

At the moment though this is very much that interim period where something exciting could take place very shortly but where caution should still be very much the watchword. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is still ruffling his blond locks of hair with all the bewilderment of a man who doesn't quite know what to say anymore. He is now fully dependent on the superior knowledge of his chief medical officer and chief scientific officer, both very learned men who keep pointing to graphs in order to illustrate their points.

And this is where it all becomes very vague and ambiguous, a puzzle within a puzzle, the most complicated set of algorithms that remind you of an Open University programme on the BBC. Over 40 years ago the BBC would wake everybody up at a seemingly unearthly hour of the morning just to explain theories, point at eye-popping graphs with neatly drawn lines and carefully calculated figures that may just as well have been an entirely different language. But we forgave the BBC because, to quote Lord Reith, this was their mission to inform, educate and entertain.

The vast numbers of fatalities and deaths do seem to be dwindling rapidly and things are now heading in the right direction but not in the volume that some of us would like. The peak of the coronavirus has now been successfully passed but the doubts linger, questions remain stubbornly unanswered and nobody can be sure when it might be considered legal to stand next to your loved ones, when to gobble up a plate of burgers and hotdogs at that summer defining family barbecue and whether we should hug our families with a moving tenderness.

Of course the parks have never been busier, more vital and lively than ever before. You wouldn't have dreamt of stopping Britain's runners from putting on those trainers and hitting those pavements. On closer inspection this morning you noticed a whole community of joggers, strollers and T-shirted runners pushing themselves to the limit. It was beginning to look very impressive and something like the old days before this all happened.

Then you saw something you hadn't seen for some time. On the public tennis courts, members of the public were swinging their rackets with unbounded confidence. There were some tennis players who looked just relieved to be out on the court after so many months of wondering whether their rackets would just gather dust in the cupboard. That magical crack of yellow tennis ball did send a warm glow through you if only because it was as if summer had been given our consent to start and the coronavirus would shortly be shunted to the tramlines so to speak.

So it is that sport is up and running and not before time or so it would seem. On Monday the good folk of Newcastle could finally watch horse racing once again but only from the comfort of their home. Sadly, the bookmakers, or so we believe, are still closed so that's a tricky one. Then we discovered that the pigeon racing season could return once again as if any of us knew that, rather like the rest of the world of sport, it had started but then stopped for whatever reason. So we could breathe again.

Regrettably cricket may have to wait a little longer for its green light and Wimbledon tennis, as we now know, has been postponed until next summer. The start of the athletics season would also appear to be delayed, cancelled or just not happening. The world of golf, which would seem to be the epitome of self isolation, could be back on the back pages and media outlets who seem to take such inordinate pleasure in the ups and downs, ebb and flow of sporting confrontations, good natured rivalries or perhaps not so good natured rivalries.

Football of course may have lost its Euro 2020 but that could always be left to next year since footballers are very adaptable and if the competition is disrupted by pouring rain, nothing is going to stop England manager Gareth Southgate from donning one of those famous waistcoats. It seems that football will now forge ahead with a comeback date for the Premier League season now scheduled in just under a fortnight now. Opinions are now not nearly as polarised as they were perhaps a month ago since there is a passive acceptance that at some point the crucial relegation and promotion issues had to be resolved one way or the other.

Liverpool will win the Premier League quite handsomely and, more so than ever now, historically because surely there will never be a season like this one. Cut off in their prime after bowing out to Atletico Madrid in this year's Champions League, little were we to know that the crowd that night at Anfield would be a harbinger for a world health catastrophe. Liverpool departed Europe but the world caught the most shocking virus of all time.

The pros and cons, the arguments and counter arguments for re-starting the Premier League have been numerous and impassioned. But the fact is that Manchester City will welcome Arsenal on June 17 when some of us were probably looking forward to the tennis at Wimbledon, also off. The match will be attended by 300 members of the respective teams coaching staff and perhaps the odd mask here and there. It will undoubtedly be one of the weirdest and most surreal matches in the history of the Premier League the like of which will hopefully never be seen again in years to come.

The latest suggestions almost belong to the joke shop. There is a strong possibility that fake crowd noise will be pumped through the ground's speakers in an effort to replicate the real thing. The source of this noise, or so we are led to believe will come from the latest X Box game or a FIFA computer device. Is this really happening?

And then finally we must not forget the cardboard cut out people who will generate the most extraordinary atmosphere Premier League grounds have ever heard. If the Edinburgh Festival- which has also gone by the coronavirus wayside - were thinking of a bright new comedy vehicle for any of its stages then it wouldn't have to look any further for material than the Premier League. We are now in the realms of the Whitehall farce where doors are slammed and accomplished actors and actresses become overnight comedians or comediennes.

Still who knows Liverpool will still be jumping up and down with the Premier League trophy, amid a blizzard of confetti and paper streamers. Then they'll release the fireworks, play the triumphant music and Anfield will share its happiest day with a couple of starlings and a magpie from the Albert docks. It will be quite the most unique occasion in the history of football, a silent movie that the likes of Charlie Chaplin or the Keystone Cops would probably have flourished in.

Meanwhile Bournemouth, Aston Villa, Norwich City and, one would like to think, not West Ham will be tussling for points in the Premier League basement in their battle against relegation. Within the space of several hurried weeks we will know for sure that football will have finally flipped. Who on earth came up with the wheeze that home advantage will not count when quite clearly neither side can hope to benefit from any imagined scenario? Oh what have they done to football? The hope is that this arrangement will work on all levels but if ever sport needed a pick me up this is not the medicine it may be looking for. We must hope that football will one day come to its senses.