Pandemic diary - week 32

Monday, 19 October 2020

Do I fear I catch the virus? Not much. But I fear complications, i.e. aftermaths in my lungs, heart or brain. I fear if I catch it, I inadvertently infect someone else or somebody else in the chain dies. I fear my parents get infected. I fear the overstrained health service does not help my relatives with their ordinary health problems. I fear doctors will have to decide who to rescue to who to let die. I fear the sight of coffins on the national stadium. It’s hard to have a restful sleep these days.

Slovakia plans to test its entire population over the coming 2 weekends, in attempt to crack down on the virus. Experts claim it is a shrewd move. I keep fingers crossed for Poland’s southern neighbours.

 

Tuesday, 20 October 2020

The number of deaths in CEE per 1 million citizens reported in October 2020 exceeds the one in countries of Western Europe. Does it disprove the assertion our genes give us better protection?

I ponder upon helplessness in struggle against the virus. A year ago the problems we are facing today seems unimaginable.

 

Wednesday, 21 October 2020

The daily number of new detected infections in Poland exceeds 10,000 for the first time.

Have you noticed every time prime minister Morawiecki speaks of the pandemic, he begins by indicating about countries which fare worse than Poland in their fights again coronavirus? But he will fool fewer and fewer Poles.

 

Thursday, 22 October 2020

Czech Republic and Belgium are the most hit by the virus. In recent days the number of daily new detected infections in both countries exceeded 1 per 1,000 citizens. In other words, 1 in 800 residents was confirmed positive in one day. Multiply it by 5 days and divide by confirmation rate of 25% and you arrive at chances of meeting an infected person of 1 to 40 (or 2.5% in each encounter).

We are following the path of the Czech Republic, but are two weeks behind them. The country goes into a fortnight-long full-blown lockdown today. I believe this is inevitable in Poland and commences around the end of first decade of November.

 

Friday, 23 October 2020

My self-isolation lasting 10-days is over. Neither my girlfriend nor I have not had any symptoms. In the evening I pop over to my parents, but all the time wear a face mask and gloves and keep distance. I will not approach them for a month since today.

New restrictions come into force tomorrow, including a “soft prohibition” to elderly (70+) people from leaving home. My parents refuse to follow it and say they will go out, taking the proper precautions. I support them in their decision. Locking people up at homes has detrimental impact on their mental and physical health.

 

Saturday, 24 October 2020

Today I was supposed to have a first meeting with a family (2 hours spent in their dwelling, which is a much bigger peril than doing shopping or riding a bus) being a potential beneficiary of Szlachetna Paczka. The meeting has been called off 2 hours before, but this is just a deferral.

Today is the first day restaurants are closed, yet dance schools are open. Leakages from the government reveal a full lockdown, even deeper than the one from March or April is on the table. I still believe it will be in effect in the second and third decade of November.

Pandemic diary – week 31

Monday, 12 October 2020

I believe numbers best describe where we are and this has been the massive surge in new infections that prompted to me restart my diary. The same trend has been visible across Europe, however in order to get the full picture, one must not compare absolute numbers, but the number of new cases daily per 1,000,000 citizens. In the most dire circumstance, i.e. in Czech Republic on 10 October 2020, 0.08% of the entire country’s population was tested positive on just one day.

Looking outside and on the traffic density map, I see traffic volume is somewhat lower than around a week ago. With the rising number of infections probably more employers switch back to home office.

 

Tuesday, 13 October 2020

Number of new cases relative to population is a measure which has to be combined with a number of tests per 1,000,000 citizens. In Poland the cumulative number of tests since the inception of the pandemic is the fourth lowest in the EU, with Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria lagging behind my homeland.

My thoughts go out to Czech Republic and Slovakia, half a year ago both praised for exemplary crackdown on the coronavirus. They have fallen victim to complacency and loosening of sanitary regime. Misfortunes strike out of the blue.

 

Wednesday, 14 October 2020

It might seem strange, but my workmates being relationship managers still meet clients (clients insist on face to face meetings), but more and more meetings are cancelled due to incidents of COVID-19 at clients’ premises.

One of side effects of obligation to wear face masks outdoors is decline in physical activity. My father who would walk to Auchan every 2 days to do the daily shopping said he would not lug shopping bags when breathing is impeded and began to drive.

