The coronavirus epoch has offered some heartwarming stories among the viral horror and its shut-in, relentless-grey-regrowth-Zoom-meeting-apocalypse gloom.

The well-compensated stars of American professional basketball are subsidising the lost salaries of casual venue staff. In Scotland, cafes are making deliveries of free food packages to vulnerable and elderly people, while Melbourne restauranteurs are feeding frontline workers. The Italian tenor serenading his locked-down city of Florence singing Nessun Dorma and other opera classics from his balcony is glorious. So is the Spanish taxi driver taking coronavirus patients to the hospital for free.

But amid the kindness pandemic and determined acts of caring, the times have provoked a simultaneous infection of self-absorption, pettiness and dangerous-foolerism. Sure, ordinary folks can make bad decisions in extraordinary times. But there are those who should know better who dont do better, through sheer force of wilful shitheadedry. They should not be spared shaming. They should be given the recognition they richly deserve. So, without further ado:

The 2020 awards for the very worst people of coronavirus so far

WINNER, the Neville Chamberlain Award for Catastrophically Misreading the Situation: prime minister of the UK, Boris Johnson

On 3 March, British PM Boris Johnson bragged at his readiness to shake hands with local coronavirus patients. On 17 March, France locked down and he suggested instead that coronavirus sufferers stay indoors a week and elderly Britons cancel holiday cruises. This strategy was herd immunity ringfencing the most vulnerable of the population and allowing the disease to take its course. Without a vaccine, that means allowing masses of people to die. If you think that sounds like eugenics, your opinion is shared by the worlds leading specialists in infectious diseases.

Its since been revealed Johnson missed five critical meetings in February that may have made him more aware of the strategic risk to his country, and himself because by 27 March, Johnson himself had coronavirus, and British infections were following the tragic trajectory of Italy. As I write this, more than 18,000 people in the UK have died.

Im most relieved that Boris Johnson is not one of them. Had he perished, he would most earnestly deserved our sympathy. Now hes on the mend, he can rightfully be served our scorn.

WINNER, the Roger Stone Award for Thinking the Rules Dont Apply to You: New Zealand health minister, David Clark

Woeful behaviour is not entirely the preserve of one side of politics; health minister of New Zealand, Labours David Clark, broke his own governments strict coronavirus lockdown rules on its first weekend.

New Zealand Labour prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, moved quickly to a national shutdown early in the pandemics progression. Her strategy of virus elimination with rigorous stay-at-home regulation and widespread testing has been feted throughout the world; of today, 16 local coronavirus deaths are recorded.

This has been made possible because the New Zealand citizenry complied with the draconian rules rules Clark blithely ignored when he took his family on a car trip to the beach the first weekend of lockdown. He was separately photographed going for a lovely bike ride.

Ardern swiftly demoted the minister, who made a grovelling public apology. It says much about her leadership that she resisted temptation to make a bicycle seat from his skin.

WINNER, the Tiger Woods Award for Making Us Feel We Hardly Know You: Sweden

Think Sweden, think Scandinavian social democracy; cradle-to-grave welfare and generous social support systems. But Swedens response to the pandemic has not been universal self-sacrifice, New Zealand-style.

On the recommendation of an epidemiologist at the independent Public Health Agency, the Social Democrats/Greens coalition government have instead pursued a herd immunity strategy theyre calling a trust-based approach to the virus. Social distancing is voluntary. Schools for under-16s, gyms, restaurants, bars and Swedens borders remain open.

As a result, it now has one of the highest proportional death rates from the virus in the world nine times higher than next-door neighbour Finland, larger even than the United States.

Since half of the countrys aged care facilities found themselves struck by coronavirus, Sweden has quietly started moving towards greater gathering restrictions. Like any apology, it doesnt count for much when people have been left for dead.

WINNER, the Donald Trump Award for Billionaire Shamelessness: Richard Branson

This was a hotly contested category. As lockdowns, shutdowns and the illness itself have wiped out the economy-as-usual across the globe, individualist profiteers of the good times are suddenly collectivists in the misery.

The old story of those who live to privatise the profits and socialise the losses really deserves a Netflix reboot perhaps centred on a protagonist like Virgin billionaire Richard Branson. Hes holding thousands of ordinary peoples jobs hostage to demands that taxpayers refinance his failing business. In the reboot, lets rewrite this storys traditional ending to make sure taxpayers are repaid for their involuntary generosity with proportional ownership of these companies. Especially since Branson is demanding a bailout in his ostensible home of Britain, where he has avoided paying income tax for 14 years.

WINNER, the Abe Simpson Award for Yelling at Clouds: Sam Newman (and friends)

Whether there could be any social identity more pathetic than that of a D-list Australian conservative is an outright no. Desperation for relevancy inspired a recent Twitter campaign demanding the extermination of bats.

But the clear category winner was the faded sports personality who defied Australias (highly effective) lockdown, taking a one-man protest to the steps of the Victorian parliament, demanding his uninhibited human right to play golf.

A video provides so many things to enjoy. A MAGA-style hat! Eye-blinding trousers! Incomprehensible raving! Most of all, theres rapture in seeing the animation of a cliche about privileged white male narcissism that didnt a) require a cartoonist or b) involve someone getting hurt.

The cumulative effect of the protest was to convince observers like myself that even if golf is at the safer end of activity, the ban should be maintained just to extend this mans personal frustration.

WINNER, the Walking Dead Award for Reminding Human Beings Our Greatest Threat is One Another: anti-lockdown protestors in the US

From California to Michigan and yet, coincidentally always in districts Republicans are heavily campaigning anti-lockdown protests have bloomed across the US, drawing social-distance-defying crowds in the hundreds, sometimes even the tens.

Egged on by the US president in impassioned ALL CAPS tweets, extraordinary photographs have appeared of patriots hanging out of cars screaming at the public-serving healthworkers who counterprotest in full PPE. Joshua Bickels photo of howling Ohio protestors pressed against glass doors deserves its own separate, serious, grown-up award for warning the world that its all getting a bit Shaun of the Dead in the US-of-A; one of the yawping mouths belongs to a Republican state Senate candidate.

It would all be hilarious if states such as Michigan werent burying the coronavirus dead in their thousands. Supply shortages, the disaster of piecemeal, privatised healthcare and structural poverty have intersected with ill-prepared and incompetent presidential leadership, compounding the effects of coronavirus across America.

After the coronavirus protests, Kentucky saw its largest spike in cases.

GRAND WINNER: President of the United States, Donald Trump

Like Boris Johnson, he ignored international warnings about the coronavirus when meaningful action could have slowed its spread. He held public rallies even while experts begged for social distancing. Hes used press conferences to attack reporters, repeat lies and push treatments that some studies now suggest may be unproven cures at the same time hes demanded praise. Hes promoted people who dont know what theyre doing, allowed the demotion of others who desperately do, hes abused leaders whove taken responsibility for their citizens, and adamantly taken none himself. Hes talked about his TV ratings while Americans were buried in mass graves.

The only award in which hes not competitive is one for failing to meet expectations because nobody whos watched Trump for five consistent minutes is surprised by this disaster at all. America outstrips the world for coronavirus infection. There have been more than 842,000 cases there. More than 46,000 Americans are dead.

Donald, you blitzed this competition. Its your crowning achievement! Now, go put a glittering corona on your head!

Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist

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Here are the 2020 awards for the very worst people of coronavirus - The Guardian