Three years ago, we were locked down amid the first wave of Covid-19, uncertain of what would follow. Would we survive? Would our loved ones survive? Because of a promptly announced lockdown in Poland, the first wave of Covid - the wave that surged across the planet before any vaccine could be rolled out - largely spared us here. But the second wave, in spring 2021, was far deadlier, with over 600 deaths a day at the peak.
Last week, the World Health Organization declared the pandemic over; 6.9 million deaths connected to the disease. This compares to 17m dead during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1920. The pandemic, as predicted, has become endemic, and will return in waves from time to time, likes colds and flus. Unless there's a new mutation that will come and get us, we'll get used to Covid-19 waxing and waning like the moon. Booster jabs and masks will no doubt be back some time - this autumn? Who knows?
Back in 2020, I wrote three posts in which I set out how I thought the world would change as a result of the pandemic (here, here and here). Written at a time of deep uncertainty, of living through something no one alive ever remembers living through before, I can now see today how resilient we are as a species, how we're able to adapt, evolve, move on - and yet how stupid - wilfully stupid - we can be at the same time.
What did I get right?
Above all, the world of work has changed for good. A survey conducted by corporate real-estate advisors JLL reveals that the average office worker goes into the office 2.6 days a week. The direct consequence of this is that most companies don't need as much office space as they once did. A CEO of one firm I talked to in January said that their 1,000m2 of floor space was occupied by an average of just ten employees - and with nearly three years until the current lease contract expires, he's looking for someone to sublet half of that space. This experience can be multiplied hundreds of thousands of times across the global economy. Warsaw's skyline is no longer full of cranes erecting super-tall structures - projects started before the pandemic are all being completed, after which there will be a pause as the market determines how much office space will be needed going forward - and where. Meanwhile, flex-space and co-working offices are all the rage, especially with new IT businesses starting up or moving into Poland.
Traditional retailing is being hammered by e-commerce. I cannot recall the last time I walked into a non-food store (other than buying a second-hand shirt and cardigan from a charity shop in December). Lockdown spurred the acceleration of e-commerce in Poland, the value of which more than doubled between 2019 and 2023 (from 70 to 154 billion złotys, according to PwC).
Covid is one of several reasons why China is looked at with growing mistrust by the West. A result of this is phenomenon of 'friendshoring' - nearshoring (itself the reverse of 'offshoring') to friendlier countries. This is an area in which Poland can gain. Example - a British firm with a long and proud tradition, household-name brand, ceased all UK manufacturing in the1990s, offshoring it to the Far East. After several consolidations, it ended up relying on just five factories - all in China. Came the pandemic, and the delivery time rose to 15 months. So this firm approached me to see if it could find a partner in Poland. We shall see. This story is being repeated by a great many businesses from the Western world seeking to make their supply chains more robust.
What did I get wrong?
The civil aviation sector is returning to normal - at least for tourism, despite higher fares. Business travel, though, is still some 25% down on pre-pandemic levels, largely as companies realise how much money can be saved from holding meetings online. Never mind Jet Zero - never mind that passenger planes criss-crossing our heavens are emitting vast amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses - folks still feel entitled to fly off on holidays.
Restaurants, cafes and bars are generally doing well (at least in Polish towns and cities). Those that survived the lockdowns have put up their prices significantly, improved service, tweaked the menu and are filling up nicely.
Mask-wearing has ceased to be common practice and is now unusual even on crowded trains or buses - it seems the average Pole isn't afraid of colds, flus or the now largely non-lethal SARS-CoV-2 virus. I stopped wearing one towards the end of March as the daily data showed the rate of new infections falling quickly. But do masks work? To my non-technical eye, the chances of infection of a non-mask-wearing person by an infected non-mask-wearing person must be far greater than in the case where both are masked - deflection or absorption of virus-laden water droplets from the respiratory system. But then who am I to judge empirically.
The stream of ill-informed opinions, malicious disinformation and ideologically motivated pronouncements made it extremely difficult for most people to know what to do. Stay in? Go out? Wear a mask? Don't wear a mask? Get jabbed? Avoid the jabs? In situations like this, I go along with Blaise Pascal and his wager: if mask-wearing isn't effective, and I'm wear a mask, I've lost nothing. If it is effective and I'm not wearing a mask, there's a greater risk of catching Covid. If the vaccine isn't effective, I've suffered no more than soreness in my left arm for 24 hours. If it is effective, it has probably spared me from Covid and who knows - death. Back in April 2020, if you caught Covid, you'd have a 7.5% of death. Today, after three rounds of vaccinations and with the herd immunity effect kicking in, that risk has fallen to 0.9%. Risk of death is now eight times lower.