Today the number of daily COVID-related death exceeded 100.

 

Thursday, 15 October 2020

Number of people on quarantine reached 296,000 today. Most of those people have had an interaction with somebody infected with COVID-19, but instead of testing them, Polish authorities tell them to stay at home for 10 days. Many of those people cannot work at that time, which increases additional losses to the economy. It seems we can afford thousand of idle people, but cannot afford widespread testing.

Experts threaten that in a few weeks number of daily cases (detected and not) might reach 200,000. With a population of 38 million, within 190 days every citizen would be infected. And apart from a humanitarian tragedy, what then? Would the epidemic burn out?

 

Friday, 16 October 2020

Went to the swimming pool this morning. It is the last day before gyms and swimming pools are shut down. Droves of people there, probably trying to lap up swimming before it is forbidden.

Just like in late March, those days we have to live with uncertainty. Making any plans for a week or two ahead makes no sense.

 

Saturday, 17 October 2020

Since yesterday I partly self-isolate myself, i.e. meet nobody else, but my girlfriend who, on Wednesday talked to a workmate whose flatmate had been tested positive. As it turned out, Sanepid is not interested in tracing such person’s contacts.

The first day when swimming pools are closed until further notice, since in chlorine water the virus has ample chances to spread, while dancing schools remain open. The government strategy of selective lockdown lacks rhyme and reason and contradicts any common sense. With swimming pools closed and limited possibilities to do sport outdoors (it is confined to place where one does not have to cover face, i.e. forests, parks and other green areas) looking after my physical health is getting more difficult.

Tinder – why I have deleted it

While I last updated on how I was doing with a dating application, I was about to meet up with Girl 10, Natalia. That affection lasted merely 10 days, yet was the most intensive of all lived through this year. The chemistry was in the air from our first date which lasted 3 hours, up until the fifth one. She was 7 months younger than me, held an executive position in one of worldwide corporation, besides was damn smart, inquisitive, businesslike and beautiful (176 centimetres tall, slim, long, blond hair). Going out with her boosted my ego (though I had not planned it), as such woman raises the bar high and very few males could live up to her expectations. I did not feel inferior on account of having a senior rank-and-file position and earning half of what she earned and not driving an Audi A6 being her company. Her approach to relationships, especially her actually unfinished relationship with her ex-boyfriend have prompted me to give up on it. I felt relief after telling we there was no point in meeting any more. Emotionally, I have come out of that affection burnt and bruised. I dug up dirt of my previous relationship or other events I had considered to be closed chapter. Yet, those 10 days gave me a very precious lesson of how I should not feel like while by somebody’s side.

As I was picking up the pieces, left with little hope of finding somebody to be a match to me, I chatted up Girl 11, also Natalia. She was kind of reserved and therefore we met after 9 days of texting at a café. We talked for 4 hours, then I saw her off to the underground. After that meeting we both thought it could developed into nothing more than a friendship. For some reason we gave it a chance and met two days later at her home, talked for 3 hours more, then hugged and in the middle of a night I drove back home. Then a few days later we spent the entire evening on a Vistula-side beach. We have just let things drift and it has shaped up.

We both realise we differ in terms of education, job, earnings, yet we focus on what brings us together, staying aware of our imperfections.

I appreciate she is straightforward, sincere, trustworthy, has outstanding emotional intelligence and has all makings of a good friend.

After 3 months (we first met on 9 July 2020) I still feel some sort of uncertainty (which is natural, yet vividly communicated by her). Also since we spend a lot of time together, also in each other’s home, it seems this relationship is has lasted longer than actually. Quite early, the time of butterflies in the stomach and honeymoon seems to be drawing to a close (hopefully the affection is not burning out). With prospects of an imminent second lockdown (the recent surge in new infections (5,300 yesterday vs. around 2,400 a week ago) we are considering living together under one roof.

Given the pandemic has sadly spiralled out of control, not only in Poland, but across Europe, I have resolved to resume my pandemic diary, which I wrote between mid-March 2020 and mid-May 2020. The days ahead ought to be saved for posterity. Maybe I am a born pessimist, but I fear the worst. The governors will be forced to choose between economic well-being and mental health of all people at the expense of healthcare brought to its knees or saving lives of elderly people.

