Warming, warning!

Gone is the second decade of the twenty-first century. Time for summaries for weather / climate freaks. Climatologists use a 30-year window as a reference period, therefore with the advent of 2021, the 1981-2010 benchmark period gives way to 1991-2020 window. I hence take the opportunity to run some comparisons of average temperatures in Warsaw measured across decades.

I rely on official, publicly available weather data for Warsaw for years 1951-2020 and for earlier period, on a spreadsheet which I downloaded back in 2010 from a NASA website, but could not restore the link. The database I had come by then traces back to 1881, however lacks measurements from years between 1938 and 1950, hence the analysis is a bit patchy.

The first chart shows how average temperatures in specific months rose in last three 30-year reference periods. The trend of rising temperatures is clearly visible, with the average temperature going up by around 1 Celsius degree, comparing 1991-2020 to 1971-2020 average.

The second chart illustrates average yearly temperatures in 30-year periods. One clearly sees the 1961-1990 period was not warmer than 1881-1910, but the heating-up process actually began in 1990s and accelerated in the current century.

The third graph shows even more vividly the growth of average yearly temperatures decade by decade. I firstly took 30 years for temperatures to grow by 1 Celsius degree, but then the pace accelerated to alarming 10 years per 1 Celsius degree.

On the fourth graph you can clearly see the mean monthly temperatures have not risen markedly between the 1881-1910 and 1951-1980 reference periods, which means temperature growth was observable, yet its pace was not upsetting.

But the fifth graph compares two reference periods which are only 40 years apart (vs. 70 years apart on the fourth graph) and here the difference is clearly visible and reaches 2 Celsius degrees in some winter and summer months.

The last, sixth graph shows the change of mean monthly temperatures in Warsaw in 30-year periods which are a century apart. Oddly enough, the difference is in some months lesser than on the fifth graph (1960s and 1970s are said to be a temporarily colder period on Poland with frosty winters and inclement summers), but I draw your attention to how the gap is spread. Average temperatures rose markedly (nearly 2 Celsius degrees) in winter and summer months, while in late spring and early autumn months, the scale of warming is visibly smaller (less than 1 Celsius degree). I wonder what the factors behind such tendencies are.

In this note, I have attempted to provide you with some raw data, with scant purely statistical commentary. Conclusions should you draw yourselves!

Pandemic diary – weeks 44 & 45

Monday, 11 January 2021
Scarce number of vaccinations over the weekend (on average 2,000 doses per day) and reopening schools for the youngest pupils stir up the atmosphere. With such approach tackling the third wave will be more difficult. Majority of health service workers will not be immune by the time the virus spreads more rapidly.

Tuesday, 12 January 2021
Controversies regarding ways to register for a vaccination arise. From the coming Friday any person aged 80 or older will be able to sign up for a vaccination, either in a health centre, or through a helpline or via online patient account.
The problem is that health centres do not let people in, unless they have an appointment, while phone lines are congested.
The government’s helpline is likely to be congested (too many people trying to get through, too few consultants).
The only system which stands a chance of not crashing (or at least of being recovered at the dead of night) is the online patient account, which I do not find a piece of cake, let alone an elderly, scared person.

Wednesday, 13 January 2021
One positive tendency is the declining percentage of positive results. I wonder how come Poland is escaping the third wave. Even the Christmas gatherings and New Year celebrations seem to have not had a meaningful impact on new infections.

Thursday, 14 January 2021
The COVID-19 death meter hits 2,000,000. Those have been just officially registered deaths.

Friday, 15 January 2021
Registration for vaccinations for 80+ people commences. The system crashes for a while. Within first 36 hours 280,000 people (80+) register, over 1 million of young ones, including me, sign up as interested.

Saturday, 16 January 2021
Pfizer reports deliveries of vaccines to Europe will be diminished for a while, in order to boost capacity of its Belgian plant. This will impact the schedule of vaccination in Poland in 1Q2021.

Sunday, 17 January 2021
Today first people vaccinated in Poland three weeks ago receive the second dose. In a week they will be considered immune.
For the public it passes unnoticed, but a case of reinfection (6 November 2020 first positive test, 17 January 2021 second positive test, 4 January 2021 first dose of vaccine administered) is reported. This makes sad news.

Monday, 18 January 2021
Today the youngest children go back to school. Not a full-blown school opening as in early September, yet this will contribute to an increase in new infections in February.

Tuesday, 19 January 2021
For the first time since more than three months, the daily percentage of positive test results declines below 10% (to 9.98%). One swallow does not make a summer, but since many days the percentage is below 20%, a major progress since times when it ran at 40%.

Wednesday, 20 January 2021
The recent cold blast has contributed to considerable air pollution coming mostly from intense dwelling heating. Scientists claim smog can contribute to their death toll from COVID-19.

