When things go wrong, such as a pandemic striking, solutions have to be found to remedy the ill-effects, adapt and move on. When things go right, celebration and congratulation are essential tools to enjoy the moment and enhance well-being.
CELEBRATING EXCELLENCE
A celebration of resilience, competition and achievement, the Olympics Tokyo 2020 are a success story. The decision to proceed was bold, and some of course thought it reckless, as the Delta variant spread its wings globally. Would it not have been easier for the Japanese authorities to cancel the games altogether, and perhaps prudently sensible? But the cessation of cowering in the face of Covid was and remains necessary across so many walks of life. The Olympics are a triumph, despite the lack of crowds, which itself makes stretching themselves to the limits even more difficult for elite athletes. Yet so many records, Olympic and World, have been broken across many disciplines.
And there is much for the UK to cheer in the performance of team GB. Tom Daley at last winning gold; British sailors ruling the sea; a new mastery in the swimming pool; a haul of medals in cycling and even boxing. While GB track athletes have struggled this time, 13-year-old skateboarder, Sky Brown, who a year earlier fractured her skull in training, became the youngest ever UK medal winner – her fearless bounce-back is a lesson to all especially in Covid times; and it is probably the first time a BBC news person has said “Well done, Sky.” Perhaps too the new inspiring institution of competitors handing out the medals to each other, rather than receiving them from so-called VIPs, will stick for future competitions. Olympic Games, and sport generally, is not everyone’s cup of tea, but they are surely a welcome tonic of human endeavour for all.
CELEBRATING CONTROL OF THE UK PANDEMIC
Of course, this unpredictable virus will continue to deliver anguish long into the future, and innovative measures will be needed constantly to fight it; but, for now in the UK, vaccine has restored an element of stability and control over the damage Covid wreaks, and the house arrest of lockdown is ended hopefully for the foreseeable future. Perhaps Boris Johnson and his team made the right decision when he lifted restrictions on 19 July, despite being branded reckless by his enemies. The World watched in disbelief some said. Did he just strike lucky or was it good judgement, and in any case should his decision be celebrated? It is good that his closest medical advisers, while worrying of course over the risks, have stood by him.
It is less good that so many Sage advisers, who will have had concern over the risks chose to go public over their own misgivings and sought to detach themselves from Government decisions. Perhaps some were politically motivated and others ego motivated? Is it not disappointing that one chose to write a book in the midst of the country fighting the pandemic, a self-justifying testament, passing judgements as if that was his right? Perhaps it betrays the weakest self-interest concealed badly in a mistaken cloak of public interest?
The realisation that those purveyors of doom who forecast the ranges of possibilities throughout the pandemic, have been shown to be consistently wrong, often by a country mile, is perhaps a valuable lesson worth celebrating. Neil Ferguson’s hunger for television airtime and newspaper columns seems insatiable. It is shocking that he broadcasts one week in July saying that 100,000 infections a day would be inevitable soon after 19 July, and then just a few weeks later, with infections nowhere near his prediction, he is on the telly declaring the pandemic looks like it will be almost over in the UK by October. The wide-ranging forecasts published at all decision points of the pandemic form a basis of decision-making, but they are so wild as to be useless. They highlight in themselves the impossible catch-22 of choices around lockdowns and alternatives faced by the whole country but especially those in authority.
It appears that rates of infections are stabilising in the UK, as are hospitalisations, and deaths due to Covid. It also appears that the real problems are with the unvaccinated, though in the case of deaths they are commonly again among the oldest and weakest, whether or not vaccinated – hardly surprising or abnormal. This stability and the vaccine success, and the consequent renewal of normal freedoms, are causes for great celebration.
CELEBRATING THE ECONOMIC REVIVAL OF THE UK
The pandemic battered the UK economy, which is so heavily services and consumer driven. UKGOV implemented one of the World’s most generous support packages for businesses and individuals. Also, the measurement criteria applied in the UK to economic growth and reduction differ from Europe and create a worse impression. The forecast outlook for a UK recovery was the most negative among developed democratic countries. However, that has all changed! Should the UK not now be celebrating that its prospects are now positive. Indeed, the forecasters of economic gloom have reversed gear and now suggest that the UK recovery in growth of GDP will be the best, with the USA, among the large economies. There is further to recover from, and even though the IMF have got most of their highly negative pessimistic UK economic predictions in the recent past hopelessly wrong, it is hopeful that they are suggesting UK recovery to pre-pandemic GDP levels by early 2022.
Unemployment figures are much lower than predicted, with hundreds of thousands in the summer coming off furlough. UKGOV support has helped mitigate job losses, with the Bank of England suggesting the unemployment rate might be less than 1% worse than pre -pandemic. With one million job vacancies in June, the ironic problem is a labour shortage in various sectors. Even Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph, who evidently regards the Ministers in UKGOV as bungling morons throughout the pandemic, bar the vaccine success, recognises that scarring of the economy by Covid could be minimal, and that “Rishi Sunak could get lucky on the economy” (Daily Telegraph, 6 August).
All people in the UK must surely hope Rishi Sunak gets lucky, or indeed has exercised good judgement in the circumstances, and then, if that continues as the IMF and others now forecast, celebrate success. Inflation worries are rearing their head and perhaps some will conjure misery and fault out of the fires of hope, but optimism rather than gloom is more likely to foster success.
CELEBRATING SCIENCE
A massive benefit of the reaction to the pandemic is to have given the importance of sciences, in all their forms, a boost, not just of publicity but a real appreciation of how science can shape and improve our lives. The vaccine successes are the most obvious. But DeepMInd and its innovations in artificial intelligence have received some accolades, but not enough, as the Covid complexities overshadow everything. DeepMind is an organisation dedicated to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) See MORE MEDICAL MARVELS, PROTEINS AND MALARIA. Their thesis is that AI can “dramatically accelerate breakthroughs in many fields of science, and in time advance humanity”. It has now published its scientific paper and source code explaining its AlphaFold 2 AI systems. They are sharing predictions for the shape of every single protein in the human body: untangling the structure of proteins seems to be at the heart of much medical science, including to fight diseases. It is to be celebrated that DeepMind is sharing its innovations with the whole world.
Scientific developments, including medical advances of great wonder, occur with great regularity but the achievements get such muted publicity. Each one is a testament to human ingenuity.
Focus, not just on solving problems, but appreciation of achievement of every kind and encouraging celebration would be good for mental health.
