Covid-19, masks, summer 2021 and freedom day

Hi guys, it's been quite a while since I've done a Covid-related piece so I thought I would update you on the latest developments in the UK. I do chat with my family in Singapore every weekend so it is quite interesting to compare and contrast the two very different approaches to the pandemic in these two countries - my family in Singapore are actually quite shocked by the approach the UK government has taken, but I hope to shed some light on this complex issue here. 

Q: So what's happening in the UK now with the pandemic? 

A: Well we have had the vast majority of restrictions lifted on the 19 July and earlier this month, we were getting more than 50,000 new cases a day and nearly 100 deaths a day - it was quite a gamble for the British government to lift virtually all restrictions despite there being a fourth wave but it was more a political move for them at this stage rather than one based on the science. The people are sick and tired of the restrictions already - mask compliance has been shockingly low even when it was compulsory. So when masks were compulsory on public transport, typically you would see about 50% to 60% of the passengers wear masks and the rest wouldn't bother. Even though the mayor of London has still mandated that masks must be worn on London public transport, compliance has fallen to around 30%. Sometimes I get on a train and I look around, like literally nobody is wearing a mask and I think, what's the point if I bother wearing a mask if no one else is doing it? Given this form of mass civil disobedience when it comes to the British public ignoring rules on mask wearing and social distancing, the government literally just shrugged their shoulders and thought, what's the point of having rules if so few people are actually obeying them? We may as well lift all restrictions under such circumstances. It's quite a relief actually, like I would used to get really annoyed when I see people without masks but now I'm like, they are no longer breaking the law, they can go without a mask if they want. Ironically, this has been less stressful for me since I was one of those that did dutifully wear a mask all the time, because I follow the rules.  

Q: Has this got to do with the successful vaccination programme in the UK?

A: Yes and no - with these many people getting infected everyday, it ought to have brought our health service to breaking point but no, we have successfully broken the link between getting infected and being hospitalized as well as dying from Covid. Hospitalizations are about a third of what they were in the third wave and deaths are even lower, about a tenth of what they used to be so clearly, the vaccinations have had a massive impact on making Covid far less deadly. However, not everyone is vaccinated - some people cannot get vaccinated for health reasons and then there are the anti-vaccination idiots. I was on the train on the way back from gymnastics when this older black guy who was quite fat started yelling at people wearing masks, "you lot are fucking idiots - you are falling for a hoax, there is no virus! This is fake news! Don't get the vaccine, they will put a microchip in you - you can take the vaccine and shove it up your ass, nobody will ever vaccinate me!" I took one look at him and thought,you're old, black, fat and working class - you're the exactly kind of person who will still get the virus and die from it because you're not vaccinated. That's why we still have anything from 20 to 100 people a day dying of Covid-19 and the rest of us have no sympathy for those who die of Covid now because all adults in the UK have already been given the chance to get vaccinated - there is simply no excuse now unlike in countries where the vaccine has been in very short supply. If this crazy man on the train dies of Covid, then it's like an unrepentant chain smoker who has lung cancer - you must make such people take responsibility for their actions. 

Q: Yes but aren't you using a rather crazy anti-vaxxer as a rather extreme example in this case? 

A: We need to think two or three steps ahead rather than focus on the immediate here and now. The vaccine is available to any adult in the UK who wants to get vaccinated and it is free - it is remarkably easy to book an appointment and get the jab. But the fact is we're never going to get everyone vaccinated even if there are enough doses of the vaccine for everyone here in the UK, so what are you going to do? Continue keeping the country in lockdown and be held ransom by people like that crazy anti-vaxxer I encountered on the train? Or do we let people like him take his chances with the virus whilst the rest of us just get back to normality? Of course, there was that case in America where this anti-vaxxer who was also black (I'm being very un-PC by flagging up his skin colour but there's definitely a pattern here) died of Covid-19 after refusing the vaccine, claiming that his Christian faith would save him. Guess what? It didn't and now he's dead, he died of Covid. Now there's another case of another anti-vaxxer this time in England dying of Covid after having refused the vaccine: you can't force these people to get vaccinated the same way smoking and drinking alcohol isn't illegal, even though those two activities are very detrimental to your health. The aim of an effective vaccine programme would be to achieve herd immunity against the virus in an ideal world, but if someone chooses to go down the route of refusing the vaccine and then dying of Covid like that black guy in America, then it's their choice; so go ahead, let them die whilst the rest of us get on with our lives, we're not even going to bat an eyelid if people keep on dying of Covid-19 in big numbers. 

