Easing Lockdown Is the Hardest Part of This Pandemic

Since I bailed from Dubrovnik with Covid on my heels at the end of February, Zach and I have stayed, exclusively, in a little flat overlooking the River Ouse (pronounced ooze) in a Norfolk country town. That is, at the time of writing, almost five months, or the longest I have spent without a night away somewhere in all my adult life.

Grateful as I am for the flat – which my aunt rented as a base for whoever was looking after my brother when he was in the depths of Stage 4 cancer – the pandemic still sucks. I had a raft of plans for the next five years: a long lease in Bali to provide Zach the home base he wanted while at uni and me the chance to travel the world by home exchanging (and sit out the recession we were overdue). The bulk of my income for the last five years or so has come from writing about travel and bars, both sectors on the sharp end of coronavirus, as indeed is publishing in general.

Put crudely, my entire life for over a decade has centred on the ability to skip between countries and continents with no obstacles more significant than the odd hellish bus journey or visa hassle. Covid has kicked all that hard up the arse. And here in the UK, as the idiot at the wheel of the clown car demonstrates our English exceptionalism by releasing lockdown and hollering to the public to spend, spend, spend, it’s hard to see a way back, or indeed forward.

By Chinese New Year, when Xi Jinping locked down Wuhan and slammed the brakes on the economy, it was obvious that something very nasty was on its way.

Thanks to friends in China, Covid appeared on our horizons in early January. By Chinese New Year, when Xi Jinping locked down Wuhan and slammed the brakes on the economy, it was obvious that something very nasty was on its way; by early February it was clear that we were looking at a full-blown pandemic. As I travelled, that month, from Zermatt to Zurich and Zurich to Innsbruck and Innsbruck to Salzburg and Salzburg to Vienna and Vienna to Dubrovnik, I scrolled the news obsessively, and, as borders started to close, my world narrowed until I broke my rule against short-haul flying and bailed for Blighty.

But I don’t think I’d envisaged what would come next. I think I imagined something brutal but short: carnage like Wuhan, followed by a fairly rapid return to business as usual. In the UK, we escaped the collapse of healthcare systems seen both in Wuhan and in parts of Italy by callously and (I assume) deliberately sacrificing care home residents, allowing them to choke to death one after another with no prospect of a hospital admission and no guarantee of drugs to ease their passing.

I didn’t envisage the economic insanity: currently, around 10 million workers are furloughed at the government’s expense, awaiting the moment when the economy magically restarts, or October, when the furlough ends and their jobs evanesce, just in time for the winter second wave.

And I still can’t see what comes next. Is this the start of societal collapse? Will the banking system hold up? Or will a vaccine magically appear and life, at least for those who have kept their lives and their health and their jobs and their homes, go back to normal? How will the pandemic and climate change interact?

It’s a strange, helpless feeling, not to know where we are or where we’re going. The knowledge that we’re led by an idiot narcissist who literally shook hands with people in a hospital full of coronavirus cases only makes that loss of agency sting harder.

Unless and until there’s an effective vaccine and reliable cure, the nomadic way of living – crisscrossing borders with merry abandon – is over.

In Indonesia, the picture is no rosier. It’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on as testing levels are low and numbers are being massaged at the micro and the macro level. Even with limited testing, however, numbers continue to rise and some experts think they may not peak until November. And, although Bali has set a goal of opening to tourists on the auspicious date of 11 September, word is that the Covid referral hospitals are already full.

The desire to reopen is understandable. Tourism is the main driver of Bali’s economy and most guides, hotel staff and the like haven’t worked since March and are reliant on charity or family farms for food; lawyers, web developers, estate agents and their ilk are finding invoices unpaid and the work tap running dry. But it’s hard to see which countries are going to accept inbound flights from Indonesia, let alone add the nation to the safe list that lets travellers get insurance.

One of the few elements that is clear is that the pandemic will reshape the way we travel. Unless and until there’s an effective vaccine and reliable cure, the nomadic way of living – crisscrossing borders with merry abandon – is over. (It’s likely that many borders will remain tight even if this current pandemic is resolved.) Expatriate lives, always predicated on the idea that, if trouble or illness strikes, you can head home, look markedly less appealing now that working overseas might mean missing a parent’s funeral. Flights are going to be more expensive, more complicated, more risky and less pleasant than ever before.

