Q&A: The Second Wave of Covid-19 in the UK

Hello again guys, I have had an interesting conversation with my sister in Singapore recently about the Covid-19 situation here in the UK and obviously, she had a lot of questions about what caused the second wave of the Covid-19 infection here in the UK and thus I thought I would craft a Q&A based on some of the points we had covered in our chat. 

Q: How bad is the Covid-19 situation in the UK now? 

A: It isn't just bad, it is pretty fucking bad! Back in the summer months, around late June to August, infection rates were low at about a thousand new cases a day and daily deaths were in the single figures, almost at zero. Now the infection rates have shot up to anything around 15,000 to 20,000 a day and daily deaths reached 143 today (13th October). Still, this is not as bad as in March and April where daily deaths did exceed 1,000 a day. We are still having to take the reports of new cases with a pinch of salt as many people are still not getting tested, instead being told to simply self-isolate if they feel sick. So if we actually had the testing capacity we needed, this figure would be a lot higher than 20,000 a day - with some estimates as high as 50,000 to 100,000 a day. So we really don't know what the true figure is when it comes to daily new cases and it suffices to say that the government has well and truly lost control of the situation - the technical term for this is "a monumental fuck up". Given that the population of the UK is 67 million, it won't be long before everyone in the country gets infected because you need to remember, this isn't linear progression but exponential progression (please see video below) - so given how quickly it is spreading, it's inevitable that everyone is going to get infected eventually. Plan A was to keep the Corona virus at bay through social distancing but given how it is now sweeping through the country so quickly this time around, it is time we admit that the public have just succumbed to Corona-fatigue: that means they are sick and tired of constantly being vigilant, having to wear masks and so they have thrown caution to the wind on the basis of, "if I get it, so be it, it is inevitable that I'm gonna get it." It is scary to see how quickly things went downhill - the infection numbers were still stable at the beginning of September: but the beginning of September was when the infection rate skyrocketed. It has really in the last five weeks when things have gotten steadily worse and worse and we're expecting the situation to continue deteriorating until winter comes, when practically everyone would have been infected, a lot more dead bodies in the morgues and then we would reach a new equilibrium. 

Q: Why is this happening now in the UK? Why is there a second wave? 

A: Well there is one key factor - quite simply, the schools have reopened. The government had been very keen to get the economy restarted again and if the kids are stuck at home with schools shuts (or offering only online learning), then you need an adult at home to supervise the younger kids and that's preventing a lot of parents from getting back into work properly. So the schools were reopened with that key aim of providing childcare for the children during office hours, so parents could get back to some kind of normal work routine - but of course, they neglected to consider how schools would cope with so many kids pouring into the classroom where social distancing is not possible. The fact is even if the young children get infected with Covid-19, they will experience very mild symptoms or none at all; what then happens is that the children still go home after school and then they mingle with the rest of their family, infecting the older members of their family such as their parents and grandparents. That's where things go horrifically wrong particularly in poorer communities: rich British people will tend to have plenty of room in big houses, when children grow up and get married, they typically move out and buy a brand new family home when they start a family - the key thing is that the grandparents and grandchildren do not live in the same house. However for poor people, the adults get to the age where they get married and have children, but they simply cannot afford to move out or buy a new home - so they stay with their parents and you have three generations under one roof. That's just how things have always been with poorer, working class communities but when these children then get infected with Covid-19 at school, they come home and sit in the living room watching TV with their grandparents, breathing the same air in a confined space and that's enough to infect the grandparents who will then become gravely ill (and possibly die) even if they have been very careful all along - so they get ill and die because they are too poor and are forced to share a house with their grandchildren, unlike the rich people. 

Q: Is it really that simplistic? Is this just poor people getting infected during the second wave?