Q: So do you have to wear a mask in public now? 

A: No is the answer, though there are some places where they have the right to make their own rules. Let's take public transport for example: Transport For London and the mayor of London Sadiq Khan have insisted that people must wear masks when using public transport. What will happen if I try to board a train in London without wearing a mask? Absolutely nothing - there just isn't enough staff or police to deal with those who do not comply and when the vast majority of the people are simply refusing to wear a mask, then those rules are meaningless. Then there's my local supermarket Sainsbury and their official stance on the matter is to 'encourage' all customers to continue wearing masks when shopping in their supermarkets; however, even the staff themselves are not wearing masks anymore and only a minority of shoppers are bothering. No one is going to say or do anything if I remove my mask whilst I am in the store, even the security guards there are no longer wearing masks. So essentially yeah, in London we can afford to ditch the masks now and ignore the rules on social distancing. Nightclubs, bars, sport venues are all open now with no restrictions, it's like life before Covid. But it's not like we're Covid-free right now, we are still recording a scarily high number of cases and deaths everyday - it's just that the public are totally fed up and have had enough; so I doubt the government here can get away with imposing another lockdown even if the death toll rises dramatically - nobody cares about people dying of Covid anymore - our society has really changed in the last 18 months ,because of this pandemic. 

: Are British people really that heartless and selfish? 

A: Yes, indeed. Let's put it this way, in places like Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan, people don't really care if a bomb goes off and kills a hundred people. Yeah like it's just a fact of life, it's just yet another bomb, people died, so what? Yet in countries where this kind of thing doesn't happen on a regular basis, people are still generally quite appalled and shocked by a small number of deaths. Just last week, in Zhenghou, China, a heavy storm caused a flood which killed 12 people who drowned when their train was flooded - the dramatic pictures of passengers struggling in water up to their necks, trapped in the railway carriage shocked many around the world. But look, that's 12 people who died in that train vs 131 who died from Covid in the UK today - in Zhengzhou the public gathered at the train station where those 12 people drowned to lay flowers. But did anyone give a shit about the 131 people in the UK who died of Covid today? Nope, nobody gives a shit; most of the news was about team GB winning medals at the Tokyo Olympics. We're far more interested in the Olympics than the 131 people who died of Covid. Why? Because this has happened every single day for the last 18 months, we're just so used to people dying everyday that we're completely desensitized to the concept of people dying. Deaths like that no longer bothers or upset us as a society. I'm not condoning this attitude, but it's a sad reflection of the terrible situation here and it is quite shocking that a country like the UK can develop this kind of mindset.

Q: This is quite a contrast from the situation in Singapore, isn't it? So is the Singaporean approach better then?

A: Some countries like Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan have a zero-tolerance approach to Covid and to their credit, it is an approach that has saved many lives. My sister was telling me how people in Singapore started panicking after there was a small cluster of cases and I was like, well did anyone die? No? Well then what are you worried about? But it is this zero-tolerance approach that has made Singapore's death rate from Covid one of the lowest in the world - allow me to compare this to the UK. The population in the UK is 68.2 million compare to Singapore's 5.9 million - so the population here is 11.56 times that of Singapore. The number of deaths in the UK so far at the time I am writing this is 153,070 and if Singapore had the same death rate as that of the UK, the number of deaths in Singapore from Covid should be about 13,241 but actually, only 37 people in Singapore died from Covid. So according to these figures, Covid is 357.87 times more deadly for the British public than it has been for those in Singapore. I can imagine if someone actually died of Covid in Singapore this week, it would probably make headline news and there would be a massive public outcry. But so many people in the UK die of Covid every single day now to the point where we're just utterly totally immune to it, we're emotionally numb from it all, unable to feel anything like anger, outrage or sadness from each death. To put things in perspective: 131 people died from Covid today (27 July, as I am writing this) and if we divide that figure by 11.56, that would be 11.33 - goodness me, can you imagine the kind of public outrage if 11 people in Singapore died from Covid in a 24-hour period? But in the UK, we just don't care anymore when people die from Covid. 

