Andy Richardson: Stay at home, it saves lives
Where will it all end?
From Telford to Tuscon, from Tipton to Tijuana, everyone is asking the same question: when can we get back to normal? When will this all end? But with joblessness soaring, uncertainty at every turn and the very real risk to health that Covid-19 brings, what does normal even mean? Lives are being changed for good, families are being placed under immense pressure, we are being tested like never before.
When the outbreak began, we were told that there were three ways to manage it: contact tracing, herd immunity or immunisation. Contract tracing didn’t work. And with hundreds of thousands of deaths and tens thousands of infections it is too late to imagine it will.
The genie is out of the bottle. It won’t go back in. The notion that we can track and trace each person who has been exposed to infection is fanciful at best. The nation simply doesn’t have the resources or surveillance systems to do so. Around the world, Covid-19 has demonstrated how infectious and prolific it is. And in an era of international travel and easy-to-cross borders, this is a global issue that will take huge endeavour to resolve. There are other parts of the world, much poorer than the UK, where there will be no ventilators or oxygen, no running water or PPE.
Which leaves us with two options: herd immunity or immunisations. Herd immunity will bring about a rate of death that is unimaginable during peacetime. Hundreds of thousands in the UK would lose their lives. The price is too great. Though a few professional controversialists have suggested that would be a price worth paying – arguments best described as being disreputable click bait remarks designed to provoke – it’s a road along which no one can realistically be expected to travel.
Which leaves us with the need for immunisation. The best estimates are that immunisations are between 12-18 months away as scientists around the world work 24-7 to find a biological solution. Until then, what? Will we endure an on-off lockdown until then? There’s only one truth: nobody really knows.
One of the most frequently used remarks at Government press conferences has been the following: “When we get through this.” We are constantly told that playing by the rules means we’ll get through it quicker. A few weeks ago, we imagined that if we followed the rules and stayed at home for a couple of weeks this would all blow over. But as we head deeper into Covid-19, it is becoming increasingly clear that while we will get through this, it won’t be for a very long time.
The efforts that people are making to help one another have been truly humbling. While there appears to be no end game, no exit strategy, ordinary people have been empowered. The idea of community is alive and well right across our region. Neighbours are helping neighbours, families are helping families, friends are helping friends and huge numbers of people are helping complete strangers. It is the latter that has been the most inspiring. While people are losing livelihoods, working out how to make do when their salaries or social security payments no longer cover even the basics, they have continued to recognise the humanity of their fellow citizens.
There are numerous stories of people in shops paying for the shopping of NHS workers, drivers at petrol pumps covering the cost of fuel for doctors who are still on the forecourts. We are all in this together. Covid-19 is not about the haves and the have-nots; it is about us all. Politicians from all sides of the divide have been working together; more so than at any other point in living memory.
Though the Covid-19 era moves at a frightening pace, it is clear that answers to the bigger questions have yet to emerge. We are living through an age that feels as though it’s from a sci-fi film. We are besieged by a silent killer that is taking loved ones and changing the way we live.
It will pass, of course, having extracted an astronomic cost. It is though the plugs that connect and power our daily lives have been disconnected. When we get back to where we were in January, it will take a considerable time to rebuild. Yet rebuild we will. And the spirit that all of us have shown in recent months does us every credit.
Our region has come together at a time of great hardship and strife. There has been plenty of humour, a willingness to help and a determination to follow the rules so that the NHS is not under too much stress and so that lives are not needlessly lost.
We are not yet through the woods. And there is only one message in town: stay home, it saves lives.
