Of all the concerns about this week’s heatwave — the hottest spot, risk of a hosepipe ban, keeping pets cool — one angle was conspicuous by its absence.
ow sweltering it must be for medics in hazmat-style suits treating the rising numbers of Covid-19 patients.
We no longer talk about those still toiling in full protective gear in high summer as wards fill up again. Their sweat, trauma and battle-weariness is an old story, boring and unhelpful. We’re away to the beach in our packed trains and buses.
For a brief period in June in Northern Ireland there were no patients in ICU. Patient numbers in general wards had fallen to mid-teens, from 800 in January.
Reported new daily cases were down to low double figures from a peak of 1,500. The renewed lockdown and vaccine roll-out had dampened the pandemic. Talk of “reopening society” began, where vaccines could do the heavy lifting.
But even without formal relaxations here, over the last fortnight case numbers have risen alarmingly, hospitalisations are now in three figures, numbers in intensive care small but rising steadily. Deaths are occurring again.
Worryingly, where England calculates its school holidays — which began on Thursday — will reduce transmission, here the rise coincides with schools closing.
With “Freedom Day” on July 19, England took the view that vaccines alone, without social distancing or masks, would handle what’s hoped to be the Covid endgame.
The dominant narrative is clear: “Back To Normal”. “Freedom Day” doesn’t — yet — apply here but its message is contagious.
Everywhere people stagger forth, blinking in the bright sunshine and throwing off their masks. Such is the rush to move things on, “pandemic” has been swiftly replaced by “pingdemic”. Goodbye restrictions, good riddance caution.
Yet behind this full-on “feelgood factor” there is another mood unfolding. One that belongs to people who recognise Boris Johnson’s big gamble for what it is. These are the “othered” who fear they’ll soon be cancelled and feel silenced by a sneering public discourse that dismisses them as “bedwetters” for remaining wary of Covid.
Even rugby players cannot escape anger and disdain — Australia and New Zealand’s teams were taunted as “cowardly” by rugby football league chairman Simon Johnson for pulling out of the World Cup.
People working at home “must get back to their jobs”. The inference is of a year-long jolly, lounging in pyjamas, watching This Morning.
But the jibes, slurs and bullying overlook the fact that for many it’s not so simple. Personal circumstances dictate their options.
Some have health issues that pre-pandemic never stopped them turning in for work, but do now. Others care or live with elderly or vulnerable relatives.
Yes, if a vaccinated person catches Covid, symptoms should be limited; but there’s a chance they may still be hospitalised. Also, they could still unsuspectingly bring the virus to a loved one. Who could still die. They might have mild symptoms but spend months battling long Covid. In other words, it could be life-changing.
Information overload causes confusion, uncertainty and anxiety. They play the percentages. For example, 66% of those in NI’s hospitals are unvaccinated — so a third who’d had one or two jabs still ended up there? How safe are they... really?
There are conflicting studies on vaccine efficacy against various mutations. Endless modelling. Virologists and epidemiologists publicly disagree.
Mixed messages abound. This week, hours after a Government minister on Newsnight said long Covid was largely all in the mind, Northern Ireland’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Michael McBride, told Nolan it was real. Given the many harrowing accounts from sufferers, I think we know who to believe.
The single biggest error of the original messaging around Covid was that it only was a danger to old people or those with underlying conditions. This left a residue of scepticism about the disease among the young, the very group the Government’s now struggling to get vaccinated — 44% of 18-30s haven’t had a jab.
Young people are the last to perceive the many risks life on Earth holds for them. It’s our job to persuade them to take precautions.
The fact is, though, in order to protect our “grown-up” lifestyles — holidays abroad, barbecues, freedom to spend our hard-earned cash — we’ve failed to protect the young and now they occupy hospital beds with alarming frequency.
Ironically we’ve exposed them to the same risks that, last year, we exposed the elderly to in care homes. Distressingly, Covid outbreaks have risen over the last fortnight from four care homes to 52 yesterday.
Already people are dicing with public transport to get to not particularly well-paid jobs. Others sit hunched over laptops at home, dreading the email summoning them back to the workplace.
In the early days, it was anti-vaxxers driving the conspiracy theories. Now it’s those who complied with the Government’s guidance that find themselves simply not believing what they’re being told.
Is it any wonder, when a health minister talks of the importance of sticking to the rules, then breaks them for a snog in the back corridors of power and both the prime minister and his chancellor try to dodge self-isolation with barely credible pilot schemes?
It’s not just our leaders’ behaviour, it’s the decisions they’ve been making. In England, masks aren’t compulsory — but, hey, you should wear one. Those who never wanted to wear one feel emboldened.
Yesterday, the Tokyo Olympics opened to stadiums with empty stands as anxiety about a sharp rise in infections spooks Japan.
But those bed-wetters should have known all they needed to do was get a portly English football fan to take his top off and light a single flare between his bum cheeks. That would have rendered the whole nation immune from infection.
After all, only two weeks ago, 60,000 crammed into Wembley and Trafalgar Square was party central.
On Monday, our Executive is likely to announce our own version of “Freedom Day”, possibly a more sullen variety than Boris’s Goldfinger broadcast from his self-isolating Chequers bunker.
“Learning to live with it” is poor advice now when we were promised a cure. Letting the virus rip through society will inevitably result in more deaths and shattered lives. It smacks of the old “acceptable level of violence” that led Troubles policy. Except it makes no more sense than an acceptable level of suicides or learning to live with drink driving.
Just as it makes no sense to deride people for still following the very advice the Government proposed but now chooses to sneer at for largely political motives.
They think it’s all over in England. Anyone want to bet?