Q: What is it about the Singaporean mentality that helps Singapore cope with this situation?

A: The key difference of course is that if there are anti-vaxxers in Singapore who refuse to get vaccinated, then the chances of them getting infected and dying of Covid in Singapore is still extremely low because of the tiny number of cases in Singapore and the highly efficient way the government there deals with each cluster of infection. Whereas in the UK, infection rates are so ridiculously high that it is impossible to avoid the virus. My sister did tell me that there was some vaccine hesitancy in Singapore as well, mostly due to the spread of misinformation amongst less-educated Singaporeans who are believing all kinds of ridiculous bullshit they read online. But the fact is even if some uneducated idiot  in Singapore refuses to get vaccinated after reading some fake news about vaccines online, then they're probably going to be alright in a place like Singapore but in somewhere like the UK where the Delta variant is circulating very widely in the community, there are far more serious consequences for refusing to get vaccinated. Such is the problematic situation we have to contend with. The one good thing about the Singaporean mentality is that '乖乖听话' nature of a lot of PAP voting Singaporeans who will simply do as they are told - so if the government tells them to get vaccinated, they will simply do as they are told regardless of their feelings about vaccines. Thus ironically in the context of Singapore, this is actually a good thing if you do want to achieve the aim of herd immunity through a successful vaccination programme. 

Q: Have you ever met an anti-vaxxer in the UK? What are they like? 

A: Okay let's call this friend Charles (not his real name), he is such an anti-vaxxer and floods social media with anti-vaxx contents. I've known him since the late 1990s when we used to train gymnastics together and he's also in his 40s now. He was a brilliant gymnast but chose to switch to trampolining instead as he thought that would be his best chance to make it onto the national team by focusing on just one apparatus rather than artistic gymnastics which requires gymnasts to perform on all six apparatuses. He then switched to diving for a while just to see if he was talented at it and he was, so for a period in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was concurrently training and competing in both diving and trampolining. He was young, good-looking and super talented then, so a mutual friend suggested to him, "there's this casting for male models to star in this ad, it's a lot of money, why don't you audition?" So he did and he scored a part in a huge international ad campaign (which I shall not name, lest I accidentally identify him) and it made him a ridiculous amount of money. I even appeared in a British film with him in 2006 - life was good for Charles during that period, he was happy doing what he loved most, everyone thought he was going to go to the Olympics and win a medal and he was making plenty of money on the side from modeling as well. But unfortunately, things didn't quite go to plan - Charles got badly injured during training and that was the end of his diving career, he recovered from the spinal injury but that caused him to miss the selections for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He kept training for a while and could have staged a comeback for 2012, but frustratingly that never happened as he just kept getting injured. Unfortunately, Charles just ran out of luck. 

After Charles' diving career officially ended, he got into a relationship with a woman and she became pregnant - this wasn't planned but Charles did the honorable thing and married her. But such was the situation then for him: he didn't have a degree, he had not much work experience outside sports and modeling. His modeling career depended on his good looks and unfortunately since leaving the sport, he put on a lot of weight and started losing his hair as well. The last time I saw him, he had become completely bald (hey just like me, but I am not trying to use my looks to make a living) - it suffices to say that his modeling days had come to an end as well since he was now an old, fat and bald man. On top of that, Charles now has a wife and child to support - he did the sensible thing and moved out of London to the West Midlands where the cost of living was a lot lower than in the capital. I did suggest that he get into coaching for diving or gymnastics but he chose not to do that, after all, being in the environment where he would be reminded what might have been, all the missed opportunities would have undoubtedly been too painful for him unfortunately. So instead, he got a job at a post office which was boring but stable - it paid the bills, enabled him to bring up his son and I thought he had settled into a quiet life in the West Midlands. Then when the pandemic happened, he started calling it a hoax on social media, even claiming that the vaccine was dangerous - that is was create to control the population and even euthanize the poor. Some of his theories are so ridiculous but no I couldn't bring myself to debate with him: where do I even begin?

