Coronavirus - two years on

 On Thursday, 24 March, it will be two years since the United Kingdom was placed under lockdown on account of the coronavirus pandemic. I vividly remember the sunsplashed but empty streets of Stornoway, a total absence of visitors and no cruiseliners - whereas in previous years, up to 40 liners would call through the summer. Having to wait in a queue outside Tesco for up to 45 minutes on one occasion, and having to take an hour to go through the store. I recall shuffling through Tesco, 7 feet apart from the previous and the next customer, having to write up the shopping list in exact sequence - because if I forgot to pick up the mayonnaise in aisle 4, and did not think about it until aisle 6, I'd have to ask a member of staff to please go and pick it up for me. Having to wait at aisle 12 to be called to a checkout. Hardly any shops open, public transport severely limited - but hardly any cases here in the Western Isles. The horror stories from the mainland, with up to 1500 deaths each day, and heartrending accounts of people dying by the dozen in carehomes - like the one in Portree, 50 miles south of Stornoway in Skye - without any loved ones to hold their hand in their final moments.

The year 2021 brought hope in the shape of vaccinations, and the restrictions gradually eased. Visitors started to return to the isles, mostly in motorhomes (much to the aggravation of many locals), but no cruiseliners. The deathtoll continued to rise, and currently stands at 150,000 across the UK. Although the numbers of deaths or severe cases of Covid have gone down substantially, thanks to the vaccinations, here in the isles, we have been hitting high numbers in recent days, up to 155 on one day last week. The demographics have shifted to children, with many new cases among primary school age pupils. 

The war in Ukraine, with a potential for becoming a world-war conflagration, has eclipsed coronavirus from the headlines. The pandemic has not gone away, and a new round of vaccinations is starting across the country. In Scotland, we are still required to wear facemasks in an indoor, public setting. 

I started 2020 with trepidation. This, the third decade of the 21st century, is fulfilling that promise of being a period of concern, and I'll go so far as to say - we ain't seen nothing yet.

Putin - isolated

I'm looking past the images of destruction, atrocities, suffering, displacement and horror. I see the man, who started a war - although his people are not allowed to call it that - on spurious grounds. Vladimir Putin (69), president of Russia. He is used to deploying tactics of "let's see what I can get away with". Forgetting that starting a war is ruled by the Laws of Unintended Consequences, the enterprise has blown up in his face in a breathtaking fashion. He will probably end up achieving his goals militarily. But at what cost. The human cost will be beyond imagination. However, my point is more the political and economic cost. Apart from half a dozen crackpot dictatorships, such as North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Myanmar and the like, no nation on this earth overtly supports him. That leaves a very lonely, isolated man, perhaps cut off from reality. A very dangerous situation, also because he commands thousands of nuclear warheads. Unlikely to be used, but still. He has, after 8 days of fighting, not abandoned his vision for Europe, as being his fiefdom, his backyard. Cut off from NATO and the Americans, and the Russian Empire restored to its glory, as existed until 1989. And Ukraine coalesced into Russia. 

Putin is isolated, and has been since the pandemic kicked off two years ago. He will be surrounded by Yes Men, and his security apparatus is busy suppressing dissent. But this is 2022, not 1939. His economy is being asphyxiated, his sports men and women are now pariahs, and shipping and aircraft are not welcome anywhere anymore. 

How will this end? That is a question that those in power and authority around the world should be contemplating. Preferably by negotiation. But with a dogmatic individual like Vladimir Vladimirovich, that will be well-nigh impossible. He, like most Russians, does not like being compared to Hitler. Putin claims to be denazifying Ukraine - not realising he is behaving the way Hitler did between 1933 and 1945.  The parallels are disconcerting.

• Georgia 2008 - the Rhineland in 1936.
• Crimea 2014 - the Anschluß of Austria with Germany in March 1938 .
• Donetsk and Luhansk 2014 - the Sudetenland, spring 1939.
• Ukraine 2022 - Poland, September 1939. 

But that is where the parallels end abruptly. Poland was a walkover in 1939. Ukraine is resisting valiantly and the Russian campaign is lagging well behind schedule. Worse than that, from Putin's perspective, the world has rallied behind Ukraine within days, and he is left completely isolated. I will not look into the future, because wars are notoriously unpredictable. Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945, ten days after his 56th birthday. Putin will have his 70th birthday on October 7th. I wonder if there will be anything to celebrate for him by then.