A: Yes, it is that simple. There is a massive north-south divide with the poorest parts of the country being the worst hit - this boils down to the living conditions: rich people can afford to have far more living space because they are living in big houses whilst poor people are struggling with much smaller houses. The situation is often a lot worse than it seems because 'sharing' is something that people don't talk about or admit - the situation I have described above, whereby the children grow up and want to get married, start a family but are so freaking poor they cannot afford to move out, so they end up living three generations under one roof: that's actually relatively common amongst the poorest working classes in the UK. But instead of admitting that they are doing this because they are poor and earning peanuts, they dress it up as if they have close knit families, they celebrate the close relationship between the grandparents and the grandchildren and they pour scorn on the rich people who don't have three generations under one roof, "they have abandoned their grandparents, I bet the grandparents don't even remember the names of their grandchildren when they see them like once a year at Christmas." Of course, this has never really been a problem until now, when the grandchildren are infecting their grandparents simply by doing something as simple as sharing a bathroom or using the same kitchen - when you live in a very small dwelling, any concept of social distancing is virtually impossible. Thus infection rates are highest in places like the north of England and Wales, where incomes are quite a lot lower than the rest of the country. But of course, poorer working adults are far more likely to be exposed to the virus - a lawyer or banker is going to be able to work from home but people who work in public transport or supermarkets just don't have that luxury and it is the latter group who are going to be more exposed and are at much greater risk of being exposed and infected at a time like this. 

So let's imagine the scene in a poor Northern town like Sunderland where the infection rates are skyrocketing at the moment - let's meet a typical working class family there, the Colson family. Grandma and Grandad Colson are retired, they help with the child care at home. Both Daddy and Mummy Colson are working: Daddy Colson is a customer service assistant at the local train station whilst Mummy Colson is a cashier at the local supermarket. Then you have Tom and Jerry, both still in primary school - all of them live in a flat with three bedrooms, the grandparents have one bedroom, the parents in another and the two boys in the third bedroom. There is only one toilet/bathroom and one kitchen. If Daddy, Mummy, Tom or Jerry get infected, given how they spend so many hours at home together, it is inevitable that the whole family will eventually get infected. Contrast that to the Goldsmith family from Hampstead, a rich suburb in North London. Grandma and Grandpa Goldsmith are retired and have their own house in Belsize Park, another nice suburb in North London. Daddy and Mummy Goldsmith work from home as they are white collar professionals who have the luxury of doing so, their children Elizabeth and Daniela go to the local private school (only for very rich families who can afford the exorbitant fees at the school, thus keeping the poor people out), where class sizes are a lot smaller and thus social distancing is enforced a lot more strictly. So even if the girls who get infected, Daddy and Mummy Goldsmith are going to make sure they do not infect Grandma and Grandpa Goldsmith - when they do visit the grandparents, the girls maintain their distance and they only sit outside. Grandma and Grandpa have a nice big garden in any case given that they are filthy rich and have a big house, so social distancing is not a problem and they have the luxury of still seeing their granddaughters whilst not risking any infection. Contrast that to the Colsons, when simply going to the toilet is exposing Grandma and Grandpa Colson to infection. Thus that is why there is great difference in the infection rates amongst the rich and the poor - poorer working class people like the Colson family are going to be hit much harder in this pandemic. 

Q: Wait, don't rich people get infected as well? The virus doesn't care about your bank balance at all.

A: Do rich people get infected with Covid-19? Yes of course they do, but they are far less likely to in the first place and let's take the famous example of Donald Trump - he received the best medical care in the world once he got diagnosed and recovered very quickly, but let's not imagine that poor, working class people like Grandpa Colson would have the same experience if he got infected. Far from it, people like Grandpa Colson would probably die from the infection if he got infected during the worst of the pandemic and he couldn't a bed at the local hospital's intensive care unit. So if Grandpa or Grandma Colson became very ill, then they would be sent to the local hospital in Sunderland where they live - but that's where the problem gets even worse because the local hospital there is likely to be already overwhelmed by loads of other patients in exactly the same situation, this will lead to delays in getting effective treatment to the very sick patients as the hospital goes into meltdown because it is completely overwhelmed by the number of patients. Contrast that to a hospital in a richer part of London like Belsize Park (where the local hospital is the Royal Free Hospital), it is far better resourced and they have far more capacity because the local infections rates are lower - this is because rich locals like the Goldsmith family have the money to protect themselves from the Corona virus and thus even if in a worst case scenario, say Grandma Goldsmith gets infected and admitted to her local hospital, her chances of survival in a hospital that isn't overwhelmed and able to operate normally are much higher than someone like Grandma Colson, whose local hospital is already in a total meltdown. This is why the experts are always talking about 'flattening the curve' because we have to make sure the hospitals are not overwhelmed, that they would be able to treat all their patients - the only way to do that is to get the general population to behave in a far more responsible manner, so as to stop the spread of the virus.

Q: What can the UK (and other European governments) learn from Singapore? 