So when I posted a photo on Facebook that I have had my second dose of the vaccine and expressed how happy I am to be fully vaccinated, he launched a stinging personal attack on me. I didn't respond but one of my friends Phil leapt to my defence and they got into massive argument on my Facebook page. I messaged Phil to say that back in the day, Charles was a good friend whom I was very close to but we have lost touch since he has moved to the West Midlands - I honestly was not expecting him to attack me this way but I thanked Phil for defending me. I wasn't going to take the bait, I refused to get into an argument with Charles over this matter but it has put a massive strain on our friendship. Not that I care or mind, since he lives in another town about 200 km from London, it was not as if I was going to see him on a regular basis anyway. But in the case of Charles, I have seen how he went from hero to zero in a space of 14 years - actually I feel sorry for him, but he's an adult and this is the life he has chosen. I can imagine that Charles has a lot of hidden anger that has no outlet - he has no one to blame but himself for the way things have turned out and that's why I think he has used this anti-vaxx stance as an outlet to vent all the anger, bitterness and pain that has been poisoning him all these years. Is this a healthy way for Charles to deal with his feelings? Of course not, but he seems to have taken this whole Covid-19 thing very personally when really, everyone on this planet has been affected as well - it is not about him but he is acting as if it is when you listen to the way he rants about vaccines. All I can do is steer clear of him and avoid any conflicts but as a good friend, I just feel so sorry for him. The Charles I have known all this years is not a bad person.

Q: But surely, there would be the equivalent of anti-vaxxers like "Charles" in Singapore as well, right? 

A: I think so but the circumstances would be different - if Charles was in Singapore and he tried to be vocal with his anti-vaxx messages in Singapore, he might face more opposition from his friends for daring to defy the government and take a stance that could be detrimental to society. After all, even if Charles doesn't care about his own health, he could potentially be infecting others in his family and community with the virus - he would thus be part of the problem, not the solution. In the UK, Charles will find it easy enough to find others (like that crazy man I encountered on the train) who will agree with him and thus I think it's easier for someone like Charles to get away with a stance like that in the UK than in a place like Singapore, where there simply hasn't been much tolerance for any kind of dissent over the decades. This is of course a double-edged sword - one of the main reasons I really like living in London is because this is a far more progressive and liberal society, it was quite a change for me having grown up in Singapore which was the complete opposite. But with this comes a tolerance for a wider diversity of opinions even on issues like the handling of the pandemic and that's why people like Charles are able to get away with his brand of anti-vaxx bullshit. Yes he risks alienating and losing friends like me but he has clearly found enough new friends who share his point of view on the issue. Like I said, I stand by the fact that I've known Charles for a long time and I do cherish our friendship, but I can't help but feel very disappointed in the way he has turned out - his life has turned out to be such a mess through bad luck. 

Q: Is the fourth wave in the UK over? Will there be a fifth wave? 

