2022: Funishment

The Father’s Perspective: Second Jab 

At the time of writing, almost 190,000 people on the Island have been fully vaccinated. The Superintendant of Public Health has stated that some people are choosing not to get vaccinated, ‘for various reasons.’

One of those reasons may be a fear of side effects from the second injection. 

I arrived early at the clinic. Just like before, there was no waiting, none of the queues I’d seen at hospital. I even had the same nurse, standing in the doorway, ready with the needle. 

I felt more wound up about the second jab. Just get it over with, I was thinking. I’ve never liked needles, and I’d heard the second dose of Pfizer had stronger side-effects than the first shot. 

As I sat down, the nurse asked for my least favourite arm. She slipped the cap off the needle, I turned away and hardly felt a thing. 

I asked her about any symptoms to watch out for. 

‘It depends on the person,’ she said. ‘Expect aches, fever and tiredness.’ 

‘Does that mean it’s working, that I’m getting a good immune response?’

She blinked at me.

‘Rest…take Panadol.’

A blond woman with a black mask came into the treatment room as I left; I sat in the courtyard outside, and set 15 minutes on my phone for my cool-off period. Soon the woman came out and sat opposite, holding her arm. We exchanged an amused look. Perhaps this is an unexpected benefit of wearing masks—we’ve all developed stronger eyebrows, for expressing the excruciating irony of our times. 

I sat back, prodding my arm. An ache was already settling in. So how was this second dose going to compare to the first one? 

Sequels are rarely better than the original: for many critics Godfather II is the best in the trilogy, but I prefer the first one. Technically I rate Empire Strikes Back over Star Wars, but both movies are very different. Then there’s Toy Story II and first trilogy Spiderman II. In many ways, Covid is in itself a sequel: but is “CoV-2” a simplification, as any virus is a result of millions of mutations?

 The blonde woman left after five minutes. Perhaps I’d overdone the eyebrows.

Soon my alarm pinged and I went home. That evening I had a Zoom call with a Dutch schoolfriend, who was feeling exultant after he’d ‘bagged’ his first vaccine jab. For months, Phil had been feeling depressed about the slow ‘roll-out’ in Holland; he’d called that morning to confirm an appointment in seven days, when the woman on the other end said, ‘We have a spare booking in thirty minutes.’ 

Phil jumped up, threw on some shoes, grabbed his keys and cycled like hell across Amsterdam. I have an image of him in his striped pyjamas, his dressing gown streaming out behind him, his wheels whizzing as he raced to the clinic. 

Phil asked me how I was feeling, after the second vaccine, and I said, ‘A bit stoned.’

I went to bed feeling optimistic. 

At 3am I woke up feeling cold. I was lying next to something heavy and painful. I realised it was my arm. 

This must be working, I thought.

May on the Island is not cold, but I was shivering as I got out of bed. I shuffled down the hallway, shaking. My throat felt like I was hanging in the grip of the Predator alien. Swollen lymph nodes?

I sat down in the bathroom and read some Calvin and Hobbes. The book shook in my lap, then gradually subsided. I didn’t feel so bad, but then I got up and the shakes returned.

It’s working, it’s working, it’s working, I thought, as I shuffled back to bed. I popped some paracetamol and lay down with my new friend, the amazing pulsating arm. 

As I tried to sleep I compared Pfizer with other vaccines I’d taken. I must have been thirteen when I took my BCG [for Tuberculosis]. I remembered standing in line with other boys, waiting for the initial ‘tester’ dose. A nurse briskly ‘stamped’ my shoulder, leaving a three-pronged welt. 

Then we all had a week of waiting to see if the pin-prints would swell up, indicating we had a natural response, and didn’t need the dreaded injection. Every morning we woke up, hoping for a blossoming on our shoulders; as far as I can remember, no one experienced a miracle. 

So we went back to the nurse for the needle. Later I experienced some painful side effects, as my friends—including Phil— repeatedly punched my arm. Apart from that, I can’t remember any problems. 

I’ve taken a lot of travel vaccines since school. Three years ago I signed up for a boat trip in Borneo, for which I had to take the Yellow Fever vaccine. On the night before the flight I felt my usual pre-trip nerves, so I partied with a friend and ate some fish and chips.

