It ain't over till it's over

We're not 'post pandemic' - we're in ongoing pandemic denial

Oct 20, 2022

red and white concrete wall — The Covid memorial wall…Photo by Jeremy Stewardson on Unsplash

I was in a charity shop yesterday, run on behalf of troubled cats. As you’d imagine, the volunteers tend towards the sharper end of their 70s, and they’re mostly women. Floral blouses, pleasant manner, reading glasses on a cord, very fond of cats.

As I wandered about, two of them were chatting.

‘I’ve forgotten my mask,’ one said.

‘Mask!’ Said the other, ‘you don’t need that now, it’s all over.’

‘Oh,’ said the first, slightly older, woman. She looked troubled. ‘But I read in the paper that…’

‘No,’ the first one scoffed. ‘They don’t work anyway. It’s been proved. You’re not going to get ill, and besides, now there’s vaccines, it’s no worse than a cold.’

Part of me wanted to steam in and tell she was was blindingly and dangerously wrong. The other part thought, if I steam in every time someone talks crap about Covid within earshot, I’ll never stop steaming.

man in blue crew neck shirt wearing white face mask — Mask or no mask? Photo by Lucia Macedo on Unsplash

As I’m writing this, I’m the only person on a crowded train wearing a mask. I’m heading home, to my husband, who has an auto-immune condition. He had Covid in the summer, and has been exhausted ever since. We’ve not had boosters yet. I had it too, back in June, and I never want to get it again. I spent a week feeling as though I was trapped in an abandoned aquarium.

It didn’t feel like any illness I’d ever had before. I was tired, everything hurt and I was completely detached from the world around me. I lost my sense of taste and smell, I couldn’t enjoy anything for weeks afterwards. Everything was flat and joyless.

It was like some inexplicable virus from a cold and empty place in outer space.

It wasn’t ‘just like flu’, it was like some inexplicable virus from a cold and empty place in outer space. But aside from the odd and miserable symptoms, the other reason Covid is nothing like flu is in its ongoing capacity to kill more people.

‘It was mostly old people with co-morbidities who would have died anyway,’ said my medic friend reassuringly the other day. ‘Mostly’ isn’t great though, because quite a lot wouldn’t have died anyway, and those who did died alone, generally, scared and isolated, waving their last goodbyes on a fuzzy screen, if the traumatised nurses had time to hold up a phone.

two red and yellow owl ceramic figurines — All ages are affected…Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash

New research this week found the pandemic has caused a ‘protracted shock’ to life expectancy levels, leading to ‘global mortality changes not seen in the last 70 years.’

The findings comprehensively trash the comforting idea that Covid has had ‘no more impact than a bad flu.’ The study, from Oxford’s Leverhulme centre for Demographic Science and a German Demographic research institute, found that countries with ‘ineffective’ responses to Covid will experience a health crisis as life expectancy ‘stalls.’ Life expectancy in Scotland and Northern Ireland hasn’t improved since 2020, the height of the pandemic.

Of course, you might argue that’s largely because the pandemic caused such a crisis in NHS provision, nobody can get a doctor’s appointment any more, metastasising cancers were missed, lockdown loneliness caused heart failure and strokes… and there may be some truth in that.

‘I don’t think I’ll bother with the booster. It’s on the way out isn’t it?’

But the key difference, they found, was down to vaccine uptake. Several friends have said recently, ‘I don’t think I’ll bother with the booster. It’s on the way out isn’t it?’

It isn’t, and the vaccine is the only way to rid the world of this virus. ‘But it doesn’t stop you getting it,’ they argue. ‘What’s the point?’

white and black labeled bottle — Vaccines. Useful. Photo by Mat Napo on Unsplash

Not dying is the point. Fewer people in hospital eases the pressure on the NHS, of course, and the more people who are vaccinated, fewer new strains will mutate, and the less likely it is that vaccine-resistant strains will develop and return murderously, like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.

But mostly, none of us wants to die of respiratory failure, or blood clots, or heart disease, caused by Covid. Possibly I sound melodramatic, so here are some statistics.

A peer-reviewed study published in the BMJ in 2021 reported that vaccines are 90% effective in preventing people dying from the Delta variant after two doses.

The latest UKHSA data showed vaccine effectiveness against death from the Omicron variant in over-50s was 59% after twenty-five weeks and two doses, and 95% after two weeks. Their analysis showed boosters alone prevented 105,600 hospitalisations in over-25s between December 2021 and February 2022.

Loss of smell and taste, muscle pain, exhaustion, and shortness of breath

Now, vaccines are wearing off again, and protection is limited until the next booster, which means more people are catching Covid - some severely.

In July this year, the ONS reported an estimated 2 million people - 3% of the population, and still only those who self-reported on apps such as Zoe or sought help - were experiencing Long Covid, with symptoms lasting longer than four weeks. Symptoms included loss of smell and taste, muscle pain, exhaustion, and shortness of breath.

