Janey Godley: Covid and independence are both divisive

We have been told that down in Westminster, the PM will be giving the country their Freedom Day, with so many more rules relaxed.

Compulsory mