'21 done!

[rich_jacko]

2021 managed to clear the very low bar set by 2020 (Hey, the only new scar I have this year is a physical one...). We may not quite be back to normal yet - cancelled parties this week have sadly proven that - but we've collectively come a long way and this was the year life began to resume.

I've enjoyed regular meet-ups with friends again, trips to the seaside, a birthday picnic and meal out, the return of parkrun, two big family events/celebrations, my sister/nieces' visit to Sheffield, a trio of major running events, my first holiday away in two years, and a much freer Christmas than last year.

All the best to you all, however you're seeing in the New Year, and may you have a fantastic 2022!

Comments

[grok_mctanys]

2021 managed to clear the very low bar set by 2020 (Hey, the only new scar I have this year is a physical one...).

I'm not feeling that.

2020 was awful, but it generally felt like the vast majority of people wanted to do their part, and were willing to accept some inconveniences and hardships for the greater good (the greater good!). It felt like we were all having a terrible time of it alone together, but with a shared goal of beating Covid.

But ever since bloody "freedom day", it feels like a lot of people have just decided that the pandemic is over, even though it clearly isn't. That they shouldn't have to be inconvenienced any more, even though nearly 1,000 people/week have still been dying from it ever since. They've given up and don't care.

There can still be a huge outpouring of grief if just one person dies in some other way that "isn't supposed to happen", with cries of "If only this could have been prevented!" But 1,000 people dying of Covid this week, and last week, and the week before that, is fine. Those people don't matter for some reason. Even though there are a bunch of little things people could do quite easily to help reduce transmission rates in significant ways and prevent some of those deaths, they don't.

[rich_jacko]

I don't think attitudes have changed that much. The stats show tens of thousands of people are coming forward every day to get their vaccines. Over a million people every day are getting tested for Covid. Wherever I go, I see the vast majority of people adhering to hands/face/space guidelines. We also don't know what people are doing when we don't see them - Who's to say that group enjoying a night out aren't having their only get-together in a month, haven't all tested and minimised their other social contacts to make the evening as safe as possible? We just don't know.

Sure, there are exceptions where not everyone is following the guidelines or doing all they reasonably can, and sure, those exceptions have been growing, but a certain amount of fatigue over restrictions is inevitable at this point. Two years is a long time to have your life disrupted and your plans put on hold.

I also think it's important to distinguish between "inconveniences" and "having a terrible time", and that those can be different for different people - Restrictions on meeting other households might have been a minor annoyance for those with happy home lives with their partners and/or families, but were a source of terrible loneliness and depression for me and many others. On the other hand, school closures didn't affect me, but have been a huge disruption to lots of children's education and a major headache for their parents. I didn't care when crowds weren't allowed at football matches (Actually it was quite nice!), but there are plenty for whom that shared experience is the main thing they live for. It is a Very Good Thing to be able to have none of these restrictions in place.

Covid is going to be with us for years to come. A combination of vaccines, improved treatments and less deadly virus mutations have all changed the risk calculations, compared to where we were just a few months ago. While it's not yet completely shifted from pandemic to endemic, I can't condemn people too much for jumping the gun a little. Deaths and excess deaths are very different now to the early waves. Obviously, every preventable death is a tragedy but, though it's a horrible thing to admit, society functions according to a degree of "acceptable losses". Anybody who says differently is only fooling themselves.

It's not uncommon for flu to kill 20,000 people in a bad winter, but we don't lock down every year because of that. Nor do we all give up ever getting into a car because of the small-but-non-zero risk of a fatal accident. We consider those things too much to ask. But we do ask everyone not to visit medically vulnerable people if they are unwell, to wear seatbelts in cars, and so on. The trick is getting everyone to see the connections between their behaviours and saving lives, and finding a balance between safeguards and inconveniences, that we can all live with in the long term as Covid becomes endemic. Where we are right now is still the early stage of figuring all that out.

[grok_mctanys]

So, to take one of the few examples where I get to actually observe a fair number of people on a regular basis, with Parkrun one of the things that boggles my mind is how close everyone crowds together at the start. Yes, it's not for long, and yes it's outdoors, but given how easy it would be to just... not do that, and wait for other people to pass, like... why?

What is everyone gaining by crowding together? A few seconds quicker on a time for an event that specifically self-identifies as "a run, not a race"? Who even cares?

