Pandemic diary – October 2021 notes

Saturday, 2 October 2021
7-day average of new infections exceeds 1,000 in Poland (in 2020 it hit the mark on 25 September, 7 days earlier), but is 37% lower than on 2 October in 2020. I sadly predict the 2,000 hurdle will be crossed on 13 October. I will resume the pandemic diary published in bi-weekly intervals once it reaches 3,800 (i.e. 1 infection per 10,000 citizen detected daily).

Tuesday, 5 October 2021
According to my estimations (no exact figures available) 80% of Warsaw’s 80+ population have received at least one dose of any vaccine against COVID-19. The calculations do not take into account inhabitants of the city registered (zameldowani) is their home towns. Nevertheless, new infections keep rising in Warsaw, albeit not as fast as in a poorly vaccinated Lubelszczyzna province.

Sunday, 10 October 2021
The Polish government seems to aim at possibly many people getting immunity naturally, or encouraging people to get vaccinated by letting them see other unvaccinated people seriously ill or dying.
In 2020 on masks became mandatory outdoors. Let’s cherish the lack of that senseless obligation, at least for the time being.

Thursday, 14 October 2021
I get it wrong, by just one day. 7-day average of new infections exceeds 2,000 (in 2020 it hit the mark on 6 October, 8 days earlier), but is 59% lower than on 14 October 2020. I predict the 3,000 hurdle will be crossed on 22 October.

Saturday, 16 October 2021
The Baltic countries reported around 1 case per 1,000 citizens in recent days. The pandemic seems to be in overdrive there. With appropriate testing (a daydream) Poland can conceivably reach the same level.

Wednesday, 20 October 2021
New infections in Poland up by 111% week-on-week. I get in wrong again, this time the 7-day average of new infections exceeds 3,000 (in 2020 it hit the mark on 10 October, 10 days earlier), but is 61% lower than on 20 October 2020. I make no more predictions, but believe the 7-day average crosses 5,000 before the end of October. The wave is bearing down on Warsaw.

Thursday, 21 October 2021
Latvia is the first European country to go into lockdown this autumn. Schools, HoReCa and entertainment sector will be closed for everyone until 15 November. Then they will be reopened, but only to Green Pass holders.

Friday, 22 October 2021
7-day average of new infections gets above 3,800, i.e. above 1 detected infection per 10,000 citizens daily. Time to resume to timeline and brace for the bad times.

Saturday, 23 October 2021
The Polish government was very intent on imposing restrictions during the previous waves. These days it takes a wait-and-see approach and only steps up enforcing the indoor masking mandate. Even in districts where 1 in 1,000 citizens is tested positive daily no measures are taken. A disaster looms ahead.

Sunday, 24 October 2021
Romania and Bulgaria, the least vaccinated countries in the EU, resort to use of Green Passes as obligatory to enter public facilities. According to their governments, the moves are necessitated by spikes in new infections in both countries. Long queues are witnessed outside vaccination centres.

Monday, 25 October 2021
Romania, Ukraine, Baltic Countries – in all those poorly vaccinated post Soviet countries the current wave is higher and deadlier than previous ones. Poland is in for the same fate.

Tuesday, 26 October 2021
The 7-day average of new infections exceeds 5,000 (in 2020 it hit the mark on 15 October, 11 days earlier), but is 54% lower than on 26 October 2020. I predict the 10,000 hurdle will be crossed on 4 November (due to limited tested around All Saints’ Day).

Wednesday, 27 October 2021
In some districts in eastern Poland more than 12 new infections per 10,000 residents are reported, which means around 1 in 800 person is tested positively daily. No new restrictions are there in place, locals have not got convinced to get vaxxed. How long before the wave burns out.

Thursday, 28 October 2021
A good day. My parents receive a booster. They will be safer during the awful weeks ahead.

Friday, 29 October 2021
On 19 March 2021 I predicted the total number of infections in Poland would hit 3,000,000 on 8 May 2021. Fortunately, I was wrong, by some 170,800 cases, or by 174 days. Hereby I predict the number of new registered infections hits 4,000,000 on 26 January 2022.

Saturday, 30 October 2021
The worldwide official death toll hits 5,000,000. A round number has little to do with reality, as actual the number of fatalities of COVID-19 hit eight digits months ago.

Sunday, 31 October 2021
And customary month-end report of the sluggish pace of vaccinations in Poland.

1. Vaccine uptake in age groups – I believe the data reported by ECDC are wrong, since booster doses are reported as first doses, hence high first dose uptakes in 80+ and 70-79 age groups. I hope by the end of November it gets sorted out.

2. Vaccination status in the entire population of Poland

The Asperger syndrome – diagnosed

Since early childhood I have felt a kind of different. I have long felt my perception of the world differs from the way the surrounding reality is seen by other people. Years went by, the sense of difference has lingered, yet no longer bothered me. In the adulthood I have been mature enough to foster my distinct personality and learnt not to try hard to fit in where I do not.

