Like everyone, I’m so tired of fighting Covid. But we must keep going
Nesrine Malik
During the past two years, each stage of the pandemic has brought with it a new species of tired. The first was a heady sort of tiredness, all jittery over-vigilance when the first lockdown happened. The memory of that time has an almost lunar quality: it felt like being marooned in a pod on a hostile deserted landscape but with your lights and radars still blinking, still whirring, powered by adrenaline and restlessness. It was a short, sharp fear, in anticipation of a crisis that would be intense but soon over.
And it was soon over. Sort of. And then it wasn’t. Then it was over again, then around Christmas last year, it wasn’t. And now, after a brief late-summer of almost normal, the emergence of the Omicron variant means that Covid is threatening the holiday season for the second year in a row, as restrictions tighten around Europe and scientists advising the UK government turn up the volume on their demands for more curbs before the new year.
The British experience is distinguished from much of the world by the in-plain-sight element of our government’s incompetence and corruption. But the uncertainty, the stop-starts, that marooned feeling of waiting to be rescued, the anticipation of life changing overnight, has been a global experience that is still ongoing. Once again, borders are sealed and airports shut down. Once again, infections are rising and as many start planning to travel home for holidays, a ripple of rumours has started. I have heard them from Nairobi to Norwich, predicting another lockdown, another domestic travel ban, another last-minute intervention by authorities who wait too long and act too late.
With the dashing of each raised hope and resurrected plan, a new tiredness sets in: a turbulent kind of tired, hot with anger towards politicians whose reckless behaviour claimed your loved one; a confused, self-berating tired, when you don’t seem to be able to complete the most simple of tasks. It’s a glass-eyed tiredness, endlessly scrolling but not absorbing, trying to become animated by force-feeding yourself the news and images of a world you can’t experience.
We’d only have to exchange a few words of that to describe Corbynite socialism and that stubborn refusal of true communism to arrive. Except, of course, The Guardian wouldn’t publish that.
They are always so tired, aren’t they?
Mind you, I got pretty sleepy trying to read her drivel.
’ And now, after a brief late-summer of almost normal, the emergence of the Omicron variant means that Covid is threatening the holiday season for the second year in a row…’
No, it’s not the variant, is it? It’s the overreaction to it.
I wonder if she realizes that for people in the UK the “holiday season” is in the middle of summer and not around Christmas like the US.
. . . that marooned feeling of waiting to be rescued . . .
That about sums these twats up.
“No, it’s not the variant, is it? It’s the overreaction to it.”
Absolutely, and how much could our hopelessly inept government do about it if everyone refused to comply with their latest raft of totally pointless restrictions?
I hope v few will be cowardly enough to kiss Johnson’s powergrabbing arse. 1/3 UK are cowards already and will cut their dicks off on Johnson’s say-so but many millions will ignore the fat bastard.
It is and has always been a powergrab.
I’ve been trying to make more of an effort to meet up with people in person and it’s a very different story when you do with lots of unhappy complaining people who readily admit they are afraid to say anything in a virtual setting or large groups.
The mood is definitely much worse than the media thinks