Spreading out is so easy. It's mind-numbingly, trivially, easy. And people don't do it.

It's a similar thing with overtaking. I mostly keep to the far left of the path where I can. But even in the places where the path is wide, and the people overtaking me are not crowded together, people would pass me within centimeters, when there's space for them to give me a meter or more. Again, a case where giving people space would involve almost zero mental or physical effort, but very few people think to do it. I spent a lot of Saturday's parkrun on the grass, a couple of meters to the left of the path, to have a comfortable amount of space.

But also the shops. I try to do my weekly shop when the shops are fairly empty. And even since the recommendation to wear masks has been official again, I see a good proportion of people just not wearing masks. Even though wearing one is a simple act, financially unimposing, proven to be highly effective, and for just the duration of being inside a shop should be the minorest inconvenience for 99% of the population; during a 400% rise in the infection rate, plenty of people aren't.

It feels like a lot of people have decided that Covid is over, just because they want it to be. Except it really isn't, and people are going to die because of that. And it bothers me.

[grok_mctanys]

What's your source for the 'flu death numbers?

I was looking for some actual data for more than a decade, to get a good idea for what counts as "common" or not, and the best source I came up with was the 2001-2019 data linked from Flu deaths per year since 2000 - Office for National Statistics.

After a brief diversion on how ICD-10 codes work to figure out whether J09 was equivalent to J009 or J090 (spoiler: it's J090) Looking through the spreadsheet for deaths with code J09* to J11* I only found totals ranging from 17 in 2006, up to a high of 1,598 in 2018, with most years being below 200.

Am I looking at the wrong data? Or am I looking at the data wrong?

[rich_jacko]

Yes, I agree people could be more spaced out at the start of parkrun, and I stand at the edge of that crowd, but I'm broadly comfortable with how it goes overall. Parkrun have commissioned a lot of research on the risks of transmission outdoors, and their Covid framework recognises that physical distancing isn't practical for everyone to do in the space available at the start and finish. All that stuff predates Omicron, but it also predates most people getting fully vaccinated.

I try to give a metre space when overtaking, but it doesn't concern me too much. You would have to be spectacularly, staggeringly unlucky to catch Covid from someone passing by briefly during overtaking, however close they were. Following in the same person's slipstream for several minutes is more likely. I stand clear of the masses at the start, make sure I recover my breath at the end so I'm not breathing heavily at any of the volunteers, but beyond that I just have to rely on the benefits of being outdoors and trust to an extent that people won't turn up if they have (or think they might have) Covid.

With shops, I've noticed a big increase in the proportion of people wearing masks since they became mandatory again. There's usually one or two who aren't, but that's been the case throughout the pandemic. I try not to let it bother me. I'll only be around them briefly, keep my distance (as I do with all other shoppers, regardless of whether they're masked) and do my best to ignore them.

[rich_jacko]

Sorry, I got this one wrong - I was thinking of the combined deaths from flu and pneumonia. In my defence, I probably got it from one of many commentators who the BMJ say have made this mistake. But whether it's flu alone, or flu and pneumonia combined, the point still stands.

[grok_mctanys]

the point still stands.

Does it though? Pneumonia has a bunch of causes, many of which are not contagious in the way that 'flu and Covid are, meaning that lockdowns would not have any effect on that proportion of those deaths anyway.

[rich_jacko]

I haven't found hard stats, but the leading causes of pneumonia are bacterial and viral infections. I don't believe discounting the other causes would affect the figures that much (especially given I said 20,000 and the numbers seem to be closer to 30,000). At this point, I think we're splitting hairs - the point is many thousands of deaths could be prevented each year if we were willing to live with lockdowns in perpetuity, but we aren't. I guess we sort of make the judgement we'd rather live in a society where we don't have constant lockdowns and can expect to live to about 80, than live in a society where all get to live past 90 but live half of our lives under lockdowns.

I doubt I'll be able to find it again, but I remember an article on a university website I read about a year ago, which suggested the reason people hate and don't always go along with Covid restrictions is basically because they're so inefficient - i.e. - you have to restrict so many lives in so many ways to avoid just one potential death, that people don't see the direct connection with their own actions and, on some level, don't feel it's worth it. It's the same with climate change, which will cause / is causing millions of deaths worldwide; there are lots of little things we could all do more of to reduce the impact; but we struggle to relate our own individual efforts to the overall picture.