On this day, I run no further. On this day, I can feel the heat upon my skin. On this day, I test positive.

It was inevitable, no matter how far or how fast I ran it would always catch me. For we are only as strong as those by our sides, we are only as safe as the person we stand next to. Our fates are bound, for together we are woven into the fabric of society, unable to exist as a single thread.

Two years have passed since I abandoned my life in Foshan, since I left my career, my friends and my home for fear of the fire. The fire that burns but cannot be seen. The fire that spreads without sound. The fire that has since singed away the sick, the vulnerable and the unlucky the world over. The fire I crossed four borders to flee. The fire that could only be stopped by way of something unnatural to our species. Isolation.

When I returned home to Scotland, I thought I was safe. I thought I had ran far enough. I thought I had escaped the danger that had choked the life out of Wuhan. But I was wrong. For we are one tapestry of humanity and no nation can pick apart the stitching that makes us so. Our greatest strength, our connectivity as one people, our shared global society, as diverse and disagreeable as it is at times, was our greatest weakness. For this fire spread through strands of twine, from family to family, but always following the money that flows along those silken roads we have carved across the Earth. Silk roads that could have been cut, if only they had not been worth more to those in power than the lives of our society’s most vulnerable.

Wave after wave we have endured, the fabric of our society thinning with every passing tide. But together we learned how to survive, how to care for and protect one another. How to sacrifice our own fleeting freedoms so that others may live. How we must cherish and respect those brave souls that fuel our health care systems and emergency services. How together, we can adapt so that we may all have a chance at living to see an end to this tragedy.

How those in power feel so little for their fellow beings. How it would seem that some have cut their ties, to the fabric our ancestors have woven our society into. How we threads of nylon and cotton are viewed by those of silk and satin. We are only as strong as the fabric of our society, a weave that is being rent and torn by the corruption and greed of the minority.

On this day, I have seen those threads woven around my own, being blackened and burned. On this day, as the powerful pretend the fire has been extinguished. On this day, as I myself face the flames.

Alexander S Jenkins