Okay, so, Covid is not that dangerous. It really isn’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m downplaying it. Paradoxically, it is the relative lack of danger that makes Covid such a menace. Just imagine if it was as dangerous as Ebola. Would there be any problem getting people to socially distance?
Covid is just dangerous enough so that if we let it run unchecked, it would stop first-world health systems from functioning. Would that be so bad? Couldn’t we just handle it until that mythical “herd immunity” kicks in? Maybe. But just think through the risk of that: for however long that would be — three months? six?—hospitals would be overwhelmed. They would be making choices about who to turn away. Anyone over a certain age? All elective surgery? Maybe just all Covid cases.
You could just imagine it: a loved-one gets sick — could be Covid. It might just be a bad flu. Early in the pandemic there were no quick tests. It would be crazy to go to the hospital — if she doesn’t have it she’d catch it there. So you stay home and hope she makes it. Many wouldn’t. Morgues and mortuaries would be full. Dead in the streets?
And, in that time, when the objective is for as many people as possible to catch Covid, social distancing would be discouraged. Would that work? Many would hope that herd immunity would be reached without them personally having to suffer through it. That would slow down the process. It might lead to many more months with no effective health system. No ambulances. Road accidents left unattended. Unnecessary deaths from heart attack and cancer. Exhausted, burned out doctors and nurses. Social media would likely exaggerate the risk of the disease. Fear and panic could take over. Some would take advantage of the chaos to loot and steal. You could have areas — perhaps whole cities — descending into lawlessness.
My belief is that early on the various government authorities did similar thought experiments — with much better data. That’s why they came to the conclusions that they did: the health systems must be protected at all costs, right up to shutting down the economy.
But Covid is not actually that dangerous to most people. Yes, governments made the correct and reasonable choice to impose rules to limit its spread. But a sizeable section of society decided they will flout the rules. They do it in the name of liberty — or convenience — or necessity. And that’s where we are.
While this understanding — that the best course is to protect the health systems — is nearly universal, how this is enacted differs widely. I’ve experienced one aspect of this three times on three different continents: quarantine.
Many nations have implemented quarantine, typically for 2 weeks. However the requirements — and the experience — vary greatly. I was in quarantine with my two teenage sons firstly in Hong Kong in June, then in London in October and finally in Perth, Australia this March 2021. My wife was unable to join us: her work is not mobile. The three experiences were very different.
Hong Kong
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| Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong |
We had long planned to visit Hong Kong last June. The purpose for the visit was to renew our permanent residencies, having gained that status by living there for almost a decade. But it’s necessary to visit every three years to keep it. Just traversing immigration is enough, but this time that was not possible. In contrast with some other jurisdictions, anyone who entered Hong Kong must stay at least for the complete 14 day quarantine period. You can’t just quarantine for a few hours or days and then leave. So we booked an AirBnB in wonderful old Sai Ying Pun. Just getting there was a Kafkaesque nightmare — which I wrote about before. In fact that would not be possible now — you have to stay in a designated quarantine hotel — and for 21 days.
The experience in HK quarantine was not so bad for us — though as it turns out we could’ve made it better. We should have prepared by bringing more supplies. Luckily I prevailed upon an old friend to drop off some necessities. Others are not supposed to visit, but staying in a private residence as we were, there was no-one to stop us. We could not, ourselves, leave due to the geo-located app we needed to frequently check-in with. And that if we were seen outside with quarantine bracelets we would likely have been reported. We had no interest in flouting these rules.
But our friend visiting while keeping distant — all wearing masks, him not touching what we’d touched— didn’t seem a risk. He stayed for half an hour while we drank a couple of beers. He left some necessities, but most importantly local mobile SIM cards. I’m not sure what we would’ve done without these. For the first couple of days we ordered additional food via Uber and Deliveroo— luckily their apps work internationally (Starbucks’ does not!). It took 3 days to get a first grocery delivery from Wellcome, a local HK supermarket chain. After that we could function quite well.