Bad days coming?

In May I predicted the second wave of COVID-19 would bring more fatalities than the first one. If we look at the number of daily new infections in several European countries, not all exhibit the typical second wave pattern (a considerable decline in new cases in between would need to be witnessed), but everywhere one can observe a surge in newly detected ones.

The figures for the recent weeks in Poland are disturbing. The number of new cases which exceeded 1,000 first on 19 September hit 2,292 on 1 October and 2,367 on 2 October. A more alarming figure is the number of hospital beds occupied and number of patients under respirators; the latter rose by more than 100% within the last 10 days.

The recent spike has little or nothing to do with the weather (locked down Israel still enjoys +30C temperatures), but with people returning to normalcy, including children going to school, mixing up and socialising as if COVID-19 did not exist and general fatigue with the sanitary regime that has kept us company over the recent months. This falls is line with my predictions dated May 2020.

Reality in early October 2020 is definitely different than in mid-March 2020. On our side are:
- good supply and availability of face masks and sanitisers as well as protective equipment in hospitals,
- better knowledge of the medical nature of the virus and how it has mutated towards less deadly form, implying lower mortality,
- worked out combinations of medicines used in therapy.

What does not bode well for the future:
- much fewer people are afraid of the virus – in March 2020 the threat of infection was a novelty, everybody feared a scenario from northern Italy or from New York where overstrained hospitals workers had to choose who to rescue,
- general return to normal life – meaning most people who worked remotely at the beginning of the pandemic are back in offices, children have returned to schools, socialising is in overdrive,
- growing disobedience of basic protective rules, especially not wearing face masks properly indoors, not to mention the bunch of morons who deny the virus and espouse the pandemic is a conspiracy plotted to take control over humans and enslave them.

It needs to be underlined PiS government has buggered it up in terms of preparing hospitals for the second wave. In some regions hospitals are already running out of beds for patients, while the worst is still much ahead. They have had 6 months to make up for deficiency other than structural shortage of workforce, but they have screwed it up all along! In terms of testing we are far behind countries which target 100,000 tests a day (France, Great Britain, Italy). If we were to catch up with them, given our smaller population, we should do 70,000 tests a day.

The second harsh lockdown is not imaginable, not just because of disobedience and reluctance to social discipline rules, but also because our faltering economy and public finances lacking reserves cannot afford it. In all countries where anti-virus measures are tightened, they are targeted to minimise contacts between humans without harming businesses. Nevertheless, rules of rigour set not only in Poland are absurd. Closing eateries at 10:00 p.m. implies a virus tends to spread overnight. An imminent (Warsaw might become a red zone next Saturday) obligation to wear a face mask during a lonely walk through countryside fields, while one is permitted to attend a wedding reception with 50 other people is an outright idiocy.

Besides, restrictions, if are to be effective, ought to be enforceable. Just like in the UK, you might forbid people mixing up indoors, but how will you check people abide by rules in their dwellings? Will you rely on neighbours kindly informing too many folks have gathered next door? The strategy of recommending social distancing rests on trust in people’s wisdom, which was effective in the early days of pandemic, when discipline was fed by fear of the unknown. Today I doubt it is effective any longer.

With this all in mind, my biggest fear now is my volunteer activity in Szlachetna Paczka, for several reasons:
- my co-volunteers seem to shrug off the virus and the fact if half of us get infected from one another (we meet in person once a fortnight, frequency of meeting to increase with time) and need to go on quarantine for a fortnight, the work in the district is paralysed (I believe we might meet, but need to wear face masks as a must all the time),
- we have to strictly obey the sanitary regime when we meet families in their dwellings and require the same from families visited,
- observing the chaos and disorganisation inside Szlachetna Paczka on countrywide and local level, I fear their plan B and plan C for the pandemic is just a non-existent strategy (it is kept confidential for some reason).

Truth be told, optimism does not keep me company these days (I am sick of working from home, yet I realise returning to the office is not an option), despite doing well in personal life.

Weather note: as a write it early in the morning, temperature is +19C and gusty southern wind is blowing. Yet temperature record for October in Warsaw (+25.9C on 5 October 1966) is unlikely to be broken.