Early the next morning I was horribly sick in the bathroom. At the time I’d thought it was a combination of partying and nerves—or was it a late reaction to the Yellow Fever jab? According to the NHS website, side effects from that vaccination include headaches, muscle pain, raised temperature, and joint ache but no nausea or vomiting. So it was probably too much battered fish. 

The day after my second Pfizer jab I felt like I’d aged thirty years. I shuffled around the apartment, feeling rotten; I’d read that exercising the aching arm may be a help, so I managed ten press ups. Later I found out that exercising is not recommended after the jab. 

That day I ate and drank and read Calvin & Hobbes. I tried building my Lego piano, but I could barely lift a piece. Feeling dizzy, I texted my friend the Immunologist: Wow, the second Pfizer has really wiped me out. 

His reply was swift:

Haha it does that

That was exactly what I needed to read. The next day I woke up feeling 60%, and now, a week later, I feel fine. The second Pfizer dose made me feel lousy but thankfully, as with most sequels, the nausea was short-lived.  

The Father’s Perspective: A March for Human Rights

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon at the big fountain. The air was sweet with the smell of caramel popcorn, parents were out with their children, Mariah Carey was singing Christmas songs from the carousels, and I was feeling edgy about the protest march.  

Was I going to take off my mask, and break the Law? On impulse, I wrote ‘SHOW ME THE SCIENCE’ on my mask, which I hoped would kick off some conversations about the absence of scientific studies justifying the wearing of masks outside.

But where were the protestors? All I had to do was follow the trail of police uniforms to a man holding a red flag. He was obviously the leader of the march, as his face was naked and four police officers in black masks were gathered around him.

Against the backdrop of the ferris wheel, the march leader was wearing a black jacket and jeans, and extremely clean red trainers. Very patiently, an older police officer was telling him, ‘It’s a crime…it’s a crime…it’s a crime.’ 

After a while the leader turned away and tucked a fine into his pocket, like a winning lottery ticket: ‘I am going to Court…it’s what I wanted.’ His thick glasses magnified his eyes, making them look huge. I asked him his name and what he wanted to achieve today, and he said, ‘I haven’t worn a mask for two years.’

A young mother pushed past me, cutting through the protestors with her baby carriage. Toddlers watched on, curious, as a man with a manbun fired up a bullhorn and boomed: ‘Let us breathe!’

The leader spoke to the crowd: ‘Wear your mask…don’t come to court like me…at 2:30 we will start marching.’ Meanwhile the police were talking to a thin, bare-faced woman with an American accent. I was about to chat with her but then I read her placard: THE FINAL VARIANT IS CALLED COMMUNISM.

There were lots of interesting signs at the protest. An older gentleman was carrying ‘Nuremburg codes protects us from medical TYRANNY’, while a girl in khaki leggings posed beside, ‘We DON’T want your Liberty we want are BIRTH RIGHTS’ [sic]. 

Two guys were holding yellow boards with ‘Where there is Risk there must be Choice’ and ‘The TRUTH is coming for you…you have nowhere to HIDE.’  I asked the sign holder, ‘What is ‘The TRUTH?’’

He leaned closer. ‘Excuse me?’

‘The TRUTH!’ I raised my voice. ‘What is ‘The TRUTH?’’

He looked at the board, then pointed at his fellow protestor: 

‘Ask him.’ 

His companion wore a grey scarf over his mouth.

‘What is ‘The TRUTH?’’ I said. 

‘All of this,’ he said, in a fervent English accent. ‘It’s all for The Great Reset.’

We left the fountain at exactly 2:30, as the organisers played ‘We’re not going to take it any more’, from a speaker on wheels. For one wonderful moment Twisted Sister competed with Maria Carey from the carousel.

The march went down a big shopping street, with around seventy to a hundred people carrying signs, and the bullhorn booming: ‘Let us breathe, let us breathe…’ Outside McDonalds the music changed to ‘We Are the World’, and a passing tourist muttered, ‘Science Deniers.’ 

I asked a policewoman if the organisers had had to get a permit for the march, and she said yes but didn’t respond to my follow-up, ‘This is quite calm, isn’t it?’ There didn’t seem to be much support or interest from the passers-by.