A: Tough one, of course we can see that Singapore is a lot more effective in controlling the situation than in Europe but the culture is so different in Singapore. Firstly, take something like face masks, the local population is so much more compliant when it comes to following the rules whereas in European countries, people are far more rebellious and will not obey the rules if they can get away with it. Take wearing a mask on public transport for example: you should be wearing a mask when you're on a train but if someone doesn't wear a mask, then there's no police or staff member there to force that passenger off the train or enforce any of the rules - it is down to the individual to decide to obey the rules for the good of the community around them and a lot of white people are very individualistic: that means they only think about the issue from their own point of view ("Wearing this mask is so uncomfortable, I think I can get away with it if I don't wear it, no one is going to stop me.") rather than the impact on the people around them. ("We all have to play our part to stop the spread of the virus, so I have to wear a mask whether I like it or not.") So it isn't the government of Singapore that deserves all the credit, but rather it is the local culture about being law-abiding and one has to thus give credit to the Singaporean public rather than just the government of Singapore or the law-enforcement authorities in Singapore. Furthermore, there is a conflict between trying to restart the economy before the economy totally collapses and trying to prevent more people from getting infected that has caused this second spike. Sure a full lock down would suppress the rates of infection, but the longer you keep the economy on a full lock down, the more it will totally suffer and eventually businesses will collapse one by one - the governments are faced with an impossible choice: economic collapse or second wave. Singapore has demonstrated that it can be done but it depends on the people behaving and cooperating, following the rules - unfortunately, I just don't see that happening in Europe because the culture here is just so different. 

Q: Okay, in light of that, what is going to happen in Europe then?

A: We're probably going to head towards herd immunity whether or not it is a deliberate government policy (such as in the case of Sweden). We're heading into a period known as 'flu season' - this is when winter arrives, the weather gets significantly colder, people stop doing outdoor activities like jogging in parks and shift towards more indoor activities like exercising in gyms. Note that flu season hasn't started yet! Typically flu season starts in December and we're still in October now, so if you think infection rates are bad now, they are set to get a lot worse in December. It is highly unlikely that a vaccine will be rolled out to the general population before the end of this year, so people like Grandma and Grandpa Colson are probably going to be sacrificed in this context as the vast majority of people in Europe get Covid-19 at some point this year (and hopefully develop immunity after that infection). A lot more people are going to die in Europe in the next few months as flu season kicks in properly as the infections spread - the governments are unable to lock down again as a second lock down would undoubtedly deliver a fatal blow to too many businesses and given how desperate the economic situation is at the moment, the governments are powerless and given how utterly useless Boris Johnson is, we're just going to see a lot of poor people die. This government doesn't care - poor people tend not to vote for the Conservative party anyway, they are Labour voters so the government will just shrug and say, "yup, too bad, nothing we can do" as more poor people die. A natural equilibrium will be established when practically everyone has been infected, most of the weak, vulnerable and the old have been killed off and thus we achieve herd immunity. Infection rates will then naturally fall to near zero after everyone has been infected and recovered - thus it is a question of whether that would happen first or a vaccine would be discovered first. Your guess is as good as mine on this matter but given how fast this virus is spreading again - I think herd immunity might happen first, let's just get it over and done with.

Q: Was it wrong to reopen the schools then if that was responsible for the second wave? 

A: Well if you want the short answer, it is yes. They could have planned it a lot better to ensure a phased reopening of the schools, to make sure that not all kids returned to school at the same time and to give the schools far more funding and time to enforce more social distancing in the schools, but things were rushed and poorly coordinated unlike in Singapore. My friend Jack is a secondary school teacher in a small town just to the north of London - his school closed down just two weeks after it reopened because too many members of staff got infected by the students, one day the school just got totally overwhelmed when too many members of staff tested positive and there just weren't enough teachers to teach the students, there was a huge shortfall so they have absolutely no other option but to send the children home and just close the school! What a total shambles that was, because they could have totally seen this coming - it was not "unforeseen circumstances", it was exactly what we knew was going to happen but they still went ahead and got themselves into trouble regardless. Jack said that the staff at the school all saw this coming a mile away and the school should have never reopened since they were not ready at all. So teachers like Jack are totally furious at what happened, because he felt that the government were only thinking about how best to help the economy recover quickly and one key factor was to make sure that the parents could get back to work without worrying about childcare - that was why the schools were opened again for some kind of normalcy to return. The infection rate was not low enough for the schools to safely reopen, unlike in Singapore, where the reopening of the schools did not lead to a massive spike in cases. Fortunately, my friend Jack is still in his mid 30s so I'm not worried about him getting terribly sick with Covid-19, but he told me that he did have colleagues at the school who are a lot older and they are a lot more vulnerable than he is, they are a lot more fearful returning to work and they felt like the government just did not care if some teachers got sick and died as a result. 