Thursday, 21 January 2021
The UK variant is officially detected in Poland. This neither impresses nor disturbs me. It has been here for several weeks, but due to restrictions has not spread significantly.

Friday, 22 January 2021,
Foresight bears fruits. With use of profil zaufany, I register my parents for a vaccination. On 10 March 2021 I have to drive them to Grójec (not a free slot in Warsaw and around by the end of March) for the first dose. A compulsory two-week self-quarantine also in the offing.

Saturday, 23 January 2021
Exactly a year ago the Chinese city of Wuhan was put on a stringent lockdown. Today the hotbed of the virus functions quite normally, while nearly the rest of the world struggles the pandemic.

Break-up & make-up

I have promised to write a longer post the break-up between my girlfriend and I. In the meantime the topic has been rendered outdated. We have decided to give ourselves a second try.

The decision wasn’t mine and I was not the one to reach out for the attempt to make up. At times I wonder whether such decisions as a matter of principle ought to be reversed, but I also keep in mind a Polish saying which says only a donkey doesn’t change their mind.

Crises hammer nails to coffins of weak relationships and solidify strong relationships. For the time being the relationship has proven strong.

We can draw on the first four good months, over which we have not quarrelled even once, we had mutual respect and seemed to be a perfect match. What went wrong then? To cut a long story short, this is not the right time for the diagnosis, as many questions are still being slowly answered.

As in case of each relationship crisis, two parties are always to blame (and I’m not about to quote a joke which says those are wife and mother-in-law). I need to work on myself and comprehend which of my traits had to be eradicated if I am to live under one roof with any woman and which are neutral and if are picked on, it is her fault, not mine.

I cannot pledge I feel a relief. There is fear of what future holds and uncertainty whether the relationship survives. Finally, I hold dear the universal tenet that upsides of a virus might prevail of downsides.

The pandemic and consequent isolation also change the perspective. Before the break-up was reversed, I had to carry on in absolute isolation, could not do what people used to do to get over in such situation. All forms of socialising were considered irresponsible. I believe, brushing aside the time necessary to get over, I would not reinstall Tinder for several weeks, because of the pandemic (when I was using it, the daily number of new inflection was never higher than 800).

I hereby for the record thank my friends: Kasia, Agnieszka, Marcin and Bartek who have spent hours on the phone keeping my company in that difficult time. Although they will not read it, they realise how grateful I am to them.

Pandemic diary – weeks 42 & 43

Monday, 28 December 2020
First representatives of medical staff were vaccinated in Poland yesterday. This marks a milestone in a fight against the pandemic, a symbolic one, but we are far from a breakthrough.

Tuesday, 29 December 2020
Now a little bit of pure maths, after 14,000 first doses of vaccine have been administered in Poland. If 100,000 jabs are given each day, it means 50,000 get immunity each day. Assuming optimistically that first people get immune to the virus 28 days after the first dose, or at the end of January 2021 and the process goes smoothly, 16.5 million Poles will have been vaccinated by the end of 2021. This too little for herd immunity to work.

Wednesday, 30 December 2020
The problem of children stranded at homes (they are unlawfully banned from moving about between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on weekdays), devoid of contact with peers, sick and tired of online learning, is getting more and more attention. Physical and mental health of youngsters has been wrecked by the quarantine.

Thursday, 31 December 2020
I thoroughly recommend watching this film to anyone interested in Polish politics. In its simplicity is masterfully depicts how badly my country has been run before and in the pandemic.

Friday, 1 January 2021
The illegal curfew was a calm period. The night was more silent than any usual night. Nevertheless, those who wanted to party stayed the night where they celebrated the beginning of 2021.

Saturday, 2 January 2021
Just for the record, yesterday my girlfriend and I broke up (actually she has taken that decision) – break-up during the pandemic means you act responsibly, you cannot take comfort in your friends, family, go and meet people, socialise and do other things which in normal times help people overcome their sorrow. More on it in a separate post, once I cool off.

Sunday, 3 January 2021
The first scandal of the new year is that some celebrities have been given a first dose of the vaccine, despite not being eligible for it (they had been told they would promote the vaccinations). My take on it is simple: vaccines must not go to waste. The other story is a lack of transparency in selecting candidates to be given the doses which cannot go to waste.

Monday, 4 January 2021
A short note on statistics – the reason why the number of total cases is underestimated is that once one member of a household is tested positive, all other, usually infected symptomatically, are quarantined. Ordered to stay at homes 7 days longer than the infected, they do not spread the virus, but are not included in the statistics.

