Nearly two years on
It’s been 705 days since the first two people tested positive for COVID-19 in the UK. A day later on January the 30th 2020, the World Health Organization would declare the virus a global health emergency. Just over one month after that the UK would report its first official COVID death, with Boris Johnson telling people on the 16th of March 2020 “Now is the time for everyone to stop essential contact and travel”.
It’s easy to forget those early days of the pandemic. I remember my thoughts gradually shifting from “We will be OK, this isn’t something that will affect England”, to growing concern, to quite frankly perturbation. I remember running to work in early to mid-March 2020, the morning after the Prime Minister and the UK’s Chief Medical Officer had held a coronavirus press conference reporting that the nation had now lost 4 people to the virus, and thinking to myself “Maybe this really is going to be a problem, what’s going to happen next?”. That particular morning was like Christmas Day, the streets were bare. The train station car park I had run past nearly every day for the past 6 and a half years, which was usually packed was practically empty. It was obvious there was widespread panic, people had retreated to their homes, it felt eerie and I really didn’t like it. I arrived to work that morning and before lunchtime, we had all been sent and told to work from home for the foreseeable future.
That day was a bit of a reality check for me, it was increasingly clear that me being sent home from work was just the start of something much bigger.
Fast forward to the 25th of March 2020 and the country would go into an official lockdown with a governmental “stay at home” order. The weeks and months that followed, well we all know the score. Panic buying, hand sanitising, social distancing, quarantining, school closures, essential workers, zoom calls, Eat Out to Help Out, alcohol curfews, mask-wearing, alert levels, tiers, more lockdowns, Test and Trace, lateral flow tests, PCR tests, COVID passes… I could go on.
It’s safe to say the past 2 years have been a whirlwind. COVID has affected virtually every aspect of human life in one way or another, on every continent on earth. It has been the biggest health crisis in living memory and probably the most significant “event” since World War 2. Many, many lives have been sadly lost and it’s been a tragic and devastating time for millions and millions of people, not only from the heartache caused by the loss of loved ones but for the mental anguish lockdowns and the lack of social contact over the past 23 months has caused.
The vaccine rollout
Like many of us, with the announcement on December the 2nd 2020 of the first medically approved COVID vaccine in the UK, I was elated. It was like someone waving a flag that said “Life WILL return to normal”, even if that was albeit slowly and not necessarily globally. Finally, we had a way out of this pandemic and people could attain a level of immunity that would enable them to live alongside the virus, without the fear of catching it and falling severely ill.
This is despite the fact, it would still take several months to get two doses into peoples arms, with sadly many more lives lost in the wave of winter 2020, and a second lockdown with many restrictions being in place (that would eventually be removed in July 2020)… we, the UK, in the summer of 2020 had finally built up a huge wall of immunity and were on the road to recovery.
Life became almost “normal” again, at least for the vaccinated. That was until recently.
Omicron, a blessing in disguise?
Now there have been many new “variants” throughout this pandemic, but none of them alarmed scientists as much as the discovery of the “Omicron” variant, which was first flagged in South Africa. On paper, Omicron looks terrifying, with 50 genetic mutations, 36 targeting the all-important spike protein that enables the virus to attach to human cells and evade natural and vaccine immunity. This coupled with the fact it is much, much more contagious has caused growing widespread concern.
This resulted in the UK government around 3 weeks ago enforcing their winter “Plan B” plan and reintroducing some less invasive legal COVID restrictions.
However as time has passed, despite Omicron’s ability to spread much more rapidly and evade immunity, it has become increasingly evident that Omicron causes less severe disease. This is thought to be because it isn’t able to penetrate and damage deep lung tissue, opposed to previous variants, causing more people to have less severe symptoms. Therefore (so far) in contrast to previous COVID waves there has been a decrease in hospital admissions, especially the need for people requiring oxygen, which in turn has resulted in much fewer people being admitted into intensive care units and sadly dying.
Now, it’s a complex puzzle, as this is also partly down to more people having immunity, either from previous COVID infections or from the vaccine/booster programme. Nonetheless, things are definitely looking hopeful.
We now have a variant of COVID that is spreading much more quickly and displacing the previous dominant variant, a variant that is considerably less dangerous, which could not only result in herd immunity but also result in the COVID pandemic turning into an endemic, where we learn to live alongside the virus, without it being a significant threat to human life or the risk of health systems becoming overwhelmed.
Alongside this, we also now have several approved antiviral drugs, which can cut the risk of vulnerable being hospitalised or developing severe COVID by around 89% (if taken at the right time).
The year we learn to live with it
In conclusion, it finally feels like we are getting on top of the COVID situation in the UK and that there is truly light at the end of the tunnel. It’s safe to say we are in a massively better position than we were 12 months ago, not only due to a dominant and more contagious, but much less dangerous variant but also because of the vaccine rollout and our arsenal of antiviral drugs.
All though it’s impossible to say, and boy has this pandemic thrown up many twists and turns it is my prediction is that 2022 will be the year COVID fades into the background and becomes like every other viral endemic. It’s there, but it’s not something that requires much of a second thought.
As 2022 rolls on and spring and summer approach, I can see a very different world, at least in the UK, one without restrictions, without worry, without a COVID pandemic.