So that was 2020, and good riddance
Jan. 1st, 2021 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julesjonesWell, that was a bit of a year, wasn't it?
A year ago I was sitting traumatized by the images of Australia burning, with no idea that two days earlier a doctor called Li Wenliang had tried to raise the alarm about a new type of SARS coronavirus that seemed to be spreading. A few weeks later I was looking at flights for a year later, i.e. round about now, in the belief that I might finally have my medical issues under control enough that I'd be able to get on a long haul flight. That was about two weeks before the images started coming out of Lombardy...
When it became clear the thing had arrived in the UK and nucleated in several sites, I said tokalypso that it might not be a good idea to go to Eastercon, as it would be the con crud to end all con crud. This proved to be a wise decision, even if the concom were unable to cancel the hotel conference venue booking until the announcement by the Prime Minister that all such gatherings were not happening for the foreseeable future.
kalypso lives less than half an hour's walk from me, and we have dinner together on most Saturdays. We have seen each other in person a handful of times in the last eight months. I have not seen any other people I know other than Other Half and my colleagues. I see my colleagues because I'm a key worker who can't work from home, so I've been going into the office all year. I don't much enjoy being on public transport, but I think it's better for my mental health than working from home would have been. All work that can possibly done at home with workarounds is being reserved for the clinically vulnerable people who are shielding so they can spend at least part of the day doing something useful, and even so one of them eventually came back into the office, because as he said, you can only paint the garden fence so many times.
Other Half is working from home, because his employer has shut the physical site and the staff are now living on Zoom. I could do without this on the days I'm on leave or come home early...
On the personal plus side, I only went to A&E once this year, and for reasons that were neither Covid nor my existing medical problems and/or medication for same. As for the latter, they have stabilised well enough that one outpatients department has said they don't need to see me any more and the other doesn't need to talk to me other than by telephone.
The remainder of the year was basically dealing with the Covid fallout at work, involving backlogs, trying to keep staff and customers safe, and everyone setting up and learning the new video links that were just being piloted for rollout over an extended period of time when all of sudden they were needed *right* *now*. Oh, and the elderly database that I keep muttering about on Twitter about the jam tomorrow replacement? Don't even ask.
As for how terrifying this is - quite a lot. But for some of us there is also this, slightly lengthened from my Twitter post on Christmas Eve:
A strange and unpleasant chain of thought this evening. The now traditional Christmas Eve TV offering of The Snowman often reminds me of another Raymond Briggs book. I'm old enough to remember the decommissioning of most of the UK's civil defence siren network after the end of the Cold War.
Part of the justification was that by then private telephones were so ubiquitous that in most areas any warning needed could be sent by automated telephone calls to the entire country. A telephone message could be customised to the particular warning needed. The spread of home internet and mobile phones made this an even better option.
I'm a child of the Cold War. I still sometimes have That Nightmare when woken by a thunderstorm.
I never dreamed that the first time I would see the civil defence warning system in operation would be for a pandemic.
On the whole, I think I prefer the pandemic. Or at least *this* pandemic, horrific though it is.
Thank you, Stanislav Petrov, that I am still here to be able to make such a comparison.
A year ago I was sitting traumatized by the images of Australia burning, with no idea that two days earlier a doctor called Li Wenliang had tried to raise the alarm about a new type of SARS coronavirus that seemed to be spreading. A few weeks later I was looking at flights for a year later, i.e. round about now, in the belief that I might finally have my medical issues under control enough that I'd be able to get on a long haul flight. That was about two weeks before the images started coming out of Lombardy...
When it became clear the thing had arrived in the UK and nucleated in several sites, I said to
kalypso that it might not be a good idea to go to Eastercon, as it would be the con crud to end all con crud. This proved to be a wise decision, even if the concom were unable to cancel the hotel conference venue booking until the announcement by the Prime Minister that all such gatherings were not happening for the foreseeable future.kalypso lives less than half an hour's walk from me, and we have dinner together on most Saturdays. We have seen each other in person a handful of times in the last eight months. I have not seen any other people I know other than Other Half and my colleagues. I see my colleagues because I'm a key worker who can't work from home, so I've been going into the office all year. I don't much enjoy being on public transport, but I think it's better for my mental health than working from home would have been. All work that can possibly done at home with workarounds is being reserved for the clinically vulnerable people who are shielding so they can spend at least part of the day doing something useful, and even so one of them eventually came back into the office, because as he said, you can only paint the garden fence so many times.Other Half is working from home, because his employer has shut the physical site and the staff are now living on Zoom. I could do without this on the days I'm on leave or come home early...