What worries me most is the muddle of public-policy response, vindictiveness towards public-health authorities (the demonisation of US chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci in particular), and above all the fact that we still don't know whether the outbreak was a lab-leak and if so was it a biological weapon under development. The number of overlapping conspiracy theories (Chinese Communist Party, World Economic Forum's Agenda 2030, New World Order's chip-carrying vaccines etc) have clouded many people's reasoning. Social media was full of voices saying "the Chinese are trying to kill us" while at the same time the same people were refusing to wear a mask and mocking those who did.
If we - as a species - as 200 or so sovereign nations - cannot get our act together and learn quickly, I am filled with pessimism. If a new virus were to emerge tomorrow (or a more virulent and deadly variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus) - how would the world respond?
What did governments get wrong?
Compare the deaths from Covid during the first wave, Poland and the UK. Poland got it right - rapid and thorough lockdown. Johnson vacillated and got it wrong. Result - peak death-rate per day in the UK during the height of the first wave was around 60 to 70 times higher than in Poland. Click to enlarge. Source: Our World in Data. That's 55,000 human lives cut short because of bad policy. That was just the first wave. In total, Covid claimed the lives of over 225,000 Britons before the WHO declared the pandemic over - more than three times the number of civilian deaths in the UK in the whole of WW2.
But it's not that simple. This was but the first wave. Poland might have dodged it, but the second and third proved deadly, with deaths peaking at over 600 a day in the late autumn of 2020 and late spring of 2021. The second wave in the UK was even deadlier than the first, again exceeding 1,300 deaths a day.
What did we learn?
Busy doing nothin'
This time nine years ago:
Springtime pictorial
This time ten years ago:
Kitten time!
This time 11 years ago:
Warsaw-Centrum to Jeziorki by train with super-wide lens
This time 12 years ago:
Loose Lips Sink Ships - part II
This time 13 years ago:
Jeziorki in the infra red
This time 14 years ago:
Some rain, at last!
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5 comments:
Will there be inquiries, particularly in the UK, about how the pandemic was handled by the relevant authorities, in order to learn lessons for a possible future emergency? Or will everything be forgotten in the (probably understandable) desire to get back to normality?
Here's an example of how different countries dealt with things three years ago. From some notes I kept:
"Thursday 16 April 2020 - A commentator notes that ‘Poland’s lockdown came after 17 cases and 2 deaths. Total deaths so far in Poland to 16 April – 292. UK lockdown came after 6,650 cases and 225 deaths. Total UK deaths so far to 14 April – 12,868.’ If this person's statistics are reliable – (where did he get them?) - then the contrast is staggering."
Regards - Michal Karski
@ Michał Karski
Thanks for your comment - it has prompted me to expand this post. According to Our World in Data, based on WHO sources, by 14 April, the UK had a total of 19,861 Covid deaths, Poland a mere 244.
But that was just the first wave... (see updated post for more)!
The sources for the statistics are what counts. I was keeping notes at the time, and basing my own statistics on those being published by both the Telegraph and the Guardian. Where they got theirs I don't know. Here's what I wrote exactly three years ago today (with an eye to turning the whole experience into a novel, with the pandemic as a background - which I'm still working on).
"Wednesday 13 May 2020
When will we see Marco and Stella? How soon will air travel be possible? Will this whole thing stop people from flying? Maybe they will prefer to cross the Atlantic by boat like environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg?
9 PM. Guardian: ’95,000 have entered UK from abroad during Coronavirus lockdown.’
Telegraph: ‘Keir Starmer took Boris Johnson apart like a Duplo trainset.’ ‘UK total cases: 229,705, UK total deaths: 33,186’. Still climbing."
So Marco & Stella are fictitious but the stats are real. As for a possible novel, would anyone want to relive that time? That's the question I'm asking myself at the moment, although the pandemic is only one element of the whole. Will try to publicize it somewhere when it's ready. Hopefully soon.
Best wishes and keep up the great blog.
MK
@Michał Karski
The Great Covid novel - I'm surprised we haven't seen one yet! The Spanish Flu hardly even gets name-checked in the works of the 1920s - presumably, because it was overshadowed by WW1 and the horrors of the trenches. Covid has left vastly more data for researchers and artists to draw from!
Johnson is not my favourite person, either. It was clear, by anyone’s standards, that he was not on top of the events of 2020, and his unforgivable dithering may well have compounded an already desperate situation.
His stance on Brexit, having transformed himself from staunch pro-European to ultra Brexiter, will also not be easily forgiven by people who lost not only freedom of movement on the continent overnight, but in many cases, their businesses and their livelihoods.
What may count in his favour, despite his initial burying of the Russia Report, is that he ended up supporting Ukraine. But the UK cannot afford to have him anywhere near the reins of power ever again. He simply doesn’t do his homework and is unfit for high office.
Michal Karski
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