It seems remarkable that it's been a whole year. Back then, the Prime Minister, dishevelled, but yet to contract Covid himself, sat behind a desk at Number 10 on a Monday evening, urging us all to stay at home.
When I look back at the graphs, what strikes me now is how small that first wave looks - positive cases, deaths, hospitalisations - the numbers we thought were huge and unacceptable look so small now between March and April 2020 - like a little speedbump, compared to the mountains of what was to come.
Naively, I believed that there'd only be one peak. I looked at Italy, France, Germany, even China - the numbers seemed to hit a high, then the social distancing measures we were all still getting used to would kick in, and the graph would descend after Easter. And that, I thought, would probably be that. No-one had mentioned variants. No-one had mentioned the wave rippling around the planet, two perhaps three times. A few people twigged that the measures weren't about eradicating it, but giving the NHS room to breathe, but I think a lot of us thought it would be weeks not months.
Here we are then, on the steep downward curve of what turned out to be the second wave, one year on. More than half the adults in this country have been given a dose of a vaccine, and schools are back, with more restrictions due to be lifted. People are hopeful, I think.
The same Prime Minister today is more cautious than he has been, about that. In the middle of a big political furore over whether the EU wants to use the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, cases on the continent have been allowed to soar, and the still dishevelled PM is quite certain that the effects of the surge will 'wash up on our shores'. We should, he warns, be 'under no illusion'.
Funny. Much of this pandemic has been about the people being pessimistic when the government have been bullishly trying to get us all back to work. Today, it feels the other way around. We are all quite fed up and want this to be over as quickly as possible; the government are hinting that the timescale could still, quite easily slip.
Anyway. It is interesting that a year ago, we were watching Europe nervously, certain that we'd not be able to hold back the tide. Hopefully, this too, will be more of a speedbump for us, and less of a mountain.
The Five Dates
Back to School Day: 0 days
Back to Sixes Day: 7 days
Haircut Day: 21 days
Big Travel Day: 56 days
Liberation Day: 91 days
No comments:
Post a Comment