In fact in Hong Kong, groups had emerged on Facebook where quarantined members would write posts, stating their location and that they needed some item, then a non-quarantined group member would drop it off. This is a very Hong Kong type of system: it’s a great community. Unfortunately we didn’t know about these groups!
But we had the internet. My sons kept studying and entertaining themselves effectively. I kept running my business ProfitView with hardly any issues, using Zoom and Google Meet. This would have been much more difficult only a year or two ago.
In no way was it a hard experience — but it was great to get our freedom when it was over. It was a treat just to walk down the street. We renewed our Permanent Residencies. We spent time with old friends. We enjoyed the relative freedom of a low-Covid city with all restaurants and shops open. It was great to be normal.
London
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| Tower Bridge, London |
We returned to France, where we live. However, my elder son pursues an English language education. For this he needed to sit exams in a college in London. Our intention was to stay in a flat I was renting near Tower Bridge for the month leading up to his exam dates. Some time before that the UK government implemented a two week quarantine. I thought — that shouldn’t be a problem. Grocery deliveries — in fact all types of deliveries — are very efficient in London. With experience of Hong Kong under our belts, we knew what to do. But it was easier than that.
In fact, the UK quarantine was not enforced at all. It became clear after a couple of days that there was no practical reason to actually stay in the flat all the time. We went for walks. We kept our distance from others — as we always did anyway.
I thought through my position with regard to Covid. From the beginning I’d asserted to my wife that 95% of our concern must revolve around her 80 year old parents. They are really at risk — especially her mother who has a serious lung condition. So in the weeks before any time we visited them, we would pedantically take all precautions to avoid Covid infection. Always wearing masks. Carefully keeping distant from others when shopping and in the street. Never touching our faces if we’d touched surfaces while out. Carrying hand-sanitiser and using it whenever our hands had the remote chance of contamination. Using our elbows to press pedestrian crossing buttons. Never touching stairwell banisters. Using a cloth to open doors. Basically being ever vigilant to eliminate the possibility of catching Covid. We’d just come back from visiting them when we left for my son’s exams.
So when we found ourselves in London in an entirely unmonitored quarantine, I went through the rationale for it. The quarantine was to protect UK residents from the risk that arrivals had caught Covid abroad and might spread it to them. After weeks of carefully avoiding any possibility of infection, clearly we were a very low risk. It seemed clear to me this quarantine programme was aimed to reduce the number of UK foreign holiday makers. It is they who had been the major source of new UK infections. With the quarantine requirements in place, UK residents who took vacations would have to miss two additional weeks of work on their return. These would be subtracted from their vacation days. Most would thus cancel their holidays. Foreign infection would be greatly reduced. There was therefore no need for the government to take on the logistics and expense of actually enforcing the quarantine — and so they didn’t. When we arrived in St Pancras on the Eurostar there was a quick check that we’d registered on their website, but that’s the last we saw of any government official.
There’s a large Waitrose just two minutes walk from our flat. I made the judgement that the risks — to the UK public — of me shopping there, taking my usual care to socially distance and wear a mask, were close to zero. So that’s what I did. Also, we went walking most days. Once in a while we grabbed a take-away coffee or hot-chocolate — all the while carefully social distancing. In this way we broke the quarantine requirements. From what I read, most people did. I don’t believe this flouting of the rules was wrong because the risk to others was vanishingly remote. We weren’t cavalier in our attitude — quite the opposite, we were minutely careful — but we broke the rules.
Perth
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| Perth city, Western Australia from King's Park |
My father died nearly 3 years ago. His death precipitated a decline in my mother. So I’ve wanted to visit her, with my sons for some time. The intention was to continue to Perth, where she lives and I grew up, after the trip to Hong Kong. But Australia shut their borders — even to Australian citizens. Western Australia, of which Perth is the capital, implemented further restrictions so that even Australians from other states were excluded.