A: Right now, we are coming to the end of the fourth wave in the UK - daily cases have been falling for about a week now, from an average of about 50,000 a day in mid-July to 30,000 a day now at the end of July. There is a time lag between the case numbers and hospital admissions as well as deaths - so we expect to see an improvement in the hospital situation and the death rates only about 3 or 4 weeks later, but things are definitely getting better now. What is significant is the lack of panic about the fourth wave, like literally, nobody gives a shit if more people died - so it's not like things have improved to the point where we can relax but this relaxed attitude amongst the British is more a sign of nobody giving a shit about people dying of Covid anymore given that we're still having about 100 a day die of Covid - but the attitude is, meh, so what? These people are either very old and frail and thus were going to die anyway, or they were idiots who didn't want to get the vaccine, so they deserve to die and certainly don't deserve our sympathy. But interestingly enough, we actually got through the fourth wave in spite of the lifting of restrictions so this shows that future waves will come and go - lockdowns can only flatten the curve (to make sure health services are not pushed to breaking point) rather than avoid a subsequent wave. So yes, without doubt, there will be more waves to come depending on the new variants that emerge in the future and that's why we need to focus on getting everyone including all children vaccinated, so we can be prepared as a country to face the fifth, sixth wave and whatever else that might come our way. 

Q: Is life finally going to get back to normal at long last?

A: The answer to the question will vary depending on whom you ask. For me, obviously one thing I would love to do is to visit my family in Singapore but no, that's not possible - the borders are closed. Even if I manage to get permission to visit (no idea how that would be possible, but hypothetically let's imagine if I do manage to do that), I will be given a 30-day tourist visa as a British visitor of which, I have to spend 14 days in quarantine in a hotel. Hardly normal, is it? Rules for international travel are slowly being eased between some countries but there's a long way before things get back to the way things were - I have been able to visit countries like Portugal this year which have the situation under control, but visiting other places like India, Africa or Brazil would not be possible for the next few years at least. But that's international travel - I have mentioned a friend 'Vera' in my blog several times already. She's currently finishing her degree and working part time, so she cannot afford foreign holidays - even before the pandemic, she rarely left the country given her financial situation. However, Vera can now pretty much do whatever she wants in London - she can see her friends, she can go to cafes, restaurants, bars, cinemas even visit nightclubs and party the night away. She can access all manners of cultural, sporting and leisure activities in the UK as everything has reopened, so for her, life is pretty much back to normal for her since she can now do everything she wants. But for me, until the international travel situation is resolved in the future, life is not normal for me at all, as 'normality' for me involves a lot of international travel. 

Q: But surely things in London are much better than before, right? 

A: Sure, things are better for me, but really depends on whom you ask. I've just started a new job, we hosted a party this week at a club and when my husband turned up, he was amazed at what he saw as it was like pre-Covid times. We had some great food whilst watching a live band perform on stage - we mingled with the other guests at the party, there were no masks, no social distancing, people were shaking hands and hugging each other. Was I worried about Covid at all at the party? No, because I am fully vaccinated so even if I do get infected, I know I wouldn't get as sick as I did the first time I got it in January this year. So yes, I am having a pretty good time right now and I'm able to focus on my new job rather than worry about what the future may bring. But for some people, they have lost their jobs - they might be on furlough or even on unemployment benefits, uncertain if they can find a job soon. I have this friend at the gym whom I shall refer to as Ian (not his real name) where he works as a gymnastics coach - he has a baby and his wife is unwell, he gets paid for the number of hours he works at the gym and he has gone through many months where he really struggled to even put food on the table for his family. Even before the pandemic, his financial situation was already quite insecure given how poorly paid sports coaches are, but the pandemic has well and truly made him realize how precarious his situation is. So for people like Ian, life isn't any better just because he no longer has to wear a mask now, that's actually the least of his worries and Ian would gladly wear a mask all day if he had a better job that paid him a half-decent salary. 

Okay, so that's it from me on this topic. What do you think? How is life for you where you are and has some semblance of normality returned? Are you still wearing a mask in public or have you ditched your masks already? Do you still hesitate to shake someone's hand when you meet them now, do you opt for an alternative like a fist pump, an elbow-bump or even just a wave? Do you think the UK government has been way too reckless in lifting the restrictions with the Delta variant still circulating in our midst or is it a logical step to take following a very successful vaccination programme? Have you been fully vaccinated yet and have you met people like Charles who refuse to get vaccinated? Have you ever met anyone like Charles, who is angry and bitter about everything? Do leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.