Q: Are the kids being made to wear face masks in school? Why are they being infected in school then?

A: The policy with masks in the UK is flawed in any case: children under the age of 11 are exempt from wearing face masks in the UK whilst in many countries in East Asia, children a lot younger than 11 are seen wearing masks in public. You wouldn't put a mask on a baby because the baby wouldn't understand why it has to wear a mask and thus try to tear it off as it feels uncomfortable. But at what age can you trust a child to keep a mask on because you've told them that they must wear it? In Singapore, that age is two - goodness me, even I think it is a big ask to explain to a two year old that they must keep a mask on but then again, clearly Singapore is winning the fight against Covid-19 whilst the UK is struggling to contain the situation, so clearly the government in the UK need to lower that age where masks are mandatory from 11 to much lower like Singapore. Just because younger children won't get very sick with Covid-19 doesn't mean that they are incapable of spreading the virus. The problem with children - particularly the younger ones - is that they don't understand the gravity of the situation. So when they're in a classroom, a teacher can easily spot a student who isn't wearing a mask properly, but given the student to teacher ratio, the teachers cannot catch every single student who doesn't wear a mask and I often see groups of young people in the UK socializing in public without any masks on. The problem is that they probably think they are invincible, that even if they do get infected they won't suffer much, they would barely notice and life would just go on - but what they don't realize is that they could become spreaders and bring the virus home to this parents, their grandparents and other members of their families. This is why I think the UK needs to do what Singapore is doing and stop exempting children under the age of 11 from wearing masks but even if you do change the law, then the question is how are you going to enforce it - are you going to have the mask police on every street corner in the UK, catching the people who break the law on face masks if there is mass disobedience then? 

Q: Do you think you've had the virus?

A: Quite honestly, your guess is as good as mine. I don't know - without a test, I wouldn't know. We had this case where MP Alok Sharma was seen looking unwell in parliament, so he quickly took a test and it turned out to be negative. For the last seven months, every time I cough or sneeze, I think, that's it - this must be Covid-19. But as MP Sharma proved, it is possible to get the common cold and fall sick without being infected with Covid-19. A few weeks back I had a sore throat and once again I thought, that's it, I've got the Corona virus - but then again, I didn't have a fever, I didn't have a cough, I didn't lose my sense of smell or taste. The sore throat disappeared within like two days and I felt perfectly fine after that - given how the testing capacity is stretched to the limit in the UK at the moment, I decided against getting a test because I felt that the test should be left for those who are genuinely sick and have a fever and a persistent cough. I consulted a friend who is a doctor and she said I should get a test if I exhibited at least one of the symptoms for Covid-19, but given that a sore throat wasn't classified as a symptom of Covid-19 then I shouldn't bother trying to get a test. My friend Graham who did get Covid-19 talked about how it left him exhausted, struggling for breath, unable to work for weeks - he described how there were days when simply crawling out of bed to go to the toilet felt like it took so much effort. Yes he had all the symptoms of Covid-19 and he didn't even get tested - he called his doctor and his doctor said, "yup, you probably have it, even if you take a test, we will just send you home and tell you to self-isolate for 14 days but there's no cure for it, so just stay in bed, don't come to the hospital as you'll just spread it and there's really nothing we can do for you here." So ironically, Graham didn't even get tested and he has since recovered but it took him nearly two months to get over it and feel normal again. So touch wood, apart from that 48 hour long sore throat, I haven't felt ill at all during this entire period - certainly nothing like what Graham went through. I might have had it, but didn't show any symptoms at all. 

Q: I am rather confused by the situation in the North of England where a lot of the Labour MPs there are opposing the government's proposals for stricter lock down measures to curb the spread of the virus in the North. What is going on here? Why are they against a second lock down or stricter measures when the infection rates in their areas are so high? Do they want to see more old people die in their areas - like don't they feel a sense of responsibility to protect the local population there? 