Tuesday, 5 January 2021
The UK goes into full lockdown and on its first day registers nearly 61,000 new infections, which means 1 in 1,100 citizens is tested positive on this day. This is not a record-breaking figure yet. On 31 December 2020 in Czech Republic 1 in 628 citizens was tested positive.

Wednesday, 6 January 2021
The Czech Republic beats the aforementioned record and reports 1 in 620 citizens to be tested positive yesterday. This is an equivalent of 61,000 daily new infections in Poland, a figure never reported, yet conceivable to have occurred in early November 2020.

Thursday, 7 January 2021
As the minister of health says, social mobility during Christmas and New Year’s Eve / Day was as high as in summer of 2020. This should be reflected in the figures…

Friday, 8 January 2021,
The statistics in Poland do not indicate as a nation we have failed the exam in responsibility in terms of celebrating Yuletide. Two weeks have elapsed since social gatherings took place and the number of new infections is not markedly higher, as I feared it would be.

Saturday, 9 January 2021
The number of tests (carried out since the onset of the pandemic) per 1,000,000 citizens in Poland hit 200,000. My homeland ranks 26th out of 27 EU countries (Bulgaria keeps holding the last position and takes no effort to step up testing).
In comparison to other EU countries (with population exceeding 1,000,000):
- Denmark has tested every citizens nearly twice,
- the United Kingdom has tested once 86.5% of its population,
- Lithuania has tested 64% of its population,
- Spain has tested 59% of its population,
- Germany has tested 42% of its population,
- Czech Republic has tested 37% of its population,
- Hungary (with overtook Poland on 25 November 2020) has tested 29% of its population.
The gap in testing between Poland and other EU countries keep growing, despite larger number of tests in recent days.

2020 finally is over

Customarily, turn of the year is a time for summaries, a time to have a look at the quirkiest year in the lifetime of probably all readers.

The hottest topic in 2020, which dominated news headlines and turned lives of all of us upside down was the COVID-19 pandemic. As it was approaching the gates of Poland (officially, since I believe the first cases were active before 4 March 2020), I named it a classic example of a black swan. At first, we feared the unknown. That resulted in strict social discipline, which, with time and growing fatigue with restrictions, soon waned. We have learnt to live with the awareness of the virus and have developed the ability to shrug it off. The loosened approach to the allegedly retreating virus was, predictably, one of major causes why the second wave was in Poland quite deadly, but has taught us little anyway. To save those bleak days for posterity, I have kept records of the pandemic in a form of a diary (currently published in bi-weekly intervals) and will continue until the vaccines hopefully help take the strain off the health service and bring us back to normalcy.

In the personal life, this was the year I got familiar with Tinder. After 10 failed attempts I found a girlfriend, yet the relationship ended on New Year’s Day. A water to the mill to those who claim on Tinder you can mostly find people who have problems with personality. This is a topic for a separate insightful post, due in two weeks. I believe the break-up and all events in the run-up to it deserve to be put into perspective. Too early to write about it when emotions are running high.

Despite the pandemic, I had decided to get involved in charity. My zeal was quickly dampened and participation as a volunteer ended up with frustration and a grudge. Nevertheless, I still do not rule out I sign up for it this year, but only if the pandemic eases.

Home office, which by 11 March 2020 was an occasional privilege, has become the order (or rather ordeal) of the day (not a single day spent in the office since then). I have no problems with efficiency, focusing on work, ergonomics (I have invested in a top-of-the range chair) nor with separating private and work time. But I do miss direct contact with people and I am sick of staying all the time at home (there was a time when I slept at my girlfriend’s place and came home to work only which gave some relief) which no longer is an asylum and a place of rest. My employer has already told me after the pandemic is gone, I will work 2 days in office, 3 days at home. This looks like the first and foremost reason to look for a new job, which would give flexibility, instead of forcing me to stay at home to bring savings to my employer.

In 2020 I wrote little about politics, especially I have not mentioned my participation in the anti-government march in Warsaw on 30 October 2020, which was attended by approximately 100,000 participants, but just like open-air protests with face masks, has not contributed to increase in COVID-19 spread rate.

My outlook for 2021? The first milestone, whose date remains unknown would be the day four weeks after my parents are vaccinated. The fear of their mental and physical health will be then gone and I will not have to choose between meeting people and visiting them which was the case over the entire 4Q2020 (I had to fork out some cash for a PCR test before Christmas). As the pandemic eases and after I get over the post break-up trauma, I will need to resume the lookout a life companion, which in practice means the Tinder experience will start over.

And I hope by the end of 2021 I also get vaccinated. I will do that:
- out of care and responsibility of those whose life or health is at particular peril,
- to help those who cannot run their businesses, lost their job, income or wealth because of the pandemic,
- to accelerate the recovery of people whose mental or physical health has worsened on account of the virus.