Some time later however, I found out that there was a system of exemptions: if you were in particular categories, you could get a G2G Pass — “Good to Go”. One category was “compassionate grounds”. So I applied, stating that I was concerned that I might not have meaningful communication with my mother if I didn’t visit soon. My application was rejected, requiring more documentation: they wanted a letter from a doctor. I contacted my mother’s GP who did draft a letter. Much to my surprise this was accepted and I obtained a the pass for myself and my sons. I planned to travel there shortly after my son’s exams in London and stay for Christmas. I booked flights and accommodation and alerted my family we were coming. It was going to be a great Christmas in Covid-free Perth!
Well… not so much.
Since the beginning of the crisis, airlines have provided the “feature” of free cancellation. Cancel any time and get credit to use for later flights. In fact the flights I booked to Perth were from credit for earlier flights that fell though (while we were trying to get to Hong Kong — see my earlier blog). But the flip-side is that airlines can cancel too — at the last minute, without warning or penalty. And that’s what they did to us.
Multiple legs were cancelled. In total the whole flight had to be rebooked three times. Each time I had to cancel and rebook accommodation and car rental, and to apologise to disappointed family members. Sometimes the root cause was logistical: if there’s not enough passengers, the airline cancels a leg. That can mean it’s impossible to connect — so the whole flight goes. But by that time there’s no free seats to rebook on for two months or more.
Other times it’s just not clear why the cancellations occurred. Australia limits the number of people who can enter each airport per week and per flight to keep the risk of infection down. This is amongst those who already have a G2G pass. Flights to Perth can carry a maximum of less than 50 — that’s on an aircraft with a capacity of over 400. I believe there is some unofficial horse-trading of seats and that normal citizens like ourselves can get arbitrarily bumped. It’s extremely frustrating.
So as the dates for our third re-booked flights approached, I didn’t have high hopes. We chose not to tell our sons — to avoid disappointment yet again. It was only when, three days before the flights we had to get Covid tests, we revealed what was happening. Even at this stage I was expecting a cancellation — and that happened! The first leg, Paris to London, was cancelled. After three hours on the phone the airline managed to find another route. This required an extra flight via Madrid and an overnight stay — but we were pleased to take it.
Even once we’d taken the first couple of flights I wasn’t sure we’d get there. As we checked in for the final legs they scrutinised our bookings with a furrowed brow. They called up their head office… the language I couldn’t understand but I could hear “…Perth…Perth…” — I feared the worst. But finally we had our boarding passes. It was really happening.
Even before we disembarked the plane in Perth it was clear this was the most serious quarantine of the three. We were delayed about an hour because another aircraft had arrived before us. They had to complete a deep cleaning of the arrivals area to eliminate any cross-contamination. They weren’t mucking around.
The arrival process took about 3 hours. We were told we were very lucky — we were going to stay in the Pan Pacific Hotel. I’d never heard of it. It turns out it is the old Sheraton re-branded. When we’d arrived in Hong Kong, we’d just taken public transport to our AirBnB — feeling that it was rather odd that we’d been allowed to. That didn’t happen in Perth: we were put on buses, socially distanced, and travelled in convoy with a police escort, lights flashing.
At the hotel we were provided a luggage trolley which we loaded ourselves. We were kept well separated from the public. It was like a military operation. I later learned that they designated certain areas “the Red Zone”. There is even a separate Red Zone kitchen. Red Zone workers are Covid tested at least weekly and couldn’t mix with other employees. So we went forward to a Red Zone check-in desk.
We were allocated a room with two queen size beds for the three of us. I don’t believe this is reasonable. I would have been fine with three single beds. Two teenagers sharing beds though, or say, me with my youngest for two weeks: not acceptable. I elected to “upgrade” to two connecting rooms — at my additional expense. This is not something I can easily afford but didn’t think I had a real choice.
The details of the quarantine are quite simple: no exiting the rooms in any circumstances. It’s timed, to the minute, from when our flight’s wheels touched down. This was very strict: even when we were being Covid tested (which happened twice) we had to stay in the doorway of the room. My youngest son was explicitly and sharply told to step back when he ventured forward a little to look down the corridor. There’s a guard posted outside the room 24 hours per day.
