No. 171 - The Second Wave is Upon Us.
Dear James,
Last week I was in Lancashire visiting my son who is a large animal vet. As it happened he was on call over the weekend and, often when up there, I go out with him on his various call outs. Last weekend it was sunny and warm in Lancashire, unusual for that friendly but rain sodden part of our nation. My son has a wonderful life visiting farms full of Lancashire Vikings, blonde women and their grumpy old farmer partners with a smile behind each grump. And all this is done against the backdrops of Pendle Hill or the Trough of Bowland or the rolling hills of the stunning Ribble Valley. We had been out all day on Saturday and suddenly we realised we were hungry. My son phoned around various restaurants between Clitheroe and Preston but all were fully booked on a Saturday night and most apologized for the additional complication – fewer tables because they were following social distancing rules. We had almost given up when we noticed an upmarket Indian restaurant along the A59. On phoning, we were surprised to hear a voice saying, “Yes just drop in, we’ll find a space for you.” While my son parked I rushed into the foyer of the restaurant which was crammed full of people waiting for takeaways. Being happy to find an open eatery I ploughed on in and was ushered into the main restaurant by the maître d. It was a large restaurant with acres of tables and seating. And it was full. The buzz of conversation filled the air. Families were eating and enjoying themselves as if they were living in a world returned to pre-Covid normality. There was no social distancing and the only nod towards caution were the black face masks worn by the busy waiters. My son joined me and as we sat there we looked around and realised where we were and what we were doing. As a vet he had already told me that he was worried about the rise in Covid infections in this part of the world and now a silence descended upon us. We looked at each other and spoke simultaneously, ‘We shouldn’t be here!’ We called our waiter. ‘Could we convert our order into takeaways?’. ‘Certainly Sir!’ And with that, we were out of there.
I feel sorry for our government. They have been faced with a calamity that was not their fault other than that they had ignored the warnings of the WHO for years that a pandemic was inevitable. Since then they have done a pretty miserable job of trying to assemble a coherent strategy to deal with the pandemic and to balance the needs of the economy with the needs for health. After the initial disastrous peak of deaths between March and May, they seemed, at last, to have things under control. Then the outbreaks started. Children are back at school, people have been away on summer holidays, bars and restaurants are open and things were returning to normal. Life was starting again. The nation relaxed its guard.
But Covid knows no bounds. It looks for every opportunity to survive and finds its hosts whenever groups of people hang out together for long periods of time. The government has scrambled to find an answer but their answer has been messy and confused. The full test and trace system should have been in place by now but the government unaccountably failed to foresee the huge rise in demand for tests due to opening up schools and relaxing other measures. The result is that testing is now at the point of collapse. And with a confused strategy you will inevitably have confused messaging. This has been appalling. There have been so many messages, so many different messages, so many vague messages and so many exceptions to rules e.g. the ‘Rule of Six’ and its grouse shooting exemption. I, for one, have little idea of what we can do and what we can’t do. I gave up trying to understand what ‘Stay Alert’ meant many moons ago. Since then we’ve had, ‘Stay Home’, ‘Hands, Face, Space’, ‘The Rule of Six’. The slogans come and go like confetti in the breeze. It is as if a copywriter is testing his latest brainwave on an opinion survey panel. Which of course is the case. Boris was always good at the short, pithy slogan and then forgetting it as soon as launched. What we needed was a single consistent slogan that will endure until the vaccine e.g. Never Relax – Covid Has Not Gone Away – It’s Waiting to Get You!’ As you can see I’m not much of a copywriter but you get the message?
Our experience in Lancashire last weekend was sobering. So far neither of us has symptoms but we shall have to wait another seven days to see whether we survived the ordeal. What was that ordeal? Well, some restaurants followed very strict guidelines. Two metre spacing of tables, hand washing facilities, clear marking of ‘one-way roadways’ and recording of every guest’s address. Others were confused or deliberately pushed the limits. I have no idea whether the restaurant we went to was breaking the latest rules but it just seemed scary. We knew we were at risk.
Perhaps that is what we all really need. An exhortation to apply Common Sense to a real sense of our own vulnerability. Yesterday over 4,332 new infections were confirmed, the highest figure since May 8th. The second wave is upon us James. I am not hopeful.
Kind regards,
BH – Your Concerned Constituent