A: This is a complex issue here that has often been exploited for political gain. For those of you not familiar with British politics, allow me to explain: the current government under Boris Johnson (our current prime minister) is Conservative, a right wing party but the vast majority of the areas that have been badly hit in this second wave have elected Labour mayors and MPs (the left wing party). So there's a sense of them simply criticizing the government no matter what they do because that's what Labour does whenever the Conservatives try to do anything. Did this government handle the Corona virus well? Hell no, quite unlike countries like New Zealand or Taiwan, the UK has made a total mess of the situation and has let it run out of control. Do they deserve to be criticized? Yes, of course they do! However, the Labour MPs are asking for the government to ease the restrictions on restaurants and pubs in order to save jobs in areas like Manchester and Liverpool - I actually think they are wrong and we need stricter rules, not a relaxation of the rules. In fact the strictest rules have come into force in Scotland where pubs and restaurants in the Central Belt (including the two big cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh) were closed for two weeks to stop the virus from spreading further. That's what you have to do when infection rates are skyrocketing - thus you have to ask the question: what do you want to save in such a situation, lives or jobs? If you choose lives, you close the pubs and restaurants. If you choose jobs, then you not only open the pubs and restaurants but you encourage people to go out and spend more money to revive the economy. Thus it seems ironic that Labour politicians would take a stance on this issue that would make them come across as pro-business as the Republicans in America; but there's a saying in Chinese for this: 唱反調 that literally means "to sing in the opposite key" and in this context, it means opposing for the sake of opposing. With this approach, the Labour politicians risk opposing what is a sensible and necessary measure to save lives during this second wave; they come across as unprincipled opportunists trying to score political points even during a crisis like this. The fact is they come from Labour safe seats - these areas will always vote Labour regardless, so what they are doing is just incredibly stupid. 

One could even be a lot more cynical and say that these Labour politicians have accepted that the virus is going to sweep through their areas regardless of what the government does at this stage, that the virus is going to kill a lot more people regardless of what the government tries to do now; so they may as well use this as political capital and keep their local residents happy. After all, life was absolutely miserable during the lock down back in spring when so many restrictions were put on our lives: life did return to some kind of normalcy in the summer when infections rates were lower. A very cynical approach to the situation would be that the Labour politicians accept that things are going to get so bad that people like Grandma and Grandpa Colson are probably going to die anyway so let's just open the pubs, let the virus spread and kill off Grandma and Grandpa Colson - after all, dead people can't vote anyway. But the younger people who are not going to die from Covid-19 and are going to still be around to vote during the next election scheduled for 2024 are going to want to go out, see their friends, go to the pub and still have an active social life - thus these Labour politicians are actually considering the needs of these younger people and giving them exactly what they want whilst happily sacrificing people like Grandma and Grandpa Colson, throwing them under the bus by deliberately increasing the chances of them dying this winter. After all, Labour did suffer a crushing defeat at the last election despite the fact that they weren't up against a very strong Conservative party - thus this gives these Labour politicians the confidence to be real mavericks in this case, to do something completely unorthodox and usual in order to try to secure and consolidate their support during a crisis like this. That is why we have a left-wing party that is actually anti-lock down during a health emergency, it may seem paradoxical on the surface, but it does reveal just how utterly desperate the Labour party is at this stage - they are willing to try anything just to prevent being eliminated at the next elections. Unfortunately, the real losers are the British public because both Labour and Conservatives are equally useless and inept in the face of a crisis! 

Where does this leave us? The situation we have on our hands is the result of a totally inept government that doesn't know how to get organized and take decisive action - if preventing a second wave was on the agenda, then they should have taken action months ago because we knew exactly what was going to happen the moment you open the schools and universities again just as the weather gets colder for autumn. So even if herd immunity was not a deliberate strategy on the part of the government, well that's exactly what is going to happen in the end given our high infection rates. I predict that many people will die, we'll get another lock down but things will work themselves out when we get to the point where there's literally no one left to infect, that's when we'll reach a new equilibrium and eventually, we will get a vaccine. What do you think? When will we get a vaccine? Is the UK, along with other countries, headed for a second lock down because of this second wave? Why are the poor being sacrificed and what can they do to protect themselves in a time like this? Is herd immunity the only solution we have? Is herd immunity such a bad option? Have you had the virus yet - have you had a test before and what was it like getting a test? Do leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.