The article for today is this short piece about Moroccan ultras. Football fans are hardly the most inspiring of people, but I do wonder why there is not more effort in modern societies to create such spaces for solidarity, carefully overseen, except by armies and fascists. And Scouts, I suppose, though it is hard to take them seriously. Surely it isn’t inevitable that young men in solidarity will become hooligans, killers and fascists.
Pakistan’s prime minister has set up a volunteer force to do this for the coronavirus and everything else besides, but as with every initiative it is floundering and will probably fail soon enough, hopefully without causing the damage of the Dam Fund.
My worry about coronavirus in Pakistan, and specifically for vulnerable relatives, is growing by the day. In fact I am really very worried, more than I was when the pandemic first started to take hold there. I have, morbidly, been charting the (known) cases and (known) deaths, both cumulative and on logarithmic scales, and all four curves are terrifying, matched only by the confused rhetoric from the government.