The vaccine is the best news of the year. But the virus doesn’t care
WHEN you’ve passed t he t hree - score - year-and-ten mark – according to the Book of Psalms, that is the ‘days of our years’, the allotted span of a human life – then every year becomes all the more precious.
You’re probably retired, you’re more than likely enjoying good health, and you’ve worked out what’s worth your while. You might not entirely agree with Tom T Hall when he sang: ‘Ain’t but three things in this world that’s worth a solitary dime/Old dogs and children and watermelon wine’, but you’ll have your own list. And children, if you’re lucky enough to have grandkids, will surely be on it.
But unless they live with extended family, many people in the 70-plus age bracket will have gone most of this year without seeing their grandchildren. They will have missed a toddler’s first steps or first words, they’ll have foregone holding a newborn grandchild, they’ll have waved through windows to mark birthdays, gone without visits and outings for Mother’s and Father’s Days. And they and their families made those sacrifices so that they could, in time, look forward to many more precious years of normality, good health, good company.
So why, then, do we need to be asked not to put their lives in jeopardy, and to squander the sacrifices they made, for the sake of our own Christmas traditions? Why did we need to be told that if you plan to see your elderly relatives this Christmas, because it’s what you always do, then you will have to skip the social whirl of the next few weeks: basically, for this one festive season, it’s the parents or the parties, but it cannot be both.
For many busy working couples, I suspect, being banned from making the weekly visit to elderly parents was, secretly, a bit of a relief. Packing the car, nappies and buggies and travel cots, bottles and formula and pureed food in Tupperware containers, keeping an eye on a small child in a house without stair gates or socket guards, where detergent tabs might be left within reach and the cat does not appreciate being manhandled like a furry toy, it can all get to be a bit of a chore. But the few days with the parents over Christmas, well, now that’s a different story altogether.
Christmas back home with the parents allows you to revert to being their child again, just for that few days, even if you’ve got a partner and kids of your own in tow. It means a Christmas dinner cooked in the way that nobody in the world can match, the tree standing where it always stands with the ornaments you made in school, the sights and scents and rituals that bring you back to your own childhood, no matter what your age. And it also means ready-made babysitters when you want to go out and catch up with friends home for the holidays, and a rare lie - in to sleep off a hangover because Granny and Grandad are on duty.
JUST f or this year, though, it is a ritual that many families are going to have to forfe feit. If it wasn’t safe to visit elderly relatives last weekend, then h it’s not going to be any sa safer in three weeks’ time: the re restrictions may have eased fo for the duration of the holiday period, but virus doesn’t tend to o respect the date on the calendar. It is still lethal, still out there h i n the community, opportunistic and resourceful as ever in perpetuating itself.
And if you are likely to come into contact with friends over the next while, for restaurant meals, house visits or gettogethers in gastropubs, then visiting elderly parents for Christmas is exponentially more dangerous than it was last weekend. Covid-19 won’t be taking a holiday. Ironically, the fact that there’s a slew of vaccines on the way is actually more likely to put lives at risk in the short term.
Knowing that there’s an end in sight, that human ingenuity has effectively defeated the virus in record time, may lull us into the false perception that it’s no longer a threat. We may be tempted to drop our guard, take some risks, as if t he opening and closing months of 2020 have conveniently bookended this strange era, and it will all be history by January 1.
The development of Covid19 vaccines was the best bit of news all year, even better than Trump’s defeat, and Donald’s reign is quite a useful analogy for the pandemic. It’s almost over, the world will soon be rid of it, we’ve certainly earned the right to celebrate, but maybe not just yet.
Because l i ke t he t oxic Trump, it can still do a lot of harm before it goes.