“Should we be booking our summer holidays?” asked journalists at tonight’s news briefing, hosted by health secretary ‘Door’ Matt Hancock. “Should you, fuck! No fucking chance. Buy yourself a disposal BBQ set and an umbrella and enjoy the British summer in all its glory,” said Hancock. Well, he didn’t really. What he, and deputy chief medical officer, Boston United season ticket holder Jonathan Van Tam, literally said was, “it’s too early.” But is it?
I took the “too early” line to mean one of two things. Either the government and its scientists really didn’t know – and Van Tam is an honourable man – or they are kicking the can down the road to prepare us for the worst. Hancock is the antithesis of anything honourable.
I just see time slipping away. We have a long-awaited, twice-cancelled family visit cum week on the lash with my partner and youngest son in Spain scheduled for June. But even though our current COVID numbers are falling, we still saw 14k new cases today. Spain saw over 19k. Both countries will need to get numbers down to, I would guess, under 1000 by June. Even with the emerging vaccines, is that possible? Obviously, I don’t know, either, but my uneducated guess is that it isn’t.
We’ve got our main holiday booked for September. Surely that will happen, right? Who knows? The UK has done really well sourcing vaccines but most of Europe hasn’t. If our numbers are low come the autumn, what happens if other countries have millions of vulnerable people unvaccinated? I’m not optimistic. The longer the world takes to vaccinate, the more likelihood of more variants, different strains of the virus.
What I am definitely not sure about is whether this year really will be better than last year. My glass half-empty worldview was always that it might well not be. The wonders of science meant we had safe and effective vaccines and I suppose many of us felt that once they came along everything would turn out fine. Things may look better, with over 12 million vaccinated, but the future, at least in the short term, looks just the same to me.
My guess is that Spain in June, or anywhere else in June, isn’t going to happen. And anything beyond that, is touch and go.
If the summer of 2021 is another mask-wearing, social distancing, stay-at-home shit show, I think it will make 2021 even worse than 2020 because all of our hopes and dreams will have been turned to dust.
I wouldn’t bother to book anything at home or abroad for this summer, if I hadn’t already. I don’t even want to think about restrictions going on into next winter, but I fear they will. If you want optimism, look elsewhere. You want it darker? Welcome to the club.
