I shouldn’t have to defend my desire to be corona-cautious
Iwent mad briefly the week before last. It was the week that headlines proclaimed London was virtually finished with the virus, and could be entirely rid of it by June. The sun was shining, people were being merry outdoors in droves, and – having been starved of physical intimacy for three months – I, like everyone else, desperately wanted things to return to normal. So, silencing my common sense, I decided that if I acted as if it was over, like everyone else seemed to be doing, it would be over.
This was the madness. I got close to people, even nipping into the odd friend’s house to use the loo. Then I asked a handyman – a wonderful person I’ve known for years – if he felt comfortable coming to fix a broken drawer in my kitchen. He did, saying something about not being as bothered as he should be about the whole virus thing. This was on the Tuesday. Neither of us thought of masks or gloves.
I kept my distance while he was in my flat, out of concern for him as an older gentleman. However, when he left, I didn’t bother wiping anything down. Why should I? London is over the virus! It’s all fine! It’s time to start living again! Well, the very day after his visit to me, as I found out that Friday, he developed a high fever that spiked high and low, lost his appetite and felt deep fatigue. It was, as his doctor agreed, very likely coronavirus.
He is still suffering (though, thankfully, not perilously), and I am nine days into a fortnight of selfisolation. Turns out, the virus is not over in London – a fact made extra clear when Business Secretary Alok Sharma was carted off for a test after profusely and painfully sweating and wiping his face during a speech in the Commons last Wednesday. He tested negative for coronavirus, but not before his condition reignited concern over the return of MPs to Westminster after a “virtual” Parliament was scrapped.
Barnet Hospital, according to a director there, is still seeing five Covid-19 admissions per day. Indeed, it turns out that instead of crowing about our low R rate – as I myself did a few weeks ago – and the stupidity of our ongoing lockdown rules, we should be reminding ourselves of one key fact: that there’s far more we don’t know than we do know about this virus.
We don’t know how many people have it, how it is transmitted or who is transmitting it. But we do know it is incredibly contagious and is still being passed on at epidemic rates.
We should remind ourselves of the reasons for caution, not indulge ourselves in fanciful disregard – all good fun until people get terribly ill, or die, which they are continuing to do. Sorry to be a party pooper, but there we are.
Every day, I find myself getting increasingly frustrated with the country’s burgeoning disregard for the facts. I see more and more people carrying on as if there’s common-sense heroism or admirable stiff-upper-lipness in “deciding” that one is “done with corona”, as I’ve heard a few put it.
If you want to risk your life, so be it. But, this being Covid-19, it’s unlikely to end with you. And so it’s particularly bad to impose your blasé attitudes on others, some of whom might have serious risk profiles or circumstances you aren’t aware of. In short: don’t make those who aren’t “done” with the virus feel like wimps, or losers who need to “grow some”.
I’m healthy and low risk. All the same, I oughtn’t to have to defend, as I have been, my desire to keep a certain distance, justify my reluctance to engage in any physical contact whatsoever and suppress my discomfort with accepting food and drink from the unwashed hands of friends. Being careful has become socially and emotionally wearying, as if one is the nerd at school offending the cooler kids by being a goody two shoes.
What dismays me even more than individuals being inconsiderate, however, is the growing vogue for politicising lockdown. It seems to have become a point of honour in some circles to frame it as a grotesque, nannying interference by an insane, overcautious government. Yet at more than 40,000, our death toll is one of the worst in the world, and would have been far worse had we not slowed things right down.
Taking seriously the devastating physical effects of the virus is not, primarily, a political position. Imposing lockdown to slow the spread of the virus was not, at least in Britain, about abuse of power, or cooking up phoney reasons based on rock-bottom science to ruin our lives as some suggest. No: I am fairly sure it was about doing what it said on the tin.
The economic cost of lockdown has already been huge and will have lethal effects of its own. But the first priority, for psychological as well as physical reasons, has rightly been to slow the immediate threat. Having done so, we can begin to try to minimise damage.
Doing so requires continued caution, not indulging in the alluring belief that because we wish it over, it is. As the dismally stubborn virus statistics show, it isn’t over – not by a long chalk.
Now please, pass the hand sanitiser.
Being careful has become socially wearying – as if one is the nerd at school