I can now reveal, in my best Roger Daltrey voice, the exclusive news that I’m free. Ten days uninfected with a house full of Covid infected people and I am finally able to leave the house and do things again. And I have followed all the rules, just like Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock told me to do and in roughly the same way that they did, apart from the tongue down throat with a secret lover I don’t have. The weird thing is that I was in the same household and often in the same room as the virus. I just didn’t get it.
Having seen how Covid affects someone who has already been double-jabbed, never mind someone who hasn’t, has been eye-opening. There are various symptoms, all of which are highly unpleasant, and it is a timely reminder that whilst the vaccine is more likely than not to stop you having to go to hospital or even dying, it isn’t guaranteed to do either. It’s made me think about the future from 19th July, too.
For all Matt Hancock’s many failings – and I don’t have enough space for them on here – it appears he has always erred on the side of caution, not wanting to open stuff up until the evidence suggested it was safe to do so. His replacement, Sajid Javid, has no such concerns. His first message as Hancock’s replacement was simple: ‘we’re opening up, like it or lump it’.
In truth, I am broadly in favour of opening pretty well everything up now, not so much because it’s medically and scientifically the right thing to do, but because people have had enough. Whilst I followed the rules to the letter (why is my nose growing?), I’m not sure that I was exactly in a majority. Lockdown is dead: long live lockdown.
When we unlock, it is likely the number of new infections will be enormous, quite possibly at record levels but if people aren’t going to hospital and dying in large numbers – and I am not expert enough to define what ‘large numbers’ look like – Javid has essentially said, ‘It’s your problem now. Live – or die – with it. Now let me get back to counting my money.’ However, there are some issues that need addressing. For example, what will happen to Serco test, track and trace?
If there are large numbers if infections doing the round, will we still be tested, will we need to isolate if tested positive, will we have to stay at home if we meet someone who is infected, will we be financially remunerated if we have to stay at home and how does this fit in with the end of any restrictions? The implication from Javid is that he will leave us all to it and we will have to decide ourselves. If we have Covid symptoms, it’s up to us whether we go to work or to the pub, just like it would be if we had the usual coughs, colds and winter flus. Can you imagine a packed boozer on a Saturday night, with tons of unseen Covid hanging in the air? To be fair, I don’t want to give Tim Wetherspoon any more of my money than I would otherwise have to, but the thought of getting Covid every few months – and this is entirely possible, I’m afraid; especially if new variants start turning up – will see me following my ‘stay at home’ message even more consistently than when I was isolating.
The pessimist in me – there is rarely an optimist – makes me fear that by the autumn we will indeed be in the grip of a new variant which evades the current vaccines and we will all be back in the shit. Javid’s ‘irreversible’ end to restrictions would be put to the test if that happened. But what happens to him concerns me not one jot: it’s what happens to us, the lumpen proletariat. If things get out of control again – and don’t forget the mess Boris Johnson has made of everything, not least in not locking down borders to infected people coming from India – I’m not sure people will be happy to lock down again. In fact, I am sure they won’t be happy or lock down.
I’ll be more conscious of the risks in future. Covid, even with the jabs, can still kill you. Granted, something will kill us all one day. I’d just rather it happened later rather than sooner.