A huge 72% had daily activities ‘limited’ by this, and 21% were ‘severely limited’ by the ongoing post-viral malaise. Women and those working long hours, along with the less well off, were worst affected.

blue and brown round ornament — The virus: Not gone anywhere Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

Another study earlier this year found the risk of a stroke was twice as high in Covid patients, and a huge study published in the medical journal Nature, based on 500,000 COVID-19 cases, found that ‘people who had been infected had a 167% higher risk of developing a blood clot in the two weeks after infection than people who had influenza.’

Meanwhile even mild Covid increases the risk of cardiac problems for at least a year after diagnosis, and affects younger people as well as the elderly. It’s not ‘just flu’.

The English stayed up late getting absolutely hammered

Caution, though, challenges the fatalistic streak that runs through the British character. In the war, people would shrug, ‘well, if a bomb’s got your name on it...’ (hence the Paul Merton joke regarding Mr and Mrs Doodlebug).

We drink more than any other nation in Europe, we smoke, we eat absolute garbage because it’s cold and we’re tired, and nobody feels like griddling butternut squash drizzled with pomegranate molasses and pine nuts after a 14 hour day, and our approach to exercise is generally ‘mild’ at best.

The night before the Battle of Hastings, the French prayed heavily and went to bed early. The English stayed up late getting absolutely hammered and telling funny stories, and lost dramatically.

It’s what makes us say, ‘oh go on then’ on a work night

We tend to rather admire this swashbuckling stupidity in ourselves, this no-rules, full-tilt boogie approach to living and dying. It’s what makes us say, ‘oh go on then’ on a work night, makes us the first on the dance floor and the last to leave the party. It’s an appealing, ‘fuck it’ approach of live fast, die young, and leave a fairly substantial corpse.

So it’s perhaps no wonder that long, enforced lockdowns and an insistence on mask-wearing stirred the libertarian rage in many British breasts. Never mind the death statistics, what about our freedoms? ‘Thank God,’ people said when it ended, ripping off their masks and crowding into gigs and cinemas.

people attending concert inside dark room — Nobody ill here. Photo by Joseph Pearson on Unsplash

Johnson’s government decided to lift all restrictions, not because it was safe to do so, but in a desperate bid to rescue the economy. He was the man who said ‘let the bodies pile high,’ who threw karaoke parties while people died alone and lonely. These are not people who care greatly about public health, particularly when those worst affected are the ailing retired and disabled masses, bed-blockers and time-wasters clogging up the pure Tory vision of an economy that runs like a purring Lamborghini, printing bundle after bundle of crisp new money for themselves and their friends.

We’re in a peculiar state of queasy denial

Peer behaviour, however, is the biggest indicator of our own individual responses. So once our friends stopped wearing masks because ‘there’s no point’ and they ‘felt silly’ and ‘they don’t work,’ and decided they might not bother with the new vaccine booster because ‘it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? It doesn’t make any difference,’ it was much easier for us to do so too. Now, we’re in a peculiar state of queasy denial, on the one hand aware that so many people have got Covid again, and on the other, convinced that the pandemic is over and masks don’t work, because everyone’s got Covid again.

stack of white yellow green and blue textiles — These aren’t the best - but better than nothing. Photo by Vera Davidova on Unsplash

But - here comes the science bit, as Jennifer Aniston used to say - masks do work. In a large US study, statistical analysis showed that the odds of infection were halved for people who wore a mask in public compared with people who didn’t. For people who wore masks ‘all of the time’ the effect was even greater. The study also looked at the differences between types of mask, and found that N95/KN95 respirators worked better than surgical or cloth masks - but all worked to reduce the risk.

Unsurprisingly, then, when we all stop wearing them at once, people are going to get Covid again But it’s easier to deny and ignore the risk now because almost nobody bothers to test. LFTs cost £10, and a PCR is £40.

Maybe I’m a paranoid loon, so traumatised by fear that I can’t let go

There are no public health warnings and almost no public concern. So perhaps I’m out of step here. Maybe I’m a paranoid loon, so traumatised by fear that I can’t let go, even when the world is back to normal. Human nature is all or nothing. So we either mask up, sanitise, stay in and refuse to hug, or we ditch every precaution and behave as though there never was a virus at all. Mitigation is boring and masks are uncomfortable.

four person holding each others waist at daytime — Are we hugging? Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash

But The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has just reported 400 deaths mentioning Covid-19 on the death certificate had been registered in the week ending October 7 - up 39% on the week before and the highest weekly death toll since August. Anecdotally, the virus is rife again, but now, we don’t collate official figures so nobody bothers to report it, because nobody’s collating…

By Spring, more of us will be dead from this harmless virus that’s just like flu. There will be more strokes, more heart problems, more Long Covid in previously healthy people. New strains will be mutating. And nobody will wear a mask because it seems a bit over the top.

‘Don’t you feel silly wearing one now?’ The cat shop lady asked her friend.

‘Oh, I don’t know…’ she said, surprised. ‘Maybe. I suppose I do a bit, yes.’

