orbific weblog

In theory, the vaccine will be ready by the end of the year. It will go to the NHS workers first, then to vulnerable people, then to the wider population. It will take some time to get round to everyone but, by the start of summer 2021, everything is back to normal. House parties, gigs and festivals can all start again.

This is the vision that was laid out by the government at the briefing I watched last week. But this is a group that has been wrong about almost every prediction. They were wrong at the very start of 2020, when they said that coronavirus was a minor issue that did not merit closing airports or cancelling large events. They were wrong when they said they said that twelve weeks would get everything back to normal. They have made unnecessary errors at every stage, such as the care home scandal, failures with track and trace, and then they make ridiculous announcements about moonshots to distract from these errors.

The government’s vaccine vision certainly saves them from the hard work of setting up proper testing, tracing and quarantining. It’s also quite a fragile thing to be basing our entire future on. There are things that could go wrong with this, and then normality is pushed back another year.

When the pandemic started, I figured the lockdown could go on for maybe 10 weeks. I prepared myself for three months of this, just in case. In parts of the summer I felt becalmed, unsure what I was supposed to be doing.

I’m now settling into hibernation for the winter. I feel good about this, as I have things to work on and to practise. I’m happy enough for now, but I don’t want to make the same mistake I made this summer, of expecting things to get back to normal at a particular point. Which makes me think about 2021. What if this goes on throughout that year, and even into 2022? What does life look like under a prolonged pandemic? How do I keep my spirits up and my enthusiasms alive if this does go on for years?

It’s not that I think I can’t, or that this is likely to go on into 2022. But answering the question ‘What if this lasts forever’ makes it easier to deal with shorter periods of time. How should we enjoy life and thrive with these new limits?

225 days in, and it feels like we’re back to where we started.

It was supposed to be very different to this, and could have been. A recent article described life in Taiwan: prompt action meant that cases were quickly brought under control and life there is mostly normal. Here in England, the government seems to have some very poor decisions and we’re entering winter with cases rising

Last weekend I went on holiday to Shropshire. It was relaxing and also provided a circuit-breaker from my constant watching of the news. Since coming back I’ve continued avoiding the news and I feel less anxious. And, since I’m distancing, there’s little that the news could change about my behaviour.

I’ve stopped travelling into work for the time being, and I’m avoiding socialising indoors. While the odds are good for me being OK if I catch covid, they are even better if I delay catching this, since treatment and outcomes improve all the time (research into long covid has barely begun, so that risk is hard to quantify). And, you know, if I’m going to get it then best to get it when the hospitals are quiet.

The ‘whack-a-mole’ lockdowns continue with no exit strategy. I watched a daily briefing last week (watching it directly doesn’t quite count as news) and it sounds as if we are holding out for the vaccine. This seems quite a gamble, as a successful vaccine is neither inevitable, nor an instant solution – unlike, say, testing, tracing and effective quarantine. This virus is going to be with Britain for a long time – and we still have the spectre of Brexit to deal with. One commentator referred to this as ‘covexit’, the two crises finally becoming the same thing.

I can’t do anything to change the tides and storms that are coming. All I can do is make sure that my little boat is seaworthy. I am walking 10,000 steps each day, even when I don’t feel like it. My diet has been a little poor recently, so I have restocked the cupboards this weekend. I’m working on focussing more on single tasks, reading more consciously, and thinking about new exercise routines.

I’m still finding sleep difficult, as I have since the start of the pandemic. I’m feeling worn-out and fatigued most days, even after a decent sleep. I wake about 6am, pick up coffee from small batch, take a stroll. Start work about 8:30am, finishing about 5, and spend the evening writing or watching TV. And repeat. It’s not a bad life, and one I can manage for some time. It’s going to be a long winter though.

One of the most interesting things about algorithms is the strange mistakes they make, which can be sometimes spooky. Like the time when Facebook made jaunty videos about people’s years, which blithely incorporated funerals and house fires among the celebrations. Or the strange writing collected on the AI Weirdness Blog.

Google photos draws up all the photographs taken on my phone in order to learn how to market web advertising more successfully. Sometimes google suggests new services or goods, such as unlimited storage space. Or an automatically generated photo book.

Google offered me a book of my best photos from Spring 2020. This was a time when I travelled less than any time in my entire life. Lockdown confined me to just a few miles from my house. It seemed a weird time to memorialise. The photos are mundane and strange and I had to buy a copy as a souvenir.

I sometimes wonder how I will remember this period. Already, the frustrations are fading and the summer is about walks and being outdoors. I remember the sunrises better than the insomnia.

A Whatsapp message from Kate, just after three yesterday afternoon, linked to a tweet from the local council. The city’s covid alert level had gone from yellow to amber, the last stage before the government “will declare the city an area of national concern“.

Along with the cutesy picture of a knitted coronavirus, the council informs us that “We all now need to make extra efforts”. What efforts? I’m genuinely not sure what else we should be doing.

My reaction to this news is not fear at getting the virus; despite the awful effect it’s had on friends of mine. My reaction is not determination to ride this out.

My main reaction is anger. Throughout the summer, the government has made foolish errors and failed to prepare for any rise in cases. Tracking and tracing is a joke, an expensive and confused bureaucracy that is unable to count cases, or tell us the number of people being tested. Local lockdowns are not working. Enforcement of the existing rules, particularly around the 10pm curfew is a mess. Nobody can keep track of the current rules people should follow, including government ministers. Messaging has been incompetent, with exemptions to the rules for grouse hunting, or certain government advisors. And just this week, the Prime Minister was telling us to go out more and support our local cinemas.

Part of my resentment is selfish, at the threat to my own plans. But a lot of the anger comes of being six months into this crisis with no clear exit strategy and no real plan from the government. My job is stable, and I can’t imagine the fear and uncertainty for those working in local hospitality businesses (most of the cinemas in the town didn’t survive the news of the new Bond film being postponed).

I guess the only thing to do is prepare to withdraw once more, and check those around me are OK. But I am so tired of this mess.

Flash forwards are a powerful story-telling technique, which work particularly well in TV or comics. A character is given prophetic glimpses of their future, a scene that doesn’t fully make sense at the time. The best example I’ve seen of this was in Babylon 5. Viewers were shown the death of two characters was in the first episode. The question became how events would lead to this moment, and what the context would be.

I’ve been thinking about flash-forwards in terms of the pandemic. Walking down the street now, I sometimes pass people in masks without thinking about how easily the world has switched. Other times I have a sort of jamais-vu where the strangeness of it all becomes apparent. The posters and other background details remind me of the subtle set-dressing in the film Children of Men. These items work in the film to defamiliarise us, to show us the different effects of the catastrophe (which, in that film, was universal infertility).

I had a moment of this jamais-vu in the office on Friday, when I realised how strange the scene in front of me was. I wondered how I would have interpreted this moment if I’d seen it as a flash-forward a year ago.

Our office is huge, and dominated by a large atrium. Of the four floors, two are in darkness, even though it is daylight outside. The main communal space has been roped off. The office is mostly empty, many of the chairs covered in plastic, out of use for now. Only a few people are in view. All of them are wearing facemasks.

The scene would make no sense to my 2019 self. Where is everyone? Why is a large corporate office empty? We have fallen into a new world.