And, from my perspective, the more lockdown opens up, the more obvious it becomes that I’m in limbo. I remember thinking, back in March, that I’d cycle the EV6, from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, once the pandemic was over. But I have no idea how long that will be: one year? Two years? Three or more? Are we basically in August 1914, believing it will all be over by Christmas? Will the economic collapse start to resolve in two years? Ten? Never? I don’t have a straight answer when I’m asked when I’m going back to Bali; I don’t have a straight answer when I’m asked how long I’ll be here.

The economy is shedding jobs like dandruff even with the government paying the wages of over a quarter of the workforce.

It’s the uncertainty that makes this new phase of the pandemic so challenging. During the hard lockdown, which for less vulnerable people in the UK meant leaving the house only for essential shopping, essential work and one round of exercise a day, the only thing to worry about was maintaining a routine and hanging onto sanity.

It felt like a challenge, to make this quality time count, to demonstrate one’s Blitz spirit, to keep calm and carry on. I didn’t bake any bread, but Zach baked cakes; I invested in a tapestry kit (currently approximately 80% completed); I started plotting out a novel (tbc); we created routines and, generally, made the most of an exceptional situation. It felt, in an odd way, like a bonus, to have time with a young man who’d otherwise be off doing his own thing.

Facing down the new normal, however, it becomes more obvious what we’ve lost. Lockdown was a few weeks. This could last many months, or even years.

My personal economic anxiety is intense – my income’s fallen off a cliff and the Bali lease I’d considered an asset now feels more like a liability, as two families now rely on it for income. Commercial writing is one of the first things businesses cut in any economic downturn and this unprecedented downturn is accelerating a range of longer-term trends, from telemedicine to the death of newspapers.

More generally, it feels as though we’re looking down the barrel of another Great Depression, with Britain particularly in the firing line. The economy is shedding jobs like dandruff even with the government paying the wages of over a quarter of the workforce; our idiot leaders are ploughing full steam ahead towards a no-deal Brexit at the end of the year, quite possibly during a second wave of Covid; the stock market is acting like it’s on crack; and the world’s largest economy is in the hands of a man who finds identifying a picture of an elephant a meaningful intellectual challenge.

I’m anxious about the second Covid wave hitting here in winter: during Spanish flu, it was the second wave that was most lethal. I’m anxious about being stuck here for winter, but I’m also anxious about being stranded thousands of miles away from my son (and my parents) during a once-in-a-century plague. I’m anxious about Zach’s future. And, perhaps most immediately, I really don’t like the new normal.

The new normal combines uncertainty over events you’d prefer to be set in stone with the need to prebook and militarily organize activities you’d rather do on impulse.

Now, I don’t want to come on like one of those fine American fillies throwing tantrums in the dentists or the grocery aisle, but I do find wearing a mask puts a damper on proceedings. Obviously, it’s the only socially conscious thing to do and a public health necessity. But one’s own recycled breath is never the sweetest; it’s depressing donning a reminder of the plague whenever you leave the house; and a mask is not particularly comfortable on a hot day.

Further, I’ve never been a fan of queuing and queuing for the supermarket is just plain depressing. There seems little point in shopping for clothes when you can’t try them on. I could really do with seeing a dentist but teeth cleaning and fillings are not on offer due to a lack of PPE. Gyms and yoga studios, replete as they are with people breathing heavily in a confined space, seem like a recipe for infection and, while I’m pleased that bars and restaurants are opening up, I need to watch both my pennies and the plague.

While I appreciate my privilege, compared to people with chronic health conditions, folk going hungry, folk without a job, folk who have lost loved ones, I deeply miss the ability to live in a freeform, fluid way. The new normal combines uncertainty over events you’d prefer to be set in stone (will my parents’ golden wedding in Italy be a go? Will Zach start university as planned?) with the need to prebook and militarily organize activities you’d rather do on impulse.

I’ve lived with this toxic combination of uncertainty about the future and restrictions on the present since February and I only wish I had a crystal ball to confirm when it will end. With Hong Kong going through a third wave, American hospitals beginning to overflow, parts of Catalonia in lockdown and global infection numbers continuing to accelerate, it feels that we are closer to the beginning than the end.

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay