Just about that one question at the press conference

It was as if I was catapulted back to high school. That you hadn't chatted during math for three lessons while sitting at the back of the classroom, but still had to stay after. I was surprised that the journalist in question didn't let out a accompanying stamp of feet. Of course, I'm talking about that very first question at the press conference.

I quote him literally, I say literally because otherwise you might not believe it, even though you were probably one of the 8 million who watched: ‘Mr. Rutte, for weeks you have said that the Netherlands is behaving exemplary and what do people get in return? Another three weeks extension, how do you reconcile that?‘ As far as I'm concerned, it's a miracle that the whole room didn't burst out laughing, including Mark Rutte, Irma Sluis, and Jaap van Dissel. Or that Rutte had firmly grasped his Oger-sized pants, due to the chance of them slipping down. Dude, there's a deadly virus circulating in our country, people are dying, it's as contagious as skirts are on skirt day and we have no vaccine. We're not talking about having to stay after in group eight, for goodness’ sake.

Maybe we had hoped for a little haircut here or a one-and-a-half-meter terrace there, although corona minister De Jonge and Rutte themselves had already been saying for a week that we should temper that hope. So it seems to me unlikely that you were counting on that. You must have read the leaked advice from the Outbreak Management Team before it started, so you could have sensed a bit that it was chilly. But nothing about children who are happily allowed to go back to school bit by bit, nothing about parents who are getting a bit more space, nothing about teenagers who can start to play sports again at a proper distance. The very first question was about why you can't play outside yourself. Because honestly, it sounded like the man in question already had a neighborhood barbecue on the agenda for tonight, but that the meat now had to go in the freezer.

On Twitter, someone remarked that for some people it is just good that schools are reopening, can I get an amen? And then I would like to give a round of applause for the angelic patience of master-president, uhh prime minister Rutte.