With hindsight I believe this blog, which I run mostly for myself and for posterity rather than for a handful of readers, also reflects the syndrome I have.

At the beginning of the relationship with my girlfriend I told her I considered myself a weirdo (dziwadło). It got on her nerves when I called myself a weirdo, yet she noticed in some ways I am unlike other people. She spent hours digging up the Internet and her supposition fell on mild autism or Asperger syndrome. To cut the long story short, I went through a comprehensive (and not inexpensive) diagnosis and have been officially diagnosed with Asperger syndrome.

If you know me well, how would you recognise I am afflicted with this inborn and incurable syndrome (I prefer not to use the word “disorder”)? I am fascinated with everything which can be described with numbers (including the pandemic), memorise them easily, have strong analytical and problem-solving skills, I have specific uncanny interests (recall my winter timelines?), tend to focus on ideas and am guided by principles. Unlike most people with the syndrome, I have no major problems with communication, empathy, recognising emotions or fostering relationships, nevertheless I tend to get stressed when facing new situations or people too intensely.

The team who have diagnosed me told I me I was doing reasonably well and actually did not need therapy to function well in the society. I just have the Asperger syndrome and need to get on with it. They claim I have put in a lot of hard work to develop social skills which come naturally to other people, but for an observer unfamiliar with the syndrome the difference between me and a neurotypical person is hard to grasp.

I should not attempt to change myself, rather embrace myself with all skills and deficiencies which are a part of me. I only somewhat fear my children might inherit the syndrome as forms of autism are generally hereditary.

Frankly speaking, I am still coming to terms with the diagnosis, climbing into a higher level of self-awareness and self-development.

Rome – some snaps from the eternal city

Time to share a part of the photo coverage of the recent foray to Rome.

Starting out with hints for travellers planning to visit the capital of Italy:
1. Buy (cheap = WizzAir) airline tickets for weekdays rather than extend the weekend – we flew there on Sunday and came back on Thursday and the cost was some 50% in comparison to an extended weekend. Another advantage of such slot is the lower number of tourists during the working week.
2. Four days are an ideal duration of your stay in Rome, unless you are a museum freak; this also lets you take hand luggage only and save on baggage charges.
3. Take SitBus shuttle from and to the airport – maybe the fastest, but the cheapest way to get to the centre of Rome (a return ticket for an adult for mere 13 Euro).
4. Unless you are a museum freak, do not buy Roma Pass – cost-wise it makes no sense.
5. Do not even dare to hire a car! Italians drive like lunatics. Plus cost-wise and convenience-wise it also makes no sense.
6. Buy bus tickets and museum entry tickets online and have QR codes in your phone to avoid wasting time queuing up.
7. AirBnB offers a wide range of affordable dwellings in cosy neighbourhoods in which you can feel the climate of Rome.

Before setting off, I weighed up whether to take my nine-year-old Olympus camera, or to just take shots with my smartphone. I compared photo quality from the two devices and eventually picked the camera. However once I get upgraded to a new Samsung S20FE (due to be delivered by a courier by the end of October), the photo quality is likely to be comparable.

First snap, taken from the Palatine hill shows the panorama of a part of Rome and underscores the undulating sites on which the city was built. It does take some fitness to walk uphill and downhill while wandering around the city. As the pic was taken, temperature topped +28C.

The Victor Emmanuel Monument is said to be the blot on the landscape of the capital of Rome as it totally does not fit the surrounding buildings. Note the lack of lanes marked out at Piazza Venezia – here law of the jungle is in force, yet Italian drivers find themselves well in such traffic chaos.

The Roman Forum looks best if you watch it from the distance and slightly from above. The ruins are constantly restored, but one feels the scent of the past at the scene. Note the yawning (or screaming) lad at the right edge!

A typical street in central Rome is narrow, laid with cobblestone, has restaurant gardens over most of the year and… has cars parked on it and brazenly disrupting pedestrian traffic. I have no idea why residents of Rome are so car-ridden. Cars occupy far too much space on the streets, mostly those parked everywhere.

The temple of Pantheon is one of entrance-free tourist attractions, hence a long and winding queue of tourists waiting up to get in. We decided not to queue there, but returned two days later in the evening, when the line turned out to be shorter and the wait lasted mere 20 minutes.

For some fans of classic automobiles, an original Fiat 126 (not confuse for Fiat 126p manufactured in Poland) on old, black number plates, sitting the in the downpour near Borghese gardens.

The Spanish stairs and the entire Piazza de Spagna are less breath-taking than on photos. Also the weather (it just ceased to rain) and the season of the year (in spring the stairs are adorned with flowers) probably have taken some gloss off it.

Di Trevi fountain, though magnificent, is squeezed between other buildings, hence the crampy site also spoils the atmosphere. I advise to pop over here around sunset, when the fountain is lit up. For some an ideal spot to pop the question.

When planning your trip, choose some uncanny places seldom visited by tourist. We ventured to the southern outskirts of Rome to see the remnants of an aqueduct which carried water to Rome two centuries ago.

