Dark uncertainty, bright point of light

The longest night of the year is almost upon us here in the northern hemisphere. The winter solstice of 2020 befits the dark uncertainty that hovers over a country in the tightening grip of deadly disease and on the brink of a dramatic break up with its closest allies. The United Kingdom’s rulers are about to “take back control,” as they put it in their victorious campaign to leave the European Union. The mood among the people is far from triumphant.

Grim news about the coronavirus has overtaken the hope brought by the launch of the world’s first mass vaccination program last week. Despite the second nationwide lockdown in November, the rate of infection across most of the country is still rising rapidly, just as retail and hospitality businesses were hoping to try to make up some of their losses in the week before Christmas. It means that around two-thirds of England’s population are under the strictest restrictions ahead of the Christmas holidays. UK leaders say they’ll stick to the plan to relax them for a five-day period around Christmas, though they warned that a “smaller Christmas is a safer Christmas, and a shorter Christmas is a safer Christmas.”

There are reports that more and more hospitals in England are running low on beds, they’re having to divert patients elsewhere and cancel operations. Even in London, which in pre-COVID times is more than adequately served by its many hospitals, a National Health Service briefing warned they are already beginning to run out of critical care beds and they expect the need to increase because of the relaxation of rules during the holiday. Almost 95 percent of the capital’s total critical care beds are occupied, with the numbers of coronavirus patients needing them jumping more than eight percent in a single day on Wednesday.

It’s a nightmare for public health managers and doctors who are pleading with the public to do everything possible to limit infections. It’s not so much a question of the number of beds, but the shortage of staff available to deal with the rise in patients. Public health authorities here have extra surge capacity that they can make available. Doctors say that staff sickness overall is increasing too. It’s difficult to cover shifts because of the need for contact isolation for staff, more than actual sickness. It means that in many hospitals, the usual one nurse to one patient ratio in intensive care has already been loosened. An ICU doctor told The Independent newspaper: “I am worried mainly over ICU nursing. We’ve already stretched the ratios, and it’s a really finite resource. We’re not at full capacity and teetering on the edge. More admissions will tip us over. I think January is going to be really really difficult.”

Hospital managers as well as doctors are concerned about the cumulative effect all the stress and long hard hours is having on nursing and other health care staff. There are tens of thousands of Filipino nurses on staff under enormous pressure who have been sharing their stories and getting unprecedented praise in the UK.

The University College Hospital declared an “internal incident” earlier in the week. Staff were told it had to do so because of the “insufficient capacity now for emergency and COVID patients, with patients waiting for admission.”

Senior doctors did extra ward rounds to identify patients who could be discharged, to free up space for those waiting for a bed.

Prof. Christina Pagel, a member of the Independent SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) committee and director of clinical operational research at University College London, said “hospital occupancy may well exceed April’s peak within the next two weeks … many frontline NHS staff are exhausted, traumatized and demoralized”.

She added: “This will mean many more deaths to come – and this is all before the Christmas relaxation starts. It feels as if we are slowly but surely walking into a burning building on purpose, knowing it’s probably going to crash down around our heads.” The scene is being set for a third peak in January that is significantly higher than the second.

Authorities are asking people to carefully consider their responsibilities beyond the rules. “You wouldn’t, for example, drive at 70 miles per hour if there was a very icy road, even though the law might say 70 mph is what you can officially drive at,” said England’s chief medical officer. “This is the equivalent of us saying these are icy and treacherous conditions…Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

Here’s some data that might provide some context to the situation facing people here compared to the Philippines. According to the World Health Organization, from Jan. 3 to 5:05 p.m. CET, Dec. 17, 2020, in the Philippines there have been nearly 453,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 compared with 1.9 million in the UK. In the Philippines more than 8,800 have died from COVID, but in the UK there have been more than 65,500 deaths. By the way, in Thailand, there have only been 4,261 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 60 deaths.

The magnitude of the economic recession caused by the coronavirus outbreak is unprecedented in the UK in modern times. That winter solstice, the year’s longest night, will also bring a far rarer phenomenon. For the first time in 800 years, Jupiter and Saturn will form a spectacular conjunction in the sky when they line up in such a way as to look as if they’re touching. At sunset on Dec. 21 in any time zone around the world, the two planets will seemingly merge into a single bright point of light low in the western sky. It’s possible that it was just such a conjunction that is described in the Christmas story as the Star of Bethlehem.

I for one will head for a high point in the city to try to shake off the anxiety and blues engulfing this extraordinary winter. With the lights of the city below, I will lift my eyes and hope to catch a glimpse of the bright light to lift my spirits and take a different perspective on our earthly troubles.

I will remember Carl Sagan’s thoughts looking at a picture of the Earth taken from Voyager 1. As it headed for the outer edges of the solar system, it turned around for one last glimpse of its home planet: “There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”