There are three meals per day delivered in bags placed outside our doors. The delivery staff knock loudly. The procedure is that you wait two minutes, put on a mask and then open the door to take the food. There’s a certain amount of food variation available — you call up and make your request. There are vegetarian, halal, vegan and lactose free versions. It’s also possible to order online — Uber Eats, Deliveroo and supermarkets. There’s a convenience store nearby that delivers. Friends or loved ones may bring some items by — though there were some restrictions on what was allowed.
For us, the food was generally adequate. There was plenty of it. Some meals we didn’t think much of — others were pretty good. I tended to order a latte in the mornings. The price was quite reasonable — surely discounted from the normal room service price. I ordered beers on some evenings — again, the price was reasonable.
The internet was okay — occasional niggles, but reasonable bandwidth. I continued operating my business without too many problems. My boys’ educations continued quite effectively. I successfully ordered Australian mobile phone SIMs from the local convenience store so that I could provide a phone number when signing up to local websites.
The hotel had set up a Facebook group where they broadcast the day’s menus and gave other feedback. They were rather censorious with it however. Complaints weren’t well tolerated. As a result some of the guests set up a competing Facebook group! There were some over-the-top posts about horrifying dust and dirt. Guests took it upon themselves to send emails to government departments and politicians saying our treatment was “inhumane”. First world problems!
Soon after we arrived and at various times in our stay nurses from the Department of Health would call and check up on us. We got particular attention because we were designated a “family with a single parent”. There were special provisions in case, for instance, I fell ill with Covid: an adult would enter our room and look after the children. Medical staff were available 24 hours per day. They were quite friendly and approachable.
They administered Covid tests on days 4 and 12. Back of throat and both nostrils — not painful. The day after the first test I called for the results. The nurse on duty took some time to look us up: all negative. “You’d know all about it if you were positive!” he said.
Checking the stats, just on the day of our second test there were two new positives. There had been no local transmissions for months. At that point there were 14 current Covid cases in Western Australia. They must have all come with flights like ours. This is even though everyone incoming has a negative PCR test less than 72 hours old. It shows how infectious the virus is. Our careful vigilance in avoiding infection is fully warranted. Australia and Western Australia’s quarantine policy was clearly the right course. They are reaping the rewards. I do feel that countries around the world could — with much effort — have done the same thing. It would have been worth it.
While we were in quarantine there was a Western Australian state election. In Australia, state elections are important and compulsory. The airwaves are saturated with political ads. It’s a big deal and very well managed: the winner has a genuine democratic mandate. In this election, the governing Labor party, who had made the tough decisions to close the state, won a stunning victory. Normally the 59 seats are about evenly divided between Labor and Liberal — the other big party. The National party — rural based — wins a couple of seats. This time Labor won 53 seats. The Liberals won’t even be the official opposition any more — they only won two seats to the Nationals’ four. It is probably the most comprehensive, truly democratic, election victory in world history.
That is the reward the West Australian people have given their government, who, this time, have served their interests well. In Perth, Covid is foreign news. It’s like a distant war: a big concern, a talking point — but it’s not personal. It’s similar to how, one year ago, the Australian bush-fires were to everyone else.
We exited our hotel rooms at the second the clock ticked to the 14 day mark. We showed our documentation to the guards. They still maintained social distancing: all, like us, wearing masks. We were ushered into the elevators. We joined a queue showing our Quarantine Completion forms. Then — we were out. We removed our masks and walked, laden with backpacks, into the afternoon air. What a wonderful feeling.
As we walked to the bus stop, we had a sense of strangeness. The sum total of all the anti-Covid habits that we were not seeing, was palpable. My son asked “Can I touch my face?”. We had walked back in time into to a better world. There was a humbling sense of privilege.
This is what we have lost to Covid. Let’s get it back.
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