Next time she goes out, she won’t wear one. I hope she’ll be OK.

LOCHED UP: My Life In Rural Scotland

Sad songs say so much

I’ve been writing about SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder in my paid job this week, and it’s reminded me that I hate Winter in rural Argyll. This will be my seventh year of living here, (ninth of visiting) and it never gets better. Actually, no, that’s not entirely true. I don’t hate anything during the period up to and including Christmas.

Late Autumn in rural mid-Argyll is staggeringly beautiful, people have little dinner parties, the pubs light their open fires and serve warming carbs, and walks are either dazzlingly blue and crisp or gently damp and misty. Red squirrels and deer trot by, birds peck scarlet berries. It’s like living in a folk rock album cover from 1973.

The run up to Christmas is also a delight - The Square Peg gift shop in our nearest tiny town does fabulous window displays of glittering baubles and golden lights, there’s chocolate snowmen in the sweetshop, Bargain Zone gets its holly-printed polyester table runners and moulting tinsel ready, and Strictly means we can spend Saturday nights with the dogs being calm, because they like tinkly telly music and they like being on the couch with us.

Most days dawn at around 11am

But then it’s January, and February, and suddenly there is no daylight. It’s like being a parrot in a cage with a damp baize cloth flung over it. Most days dawn at around 11am and draw to a close shortly after lunchtime. Everything outside of that crucial period can be filed under ‘murky dreichness.’

It rains, sheeting from great drifts of Atlantic cloud, soaking the trees and the roads and pouring into the lochs so they rise and flood the fields, and it gets into your bones and makes everything feel damp and slightly mouldy.

Taking in penguin refugees

Or if it’s not raining, it’s windy, with biting draughts that find every nook and cranny in your coat and hat, and whistle through your teeth. Sometimes, it’s just freezing and I cannot get warm, even if the heating is at 22C. The only way is to have a boiling bath, slowly turn the colour of a football fan in Magaluf, and then sit in front of the fire wrapped in layers of wool like a crumbled peasant.

But this year, fires are going to be reserved only for evenings so cold we’re taking in penguin refugees to put some of the warmth back in their little blue flippers.

penguins on green grass during daytime — Penguins, coming to sit by the fire. Photo by Martin Wettstein on Unsplash

So yes, the weather is foul, the world is soggy and chill, the outerwear steams continually and smells faintly of damp dog…but it’s the darkness that gets me. I can sleep for Britain as it is, and am never awake before 8.30am. All my friends are leaping from bed at six, cheerily making coffee and doing midlife-friendly stretches, but I feel as if I’ve died if I wake up at that time. I can’t see, I can’t walk - I blunder to the bathroom, cannoning off walls and keening like a banshee with exhausted distress.

I will groan, I will burrow

In summer it’s bad enough but once I’ve got a cup of tea I can at least scroll through Twitter with one hand while the other gradually pushes up my silk sleeping mask. In winter, it’s like prising a superglued oyster from a shell. I will cling to that duvet, weighted blanket, bedspread, and the hot water bottle containing vestiges of forgotten heat from last night. Possibly also Ellroy, if he’s joined me. I will groan, I will burrow. Andy brings me tea and flings the curtains open and I recoil like Nosferatu - even though it’s still pitch black out there.

I work at my desk all day - actually I’m lying, I work at the kitchen table because I like the dogs being nearby - and Andy says, ‘you need to go for a walk, get some air,’ and I whine like a toddler about the weather (‘I don’t WANT to, it’s FREEZING, have you SEEN the rain?’) then stomp out for twenty minutes and come back soaked and mouldy with spaniels soggy as sea-sponges.

I remember it’s already January and I have no money

Nothing improves till late March, when all the good stuff comes back. But in the meantime, I always think ‘right, I’m going to book a holiday in January, and we’re going to spend the worst of it abroad and then when we get back, it’s only a few weeks till spring…’ and every year I remember it’s already January and I have no money, and my tax bill is sitting at the top of a cliff of hard work, like the Hollywood sign dominating the landscape.

I never have been away in January. I probably never will. I’m only thinking about it now because from clocks-going-back onwards, it looms ahead.

So instead, I’ve made a list of things that might make winter bearable. Perhaps you’d like to join me. If so, we won’t go wrong with any of these:

The new Bruce Springsteen covers album, Only the Strong Survive. Nightshift is genuinely far better than the original.

A weighted blanket. Luckily I have one, in continual use all year.

A dog, maybe two or three.

A cat. We are getting a kitten, I think this will be a big help.

Rebel Wilson comedies. I love her.

Strictly. Obvious I know, and all over by January in favour of edgy dramas about serial killers, and I really can’t bring myself to care about Claudia’s talky bits at the top of the stairs. But still.

Boots. You have to have new boots every winter, it’s the law. This year, I just found Isabel Marant ankle boots in a charity shop for £8. This ranks as one of the best bargains I’ve ever had. Yes they’re suede and useless in Argyll, but I don’t care. I’ll just sleep in them.