The demonstration stopped outside a shopping centre, and the leader gave a speech. 

I picked up, ‘Vaccina…criminali…humanity…’

‘Ecco…’ agreed the demonstrators. ‘Ecco…’

‘Emergencia…radicali, democratico!’ 

I think I heard ‘Magna Carta’, but I couldn’t be sure. As I left the demonstration, the sounds of the bullhorn faded behind me: ‘Let us breathe…let us breathe…let us breathe…’  

I weighed up my feelings about the march. While I admire people who stand up for what they believe in, I’d expected them to focus on the follies of outdoor masks, instead of other [albeit related] complaints. It was billed as a ‘Peaceful March for Human Rights’, so I should have known better.

At the top of the high street I counted twenty people either without masks or ‘at half-mask’, with their noses showing. There was no one to catch them: the march seemed to have sucked up all the police. I realised that my mask had expanded as I was wearing it, so only the words, ‘SHOW ME’ were now visible, with ‘THE SCIENCE’ tucked away under my chin. 

As I headed home, I wondered whether the restrictions could have been fairer; could the authorities have declared shopping and tourist areas ‘masked zones’, and left less populated areas alone?

The police had been very calm and professional during the protest. On the day the restriction came into effect I’d seen a member of the local constabulary patrolling my uncrowded harbour, sniffing out naked faces; I hadn’t seen any officers in my neighbourhood since June, the last time citizens were fined for wearing masks outside.

The Father’s Perspective: The Children in the Gym 

Charlie’s father volunteers at a summer school during the pandemic

It was thirty-five degrees and there were no fans or aircon for the sixteen kids running around the school gym. At one point, a seven-year old boy came up and said something to me.

I bent down. ‘What?’

He pulled down his mask. 

‘It’s hot,’ he said, and went back to chasing a ball. Later, a doleful girl with wet hair just stopped playing.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

‘It’s too hot.’

I sat next to the supervisor for the class.

‘Yesterday I was working out in a gym,’ I said. ‘It has big fans and air con, and no one had to wear masks, so why do these children have to wear them?’

‘I’m a believer in kids wearing masks, she said. ‘If just one of them has Covid, they’ll pass it on, and then they’ll all be in quarantine.’ 

‘But we know that kids don’t suffer from ‘Severe Covid’ as much as adults, we’ve vaccinated all the ‘vulnerables’, so why are we doing this to these children?’

‘Kids have died from Covid.’

‘It’s very rare, though,’ I said. 

‘Anyway, I don’t want to get it from them.’ She sat back, exhaling heavily. ‘I’m a diabetic.’

This seemed to end the conversation, as if challenging someone’s medical status was forbidden. I found her attitude arrogant and controlling, and I suspected her diabetes was diet-related. 

I considered her position: I can understand how it’s impossible to rely on children to follow adult guidelines of social distancing and relentlessly sterilising hands, and masks must seem to be the best answer.

But I can’t help feeling a sense of shame. As an adult, I feel complicit in putting children through two years of restrictions for a virus which, statistically, is unlikely to cause them long-term harm. 

I’m grateful that I’m in my forties during the Pandemic; I feel really sorry for the eighteen to thirty-year olds who’ve had their youth disrupted, when they are clearly in a lower risk group. If I’d been that age in 2021 I would have been much more reluctant to follow all the ‘guidelines’.

I’m grateful that my son is only five, and he can roll with it with more grace than I can. It must be much harder for older kids; at worst, the last two years’ restrictions have increased rates of childhood eating disorders, mental illness and suicide. Children have missed the community of their friends and all the other things school has to offer, from music, dance, sport, cookery and drama, even lessons. 

Of course, not all kids are gutted at missing school. When I heard that certain pupils were using lemon juice to fake ‘positive’ readings on PCR tests, my first reaction was, ‘Wow, they’ll go far.’ 

Yes, faking the tests is wrong and causes chaos, but I couldn’t help admiring kids who use their initiative to game a system which has condemned them to months of home schooling, or sitting in classrooms wearing masks.  

I’m pro-vaccine and protecting people, but I think it’s important to question policies. Personally, I can put up with 2021’s social irritations, from showers randomly shutting at sports clubs, to the litany of cancelled flights and social events. 