A Polish accent in the Vatican Museum – the battle of Vienna, painted by Jan Matejko and handed as a gift to a pope in 1860s. The painting commemorates fending off Muslims at the gates of Europe and defending Christianity. Today it brings off ambiguous associations.

St Peter’s square in turn looks smaller than on photographs. To the left – St Peter’s basilique (entrance also for free, queuing lasted around 20 minutes), to the right – a building from which the Pope speaks every Sunday at noon. I had to use to search engine to learn he appears on the second-right window on the top floor.

A typical picture of squalid Rome. Rubbish scattered everywhere spoil the character of the city. One reason for this is the inadequate number of rubbish bins, the other are long-lasting problems with waste collection which plague several Italian cities.

Trastevere, the essential Rome and the most climatic part of the city is a must-see district. Here, a classic view of it – a narrow, cobblestone-laid street, scooters parked, laundry hung out to dry on strings above the street, flowerpots. The place I long to return to!

Unlike in Berlin, Paris or in Warsaw, the river banks are not the a popular hangout nor a nightlife spot. River banks have been laid with concrete, one can see few walkers, runners or cyclists (a bicycle is not a popular vehicle in Rome) there. Maybe the threat of flooding is the answer why the river banks remain undeveloped…

Rome – travelling in COVID times

I hereby reported I have returned from a foreign trip. My two recent holidays were in spent in homeland, either at the seaside or into the mountains. It was my first flight since the onset of the pandemic; I crossed the border of Poland for the first time since June 2019 and spent a few days abroad for the first time since May 2018 (which was a memorable journey).

The pandemic at first was associatied with a stay-at-home order and absolute ban on travels. Nineteen months into it, travelling has been tamed. It involves some limitations, but is utterly doable.

Some more hassle is necessary before you set out. Provided you have been fully vaccinated and can download the Green Pass, the only other formality which needs to be handled is filling in Passenger Locator Forms (PLFs) for everyone crossing borders on board of an aircraft. The one necessary to enter Italy is bothersome, the one filled before returning to Poland, less complex.

At the airport in Warsaw nobody bothered to check neither the Green Pass nor the Italian PLF. Consequently it seems anybody can enter Italy. At the Fiumicino airport in Rome also nobody took the trouble to inspect anything.

While in Rome, Green Passes came in useful five times – to enter Colosseum, Roman Forum, Pantheon, The Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s Basilica. Besides, I have seen no single eatery / restaurant where Green Passes were checked. The other story is that we always dined outdoor and walked in only to use toilets.

In terms of wearing masks indoors, the Italians exhibit exemplary discipline. In the underground less than 1% of passengers had their mouth and nose not properly covered, same in shops. In crowded outdoor places more than 50% wore masks. It seems the trauma of spring 2020 is still alive, although except for face-covering obligations and limits on number of people in various places, no other restrictions are in place in Italy. The locals live it up as before the pandemic, respecting the social distancing and masking rules. For such reason Italy has seen new infections dwindling from late August by over 50%, while in Poland they soared since then.

Back at the airport in Rome our Green Passes were controlled twice (once before going through security, then before boarding) and then, to my surprise the staff at the Warsaw airport checked them again.

The biggest nuisance is having to wear a mask for several hours (airport, flight, transport to and from the airport), besides I see no major drawbacks of travelling during the pandemic. We have no choice, but to learn to live with the virus, trusting in science (get the jab!) and hoping it does not mutate to escape the vaccine-induced immunity.

A photo round-up is due next week.

Pandemic diary - September 2021 notes

Wednesday, 1 September 2021
The school year begins. Nearly everyone hopes things shape up well, but too few people take precautions so that things go well. I fear the delta wave has begun in earnest in Poland.

Tuesday, 7 September 2021
The delta wave reaches it peak in Israel, with more than 10,000 new infections per day confirmed. The country has begun to give out the third dose of Pfizer vaccine to fully vaccinated adults. This helps contain the pandemic (with hindsight – new infections have fallen by more than 50% within 3 weeks since then).

Thursday, 9 September 2021
Looking at pandemic figures in highly-vaccinated countries, one easily notices the pandemic retreats in Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Italy and in several other countries where more than 60% of the population have been vaccinated.

Saturday, 11 September 2021
50% of Poland’s population fully vaccinated (way too little).

Friday, 17 September 2021
Two-third of all residents of Warsaw (including children below 12) fully vaccinated. The capital of Poland ranks third in Poland in terms of full vaccine uptake.

Tuesday, 21 September 2021
The government approval application of the third dose of any mRNA vaccine for health-care staff and everyone aged 50+. Waning protection has become a matter of fact and quite probably smart folks will face a necessity to get jabs twice a year until this mess is brought under control.

Wednesday, 29 September 2021
More than 1,000 new infections on one day reported for the first time since 27 May 2021. In 2020 a four-digit figure was first reported on 19 September.

Thursday, 30 September 2021
And customary month-end report, of the sluggish pace of vaccinations in Poland.

1. Vaccine uptake in age groups

2. Vaccination status in the entire population of Poland