Opinion: ‘Light at the end of the Covid tunnel’

The first recipient of a coronavirus vaccine was Margaret Keenan, who turns 91 next week. I believe her name will represent a milestone in medical history.

I am immensely grateful to the scientists and doctors who have achieved so many wonders in so little time. For the purposes of comparison, it took Jonas Salk seven years of research and testing to develop the polio vaccine. We can be proud of the technology and ingenuity that have gotten us to this point.

Nevertheless, as we start to see the first gleams of light at the end of this particular tunnel, we shouldn’t just congratulate ourselves on having survived. We need to be wary until the health professionals tell us otherwise: this means still wearing masks, washing our hands frequently, and maintaining social distancing. I’m afraid the tier system will be with us for some time to come. An optimistic assessment I heard on the radio suggested that we will be able to go on summer holidays: this is something to look forward to, but there is a distance between here and there.

I also believe that it’s time to ask how we were caught so flat-footed by the coronavirus. It is not as if we weren’t warned. The World Health Organisation believed there was a risk. Before leaving office, President Obama and his team had a strategy in place should it occur; unfortunately, it appears President Trump ditched this.

Our world has never been more interconnected. This has many benefits: we can buy more high-quality goods for cheaper than ever before. This has a downside: along with goods, our diseases can travel far more rapidly than in previous eras and touch every part of the globe.

Perhaps we have been so busy looking at the upside that we didn’t consider the potential problems.

On a local level, we should be better at our planning for such events. Having been caught out this time, we should do our best to anticipate what may come our way. Peterborough is not what it usually is: as I go through the city, I see that many have their Christmas lights up, and there is a general holiday glow. Yet, there is something lesser about it: it’s not that the lights are dimmer, but the volume and tempo of the city has been constricted by necessity. It will be an odd holiday season. Whatever we can do to avoid this happening again is worth consideration.

We also need to consider how our lives will change permanently: I suspect there will be fewer people who will work in offices from here on in.

We will do more online out of general principles; many have discovered the convenience of online shopping. This has big implications for commercial property and the revenues the council can raise from taxing it. It makes Fletton Quays look like even more of a white elephant than previously.

We are emerging from a grim 2020; Margaret Keenan is the first one stepping into a brighter day, we will follow in line behind her. But perhaps the ultimate judgement on our society and government will flow from what we have learned.