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.