But I get angry when I see regulations inflicted by adults on children which don’t seem to be saving anyone. If such a high proportion of the Island’s population has been vaccinated, why are children wearing masks in a hot gym? Are we trying to achieve a form of herd immunity, or ‘treading water’ while we wait for vaccines to kick in, and we know more about the Delta variant? 

Back in the gym, the supervisor inhaled and sat up. 

‘When they run,’ she said. ‘They can pull their masks down.’

‘Yes, but do they?’

‘Hey everyone!’ she called out. ‘Don’t forget to pull your mask down when you run.’

Few of the children remembered this in their excitement. It all seemed self-defeating: surely when you’re running along and breathing hard, you spread more ‘aerosols’ then when you’re standing still? 

Ultimately, I’m glad that the kids in the gym showed a greater spirit and resilience than whining grown-ups like me. Young people are our most precious ‘assets’, and we need to make their lives as safe and as fun as possible. 

At least the children in the gym have frequent water breaks. Now, two weeks after I’d pressed for them, the organiser of the sports programme has provided some fans, so the gym has its own ‘cooling station’, an oasis in the humidity. I’m amazed it has taken so long, but I’m also glad it has finally happened.

FUNISHMENT: A Father’s Final Words from Covid 19 

My niece has contracted Omicron. At eleven, she’s too young to take a vaccine in the UK. I’m feeling a little nervous as I FaceTime her in quarantine. 

She looks listless. I ask her how she’s doing.

‘I have no energy,’ she says. ‘And a fever.’

The Russians have two kind of envy: ‘black’ envy, and ‘white’ envy. I’m feeling the friendly ‘white’ variety as I tell her, ‘Chances are, you could end up with much stronger immunity than me.’ 

Even though my niece is the first in my family to contract the virus, I’m sensing that Covid 19 is nearing its end. Now hospital numbers are dropping throughout Europe, the pandemic seems to be waning. So, are we really in an ‘endemic’ phase—or am I being premature? 

Perhaps it depends on how many letters are left in the Greek alphabet. Sometimes I feel like a commentator on CNN, eager to ‘call’ the winner of a Presidential election, but wary of calling the wrong candidate. 

Summarising two years, a plague and almost six million deaths feels like condensing a world war into a few pages, so I’m focusing on language. Much of 2020/2021 I’d gladly forget, but the parts I want to remember are anchored in words and phrases—some new, but some old and previously unknown to me. 

CORONAUSEA

Towards the end of 2021, my family had a game: see how long you could get through a day, or even a conversation, without mentioning Covid-19. I was saturated with imaginative theories and predictions, and it felt surreal having my experiences reflected both locally and globally, as presidents and talk-show hosts were all preoccupied with the same topic.

For me, Covid was interesting to talk about and boring to live through. This is particularly true for one of my vaccinated friends, who is currently undergoing his eighth quarantine, despite never having tested positive himself.  

Despite the boredom and the travel frustration, I remember an explosion of creative videos online— lovely opera coming from lock-downed balconies in Italy, or a family coming together to record charming parodies of pop songs  [the Marsh family]. Perhaps that is why I’m now addicted to YouTube.

For some, government policy in Italy and Austria verged on the despotic; I imagine sociologists of the future being fascinated by the imposition of mandatory measures, and doctors being upset about the abrupt transition from individualized medicine to ‘one size fits all’ vaccination policies.

There were some crazy stories. One friend freaked me out with news of a Swiss variant, before adding, ‘Don’t worry, Peter— you can’t afford it.’ I heard of a mountain where you could ski unrestricted on the Swiss slopes, but you had to wear a mask if you were skiing down the French side. And who said, ‘Wearing a mask while you’re driving on your own is like wearing a seatbelt in the park’? 

In the future, will ‘coronausea’ give way to ‘coronostalgia’? I have an impressive collection of masks, with zippers, shark teeth, famous paintings, divers and even a sensual pair of lips; will some people miss wearing masks, washing hands and being face-gunned by temperature-checkers in supermarkets? 

