The coronavirus dog that didn’t bark

IF you’d spent the last five years trapped in a cave somewhere, you’d probably bet that Queens-accented kid from a place called Jamaica Estates would be better at relating to the sorrows and stresses of the everyday citizen than a real-life queen who grew up in Buckingham Palace, always at a remove from the commoners.

But if you’re like most people and you’ve seen both Donald John Trump, 45th president of the United States, and Queen Elizabeth II in action, it came as absolutely no surprise that the United Kingdom’s soon-to-be-94-year-old monarch responded to the deadly coronavirus crisis in a four-minute speech that found exactly the perfect words that have so eluded Trump in literally dozens of hours on national TV.

Avoiding the kind of macho war rhetoric so popular with Trump, the queen spoke instead of national purpose, unity and shared sacrifice. “Together we are tackling this disease, and I want to reassure you that if we remain united and resolute, then we will overcome it, ” said the British monarch who, as a teenager in World War II, endured bombing raids that struck Buckingham Palace rather than flee London and even joined the royal military as a mechanic after she turned 18 in 1944.

Queen Elizabeth consciously invoked the Battle of Britain – and the famed wartime anthem, Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again – in a stirring conclusion. “We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.”