The Covid Christmas: worth the risk?
“So the three-bubble family
Christmas is on,” said India Knight in The Sunday Times. Up to three households (and their support bubbles) will be allowed to meet indoors over five short days: 23-27 December. It promises to be a rather fraught occasion. The older generation is split between those who are “blamelessly observant, rigid with fear” and the “stuff-andnonsense brigade”. Some guests will come in masks and visors; others will claim that they “had it last January” and so “have antibodies”. The Government’s scientific advisers, Sage, have rushed out some guidelines, said Tom Whipple in The Times. Eat outside if you can, and if not, rearrange the furniture, open windows, and sit in a row, so as to “reduce droplet transmission”. Eat off your own plates. Avoid Monopoly and other board games where players touch counters. Don’t sing, and certainly don’t hug. England’s Chief Medical Officer, Prof Chris Whitty, said people should not hug or kiss elderly relatives “if you want them to survive to be hugged again”.
Is it really worth it, asked Ayesha Hazarika in the I newspaper. Over the summer, we had a brief respite from “the joylessness of 2020”. It was wonderful, but we have paid “a pretty heavy price” for it this autumn. The Christmas plans are likely, as one epidemiologist put it, to “throw fuel on the Covid fire”. Even so, “we need Christmas like never before”, said Janice Turner in The Times. This year, “every human gathering from Wimbledon to the village fête” has been “canned”. We are “emotionally malnourished” and missing human contact. “We deserve something to celebrate our survival, to console ourselves and gird us for this pandemic’s last push.”
“How much is a nice Christmas lunch with your family worth,” asked James Kirkup on UnHerd. Relaxing the rules means, inevitably, that some people will die. “I don’t say this as a criticism”: there’s nothing unusual about a policy accepting some deaths in exchange for some benefits. The Treasury even has a way of accounting for them: the Value of a Prevented Fatality is around £1.6m. It’s an uncomfortable thought, but it’s one we need to consider. Sorry if that spoils your turkey.