‘PLANDEMIC’

The writer Yuval Noah Harari beautifully described the dawning age of science as ‘the discovery of ignorance’. I sense there was a great deal of ignorance exposed by this ‘novel’ virus. 

For me, the strongest metaphor for the sheer scale of the problem was the Ever Given cargo ship, wedged across the Suez Canal in March 2021. It looked massive and immovable, just like Covid 19. At the time, I sensed there was never a way of ‘beating’ the virus, only of minimising its impact.

Did governments and health councils have a preferred outcome, or was it just ‘wait and see’? I tried to remain rational about the Great Experiment we’re living through, with two years of winging it and ‘Following the Science’; I never trusted ‘Big Pharma’, but my gut feeling regarding humanity favours opportunism over ‘evil plans to take over the world’. 

I decided I trusted my medically-trained family members over some of my friends who’ve magically became virologists after watching videos on You Tube. My grandfather, PB Medawar’s quote that “a virus is a piece of bad news wrapped up in protein” had a renaissance in 2020, while my father, a retired radiologist, remembers Polio as “…another virus that crippled or killed, and is now extinct, worldwide…there were opponents of immunization then, too. Jerks.”

For final reassurance, I needed that Great Physician, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to guide me: ‘…all of the virologists and doctors and epidemiologists have studied diseases and vaccines for their entire lives, so I listen to them…if you have a heart attack, you don’t check your Facebook group, you call an ambulance.’

So I bumped elbows, kept my distance and washed my vegetables. I avoided crowds and wore masks on the beach, feeling like an idiot, in the drive to ‘keep everybody safe’. But then, following the contemptuous behaviour of [my] UK government, I developed doubts. By late 2021 I was teetering on the edge of a dozen rabbit holes, YouTubing doctors in bow ties, questioning public policy.

My Italian statistician friend’s claim that ‘There are lies, damned lies and Covid statistics’ strengthened my distrust of numbers, which could be used to strengthen any argument. My attitude towards vaccines may have been different if I’d contracted Covid in 2020, as I never explicitly disagreed with the benefits of natural immunity over vaccination.

Now, as data grows supporting the long-lasting, polyclonal protection afforded by Omicron, I’m wary that the conspiracy theorists were right all along; will the unvaccinated sell their untainted blood for billions? Will the vaccinated become graphite-controlled 5G zombies with increased risk of mortality via embarrassment?

OMNICRON

Since I read reports in January 2022 from South Africa, suggesting that the latest variant would go everywhere fast, I couldn’t avoid adding the ‘omni’ to this omnipresent virus. The predominant adjective for Omicron was ‘mild’, hopefully spreading swift natural immunity with blessedly reduced hospitalization; I couldn’t help feeling that Mankind dodged a bullet with this variant. 

My favourite quote came from a conversation between two doctors in Uganda: ‘The Omicron variant is the vaccine that we failed to make.’ [from John Campbell, Great News from Africa, YouTube [27.1.2022]

FUNISHMENT

I became addicted to medical reports; their language enriched my vocabulary. Soon I could discuss ‘immunological ‘naïvity’ to SARS Cov-2, clonal expansion of B Cells specific for antigenic epitopes, nucleocapsid-specific T-Cells, and pre-existing spike cross-reactive memory T-Cells’, without understanding any of it.

Some familiar words felt corrupted. I used to like ‘bubbles’ before they were used to divide people, and ‘breakthrough’, once a heroic advance, now refers to a fully vaccinated person being infected by the virus [a ‘vaccine’ breakthrough]. Thankfully no one is using the nauseating phrase ‘New Normal’ any more.

In addition to ‘Coveat’, ‘Cobo’ and ‘Angstipation’, I’ve come up with ‘Funishment’: over two years of puritanical caution, having a party could be ‘funished’ by quarantine, a fine, or hospitalisation. See also hangover, herpes and Boris Johnson. 

CHILD VECTORS

In 2021 a paediatrician friend asserted, ‘If adult mortality were as low as childhood mortality with Covid, we would never be talking about a pandemic at all.’ Since then I saw my son isolated at home for a fortnight because he was in the same room as a positive case, and then released after consistently testing negative.

