Saturday 5 December 2020

Rumination: Lockdown 2.0

Pandemic Thoughts - November 2020

The Following is for Reference Only, the 2020 Summary will follow in a Month from Now.

On December 2nd, the second National Lockdown to attempt to arrest the resurgent spread of Covid infections came to an end, and even after four weeks of renewed restrictions and attempts at containment, I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it, with most of my most substantial thoughts having been shared at its outset, as it hasn't seen me get out of work, predictably enough, and aside from having no opportunity to travel away to visit Mum, it had no other impact on my plans which mostly involved hibernating my weekends away at the onset of the Dark Season. I'm sure all those involved with the hospitality, leisure and non-essential retail sectors will have really felt the sting of it, especially after so many weeks of mixed messaging from those who would govern us ahead of the inevitable, but being in the business I'm in, and having so little social interaction beyond my familiar circle, I really can't make any more useful observations beyond the facts of trains into Leeds being noticeably quieter in the mornings, but inexplicably busier in the evenings. It's not been an experience anything like the first national lockdown though, where most businesses shut down and so many people were effectively confined to their homes for two months, as this time around schools have stayed open, and suffered all the fluctuations in attendance and operations that might have been expected when operating through a pandemic, while there have been a lot more retailers opened up and offices not doing nearly as much working from home as before. I'm sorry that I can't report anything personally in more detail, but my attitude towards self-protection during this crisis means that I've been witness to so very little, and can only really reflect on what I've learned through the usual methods of reportage, such as noting that the Covid infection rate dropped by 30% during the past month, which is a substantial drop and not a stat to be taken too lightly, but it feels less like a good reason to return to normality than a reason to get everything back to normal, than a cue to keep things shut down for another month to arrest the spread further. It's certainly discouraging to see the increasing infection rate in school age kids, and the dangers that it presents to families nationally, and for the first time in months we've started to look seriously at the death rate again, which HM Government had massaged down to 41,000 at the start of July, but has since risen to 60,000, presenting the horrifying reality of this second wave, with the ONS suggesting that the rate should be revised significantly upwards again to reflect all the indirectly caused deaths that have occurred due to medical access restrictions during the months of pandemic conditions.