Palpable is a word often used to describe things that usually can't be handled, such as emotions or sensations. You probably wont see palpable being used to describe, say an egg or a doorknob or a motorcycle. Palpable is usually reserved for situations in which something becomes invisible becomes so intense that it feels as though it has substance or weight. When the towers came down, the sense of sadness, it was palpable. Loneliness, longing and loss can be palpable too, and currently because of the coronavirus we are facing it has created a real atmosphere of palpable fear and worry that is currently being felt globally.
We feel that the world has changed , and it has. The loss of normalcy, the fear of economic toll, the loss of connection.This is hitting us all and we are all grieving. Collectively, we are simply not used to this kind of collective grief in the air. Personally I feel a palpable rage at this present time.
Palpable
adj:- capable of being perceived,
especially capable of being handled or touched or felt.
( of a feeling or atmosphere) so intense as to seem almost tangible.
" a barely palpable dust"
"felt sudden anger in a palpable wave."
" the air was warm and close - palpable as cotton"
"a palpable lie"
" Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true , but seldom or never the whole truth " - John Stuart Mill
I personally have a palpable distrust for politicians, who often release words of palpable nonsense. Take our Prime minister Boris Johnson for instance who publicly thanked Britain’s beloved National Health Service for successfully treating him for Covid-19 over a seven-day period in early April. “It’s hard to find words to express my debt,” the prime minister said, naming several nurses, and thanking two in particular for standing by his bedside for 48 hours when “things could’ve gone either way.”
Johnson’s speech, which he might have hoped would be lauded for its graciousness, served instead as a reminder that the NHS is a success despite him. When the first cases of Covid-19 in the U.K. were confirmed in late January, Johnson’s Conservative Party government claimed that it was prepared for any eventuality.
That turns out to have been a lie. The government’s failure to provide sufficient protective gear, which has so far contributed to the deaths of at least 114 health care workers in Britain, was preventable. Moreover, two separate investigations have now revealed high-level attempts to cover it up.
Recently the BBC’s Panorama showed that the British government’s pandemic stockpile lacked key equipment, such as gowns, visors, swabs, and body bags. The government was of course aware of this deficit and yet, even after the pandemic hit the country’s shores, U.K. leaders refused multiple opportunities to bulk-buy PPE. When the lack of supplies became obvious to the public, the government tried to hide the problem by inflating PPE numbers, counting one pair of gloves as two items of PPE.
Another investigation, by the Sunday Times, a decidedly right-leaning newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch that has previously swooned over Johnson, calling him a “rockstar,” showed just how casually the prime minister confronted the pandemic. Johnson had skipped five high-level emergency meetings to discuss the virus, the newspaper reported. He insisted, in a manner reminiscent of U.S. President Donald Trump, that briefing reports be as short as possible. He went on holiday to a country estate, refused to work weekends, and attended a fundraising ball.
After his thank-you speech, Johnson retired to Chequers, the lavish 16th century, 1,500-acre manor house used by British prime ministers, where he was photographed strolling the grounds with his pregnant fiancée and their Jack Russell terrier. The world was in the grip of an unprecedented crisis, but the U.K. was without a leader.
Johnson’s NHS caregivers, meanwhile, returned to work immediately, and every day, reports stream in of front-line health workers like them who are forced to combat the highly contagious virus in clinical waste bags and plastic aprons. They were asking schools to donate science goggles. They were adapting snorkels as respirator masks. When UNISON, the U.K.’s largest public services union, opened a PPE alert hotline, it was flooded with calls from health care workers who talked about having to buy their own equipment.
Of the health care providers who have died so far, one, Abdul Mabud Chowdhury, a consultant urologist in London, had written a Facebook post appealing to Johnson to protect him and his co-workers. “I hope we are by default entitled to get this minimal support,” he wrote on March 18, five days before he was hospitalized. Johnson is responsible for his death, and for the death of every other health care worker in the country.
Johnson also after recovering from Covid-19 and the birth of his son said he "bitterly" regrets the Covid-19 crisis in care homes and expressed frustration about problems supplying personal protective equipment. He will be making a statement on the route out of lockdown at 7pm conveniently following from the 75th anniversary of VE day. But quick fixes and crowd pleasing politics will not save us in an emergency. We should not forget that the Tories have been in government for ten years prior to the pandemic and had consistently run down the NHS and the Public Health Service. They were willing to contemplate millions of deaths in order to achieve 'herd immunity' and their focus was more on Brexit than any wish to save lives.
The late great Aneurin Bevan once said that he could not get the hate for the Tories out of his heart and that he thought that they were lower than vermin, I am quite clear now as to why he held that view. The Tories initially opposed the establishment of the NHS and every time they have been in power have sought to undermine it, in their recent current response to our needs they have given massive contracts to the likes of SERCO to provide public health services, a company renowned for failing at all other services provided to the public sector.
There is a palpable sense that people are increasingly hungry for new political approaches. We now have at least the time to pause and reflect upon the palpable sense of urgency in changing some fundamentals about our society. This crisis is a wake up call to us all. The virus has no respect for borders, and demonstrates fundamentally, that we live in an interconnected world, that we need nations to work together in times of crisis, and above all we need serious, sensible politicians of good intent at the helm.
There will certainly be a palpable sense of relief when this crisis is over, hopefully united by a common purpose, newer approaches and new behaviors and a renewed sense of community that will hopefully not see us going back to our old ways, and when we eventually come out of this catastrophe , people must remember the shocking behaviour of Boris Johnson. As we eventually reconnect let us all continue to feel the palpable waves of love,