Over the past two years I felt sorry for younger generations, from university students to school children, suffering for a disease which predominantly affected older people. By late 2021 I was unconvinced by arguments that restricting children would prevent them from passing the virus on to adults, not when such a huge majority of older people were vaccinated.

In the end, I was chastened by my son’s cheerfulness in isolation. Perhaps he was enjoying a fortnight of not wearing a mask and being snapped at by paranoid grown-ups with handy-wipes.

FINAL WORDS

According to the naturalist Colin Tudge,

“…. [viruses] are major drivers in all of nature, that may determine the shape and direction of an entire ecosystem….it may be that if there were no parasites, there would be no sex… Without sex to mix the genes, creatures like us…could not have evolved at all.

It seems indeed that we are as we are because our retrospective ancestors had to cope with disease.”

[Colin Tudge The Secret Life of Trees]

Essentially, his view is that our conflict with viruses have helped push our evolution. Cold comfort for the day-to-day horrors and irritations of the pandemic, but perhaps we can use this concept to improve as a species.

The core aim of governments throughout 2020/21 seemed to have been protecting health systems, and preventing Intensive Care Units from being over-run with sick patients. So should we now invest in building new hospitals, buying more equipment, training contingency staff and improving the working lives of doctors?

For me, the key is how to help the next generation: how can we improve life for the children who’ve sat through hot unventilated lessons, played sport in masks and only seen their friends through digitised lessons at home?

One common word in the Pandemic was ‘comorbidities’, a disease or medical condition which can significantly worsen a patients’ health if they have Covid. My friend, a Canadian author, tells me, ‘I’m 43, fit and I eat healthy, but require immunosuppressive medication…Omicron is not mild for everyone, and those of us with health issues and disabilities have essentially been deemed worth sacrificing.’ He’s not asking for endless lockdowns, just a little kindness and consideration. 

Among the most commonly mentioned comorbidities are diabetes and hypertension. Hypertension, unfortunately, has rarely-noticed symptoms, which led to the fear of unknown numbers of vulnerable people blocking up the hospitals.

This ‘tip of the iceberg’ concept was a strong justification for restrictions. There were many arguments for and against masks, lockdowns and vaccines, and yet the dangers of bad diets were chronic long before 2019. Along with age, obesity was probably the most commonly quoted risk factor for severe Covid; now that huge resources have been thrown at controlling Covid, why not push for another campaign against controlling obesity? 

Why not teach children more about how to cook for themselves, and how to limit the intake of salty, oily or sugared junk which proliferates our supermarkets? Why not emphasize that takeaways are a treat, not part of a regular diet? 

I strongly believe in the benefits of regular sports and fitness, providing fun, social contact, and increased energy. Losing the right to play sport during the Pandemic, while all the takeaways remained open, and junk food mopeds circled the Island, was one of the most frustrating aspects of the Pandemic for me.

Sport has been one of the few undisputed pleasures of my life; I don’t need a doctor to tell me that encouraging the blood to flow faster round my body helps in all areas of physical health, and I don’t need to read the ingredients for a Big Mac to know that it may make me feel lousy the next day. 

Many people avoid talking about Covid now— perhaps they’re sick of it. But we need to be ready for future pandemics; I haven’t seen any reports of Viral Research Labs being shut down, or an abolition of the horrific ‘Wet Markets’. How are we better prepared now, than in 2020?

Our population is growing exponentially, and we’ll keep on encountering new diseases which spread through our urban and travel matrices, following on from HIV, Spanish Flu, Avian Flu and Covid 19. For now, we should maintain a state of virological preparedness and enjoy life as much as possible…before we get wiped out by Omega. 

Let’s push on with our evolution, working from home more to reduce traffic and air pollution, and promoting an educational system suitable for the 21^st Century. And why not tackle grotesque social inequality, worldwide destruction of forests for agriculture, over-fishing and plastic pollution while we’re at it?

Five days after her Omicron diagnosis my niece took an antigen test: for a happy thirty seconds it was negative, and then…positive. When I FaceTime she’s playing Battleships against her mum, and she looks rosy-cheeked and healthy.

  ‘How did you sleep last night?’ I ask. 

‘Better. My sore throat has gone…still got a runny nose.’

‘So it’s basically just like…a cold..?’

She grins: ‘Yeah.’