On the personal plus side, I only went to A&E once this year, and for reasons that were neither Covid nor my existing medical problems and/or medication for same. As for the latter, they have stabilised well enough that one outpatients department has said they don't need to see me any more and the other doesn't need to talk to me other than by telephone.
The remainder of the year was basically dealing with the Covid fallout at work, involving backlogs, trying to keep staff and customers safe, and everyone setting up and learning the new video links that were just being piloted for rollout over an extended period of time when all of sudden they were needed *right* *now*. Oh, and the elderly database that I keep muttering about on Twitter about the jam tomorrow replacement? Don't even ask.
As for how terrifying this is - quite a lot. But for some of us there is also this, slightly lengthened from my Twitter post on Christmas Eve:
A strange and unpleasant chain of thought this evening. The now traditional Christmas Eve TV offering of The Snowman often reminds me of another Raymond Briggs book. I'm old enough to remember the decommissioning of most of the UK's civil defence siren network after the end of the Cold War.
Part of the justification was that by then private telephones were so ubiquitous that in most areas any warning needed could be sent by automated telephone calls to the entire country. A telephone message could be customised to the particular warning needed. The spread of home internet and mobile phones made this an even better option.
I'm a child of the Cold War. I still sometimes have That Nightmare when woken by a thunderstorm.
I never dreamed that the first time I would see the civil defence warning system in operation would be for a pandemic.
On the whole, I think I prefer the pandemic. Or at least *this* pandemic, horrific though it is.
Thank you, Stanislav Petrov, that I am still here to be able to make such a comparison.
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Goodbye, 2020!
Date: 2021-01-02 01:38 am (UTC)Re: Goodbye, 2020!
Date: 2021-01-02 09:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-02 03:57 am (UTC)It is better to measure the excess deaths in the hundred thousands instead of the hundred millions, yeah.
I remain unwilling to give the political leadership a pass on the hundred thousands.
Glad the medical problems are improving; may the trend long continue!
And may you find it much the better year, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-02 10:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-02 11:15 am (UTC)Here's hoping that the vaccine roll out will go smoothly, though with the Tory government's habit of over-promising and under-delivering, I expect problems.
Re the civil defence siren network, I'm old enough to remember it being regularly tested and my mother's tension until the upward howl remained steady in the All Clear. As you say, better a pandemic than mutually assured destruction.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-03 11:59 am (UTC)At least with this pandemic, even if it wiped out humans there would still be lifeforms higher than a cockroach left behind.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-04 05:27 am (UTC)I'm not dead though I seem to be middle aged.
As a child my nightmares were either sci-fi or the mundane "you didn't do a test right and now you're going to be held back". With the occasional falling through clouds and realizing there was a forest rushing up at me fairly regularly. Huh. I just realized that I stopped having the falling nightmare about when I started flying in my dreams when I was midway through my teens. Though I do remember a sort of low grade background fear that there would be a flash and then I'd be vaporized since there was an old missile silo about 2 km from my childhood home.
I suppose I should do a year end update myself. Maybe write about the things that interest me.
Anyway, glad you're more or less all right.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-09 02:23 pm (UTC)IIRC, you're just about enough years younger than me that you were in your early teens when the Wall came down. So old enough to remember, but young enough to not have spent decades with that background fear.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-05 05:53 am (UTC)I am reminded all the time that, though we have had it rough, so much of the world has had it unimaginably rougher. Take care, and here's hoping and wishing that 2021 turns the world back to something normal (it won't happen quickly, but I am thinking positively).
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-09 02:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-10 11:50 pm (UTC)Here; the Premiers get some stick (the PM has been useless, the State Premiers are basically running the show) and made some mistakes, but all in all have really stepped up. And the population, with some stupid exceptions, have basically done the right things.
I mean, when a major outbreak in our state is, well, four or five suspected cases...
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-05 03:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-09 02:30 pm (UTC)