We have to protect the vulnerable from coronavirus – it’s vital in countries like Lebanon with large refugee populations

Moving countries as they implement safety measures has shown me how important it is to follow the rules

A worker sprays disinfectant as a precaution against the spread of coronavirus at Rafik Hariri international airport in Beirut (EPA)

It has felt like trying to outrun a tidal wave.

Attempting to move between two countries which are not friends, via a third, during a global pandemic, with borders closing around us, shifting quarantine and entry regulations, and everything I own including two cats in tow, has felt apocalyptic.

The scheduled week-long journey to move to my new posting in Beirut started when the Covid-19 outbreak was still a news story breaking elsewhere.

That changed right at a point where it was impossible to turn back. Along the way, the subject I had been furiously filing on for work, suddenly became a very galling reality.

It hit that not only were most countries in the world likely to experience some level of government-enforced lockdown, but even if our authorities do not enforce such measures, we as citizens must be responsible and carry out precautions like social-distancing ourselves.

I write this piece not to spread more misery nor to moan about how hard it has been (because it really hasn’t) but because conversations with people back in London and in the US sound so alarmingly out of tune with the reality we are facing, with the reality they will likely face.

So many people back home keep telling me this is all overhyped by the media.

They say catching the virus is a bit like riding out the flu, even as the death toll soars towards 6,000 and experts warn it can cause lifelong damage and the healthy can unwittingly transmit the disease to the most vulnerable. Or carry it to countries like Lebanon, with large refugee populations, that cannot cope. Facebook posts still abound with people sharing articles claiming there was no need to “panic”, to stop going to restaurants, to change your routine. Others complain their travel plans are on hold.

Panicking is never a good idea – obsessively stockpiling unnecessary amounts of toilet roll is not a good idea – but the notion that we won’t or shouldn’t need to temporarily change our behaviour in quite significant ways to protect people, that we can continue our lives as before, is naive and even dangerous.

The restrictions are coming to everyone everywhere. We must calmly and orderly respect them. This hit me when we were detained at the first border we needed to cross, over quarantine queries. We were eventually let through just hours before that border shuttered indefinitely. A day later the country we had just left, effectively sealed itself off completely.

Twenty-four hours after that – now in Jordan – the Jordanian authorities banned all travel to Lebanon and so we boarded what turned out to be one of the last flights out of Amman to Beirut – or the last chopper into Saigon as friends darkly quipped. At each point, there was panic, confusion, anxiety, heartache as people were trapped on either side of border crossings trying to get out or trying to get in. There was terror at anyone who coughed.

Stressed officials repeated the same plea that they did not know the new rules, hotlines didn’t work, health ministry websites crashed. We had bizarre conversations where we were breaking the news of fresh travel restrictions to airlines that could not keep up with their own government press conferences.

The Twitter account of Royal Jordanian sent me a message saying flights to Beirut have been halted while the flustered call centre said they thought our flight was still on. On that plane, which did leave, everyone from the crew to passengers were in masks.

While in the air, Lebanon announced fresh restrictions on people coming from the UK, prompting confusion at the airport about whether they could let me in even though, according to Jordan’s rules, they couldn’t send me back. Beirut airport officials taking temperatures at passport control briefly panicked about whether the cats could carry corona.

I stood marooned like a plague victim holding the carrier, with the cat screaming inside, as everyone took several big steps back until it was confirmed that could not be the case.

We arrived in a once-bustling city of Beirut, renowned for raucous nightlife and great restaurants, at a point where nearly everything is closed bar supermarkets, where everyone is quietly (and orderly) stocking up in masks and gloves. Store security officers now take your temperature to permit you entrance and disinfect your trolley before handing it to you.

We hear reports that fresh restrictions will come into play tomorrow closing everything – including private and public institutions – except supermarkets at certain times and pharmacies.

The reassuring conversations I had had with colleagues just days ago, that people were overreacting, that the restrictions were too severe and likely would not come to us, that we can and should continue our lives as before, feel like a dream from another world. Those naive points we stupidly made disintegrate hourly with every new piece of information received.

Instead a realisation has come into stark focus: it is an enormous privilege to be able to make plans like travelling or even popping down the street for a coffee with a colleague.

Friends from the war-torn countries have bitterly pointed out uncertainty and restrictions like these are just one section of the horrifying reality they face every day. Welcome to part of our world, they type.

The need to protect the weakest is acute here in Lebanon, a country where the economy was already on its knees before the pandemic, that was rocked by anti-corruption protests and is host to as many as 1.5 million refugees from Syria.

It would be impossible to contain a deadly outbreak if just one person contracts the virus in the camps where people are living without access to proper sanitation in tents. And so, for now, as miserable as it all seems, we must all do our part to help.