The thoughts uppermost in the minds of most people these terrible days are taken up by concerns about the spread of the virus and the vertiginous spike in the number of infected persons that have led the authorities to announce a virtual lockdown and the opening of more Covid ITUs at the hospital.

We would not be us if these developments were not accompanied by venomous diatribes from the partisan sides, and in fact both sides have surpassed themselves.

An outsider or someone reading this a couple of centuries hence would probably not understand why in the face of such danger the Maltese were not more unanimous in their reactions. But this outsider and this person from 2221 would first of all have to understand how our reading of events is all the time being warped by the partisan party media overhanging everything else.

It will take time for people to start seeing facts as they are even if that undermines the partisan spin all around us. Even if the infections continue to multiply, and the deaths.

We can see some shift in public opinion but this is still glacier-like and will be quite useless in the short or medium term.

Now this is quite dangerous. We are here, at this juncture and predicament precisely because our collective behaviour these past weeks showed we did not believe we were in any danger, that we had overcome the virus, as we were told, and that wearing the mask was OK even if the mask hung from our chin or left our nose uncovered. And that meeting friends and family inside was OK even if the numbers were higher than allowed.

And of course now there's the vaccine, in all its variants. Apart from some issues regarding one of the vaccines, which have led countries to ban its use, there is, for me at least, this dangerous, unacceptable, race to skip the queue, regardless of the patient vulnerable people waiting in orderly lines. It's Malta at its worst, with the government complicit in the queue jumping.

I do not accept the reasoning that "everyone's doing it" both in Malta and abroad and praise upright persons like Italian President Mattarella who went for the jab only when it was their turn.

Which reminds me - we have not been hearing of many of our leaders getting it. Is that because they're still in the queue or is it because they skipped the queue and are ashamed to admit it?

Many alternative ideas have been shared - such as that all Gozo be given the vaccine all at once or that obese persons, especially males, be given priority given the virus's predilection for such people but none have been accepted. It's clear the powers that be prefer the diabolical rush we can see today.

And so, we lurch from crisis to worse crisis, learning nothing on the way and destroying people and lives.

But just to show us there's always a worse situation than our previous worst, we had this past week terrible claims coming from court about the plan to killed Daphne Caruana Galizia with a former minister and other persons being mentioned. Should not the police be already investigating such claims? And should not a commission of inquiry be appointed to investigate the cesspool that seems to have been Castille under Joseph Muscat?

Having been elected specifically to ensure 'continuity', Robert Abela is or should be, already under investigation, by public opinion if not by the appropriate authorities in this tinpot island where the PM is king.

Obviously the above statement will not be accepted by those whose TV set is daily listening to One News and Karl. In a country with no autonomous public opinion and with partisan stations and where the supposedly main station peddles soft news only is it a mystery that so many people refuse to accept what is so clear to many others?

It's exactly why we are passing through this infernal replay of where we were a year ago, with more than 300 dead, with a tourism industry broken beyond repair and now so many people depending on government's handouts.

With the country being Robert Abela's grand jury, he must understand that if he acts as the 'continuity' chief he just cannot begin to heal the country from the toxins left by his predecessor.

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