2020 was a year to remember ... and forget

Anton compares the flu outbreak of 2000 with our current situation, and reflects on their similarities and stark differences

HOSPITALS around the UK feeling the strain. Patients awaiting treatment having to stay overnight on trolleys. Intensive care beds full. Non-emergency surgery cancelled. Sounds familiar?

Add in refrigerated lorries used as temporary mortuaries because existing facilities are overwhelmed, and you have our worst nightmare. But it is no bad dream. It was the picture in Britain 21 years ago this very day.

On January 6, 2000, while the government blamed the worst outbreak of ’flu for a decade, the Royal College of Nursing told the BBC that the problem lay not in a shortage of beds, but in hospitals having too few nurses to attend them. As the French say: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

However, most people hadn’t got the time or the energy to even care where lay the blame. They simply wanted it all to be over.

There was certainty, though. We knew that we just had to hang on in there until the spring. Then life could return to normal, although I don’t believe that we regarded it as abnormal. It was just something to which we’d become accustomed every winter. In 2000, there was no lockdown or tiers. We didn’t have to socially distance or wear face coverings. Pubs and restaurants were still open, people still went to football matches.

I’ll go further: if you’d asked me in what year all that happened, I doubt that I would have been able to tell you precisely. Not like 2020. We’ll all remember 2020. The year that started off like any other and ended up like no other. Don’t let us compare “ordinary” ’flu with Covid19. It is much worse, much more virulent.

Back in 2000, health experts said that the outbreak has been made worse because vulnerable people such as the elderly had not been vaccinated. I read somewhere that in 2020, cases of ’flu were way down on what is normally expected. When you weigh this up, it isn’t just because more people have had the ’flu jab – vitally important though that is – it’s also because most of us have been following the advice to wash our hands and keep our distance.

Looking back over my diaries, I note that every year, for years, around November, the whole family came down with a nasty cold, one that often lasted for weeks and weeks. At the end of 2019, daughter Nicola and I both lost our senses of taste and smell for well over a week.

What a miserable experience that is, not to be able to enjoy food and drink. And the overwhelming sense of joy when you realise that it is returning. It is still a vivid memory. I was sitting right here, in the office, staring out of the window, as usual wondering what to write, when I became aware of the unmistakable aroma of coffee floating up the stairs. Quick, the biscuit tin … yes, I can taste as well. Yippee! What’s for dinner?

I am now aiming for that to be the last time. This dreadful lockdown has made me realise how relatively easy it is not to catch that annual cold. I took it for granted that if I rode on public transport, walked through busy shops, then sooner or later someone would infect me. It was inevitable. Someone would leave their germs on something I would later touch.

It was just part of every year. Something to get through, sneezing, coughing and sniffling until the bluebells flowered. I am now making it my ambition never to catch another cold. Even after Covid-19 we must remain vigilant. I’ve now started washing my hands every half hour …

We must end on a lighter note. My pal Ted Harrison reminds me that at least 2020 was the year when it was perfectly acceptable to walk into a bank, wearing a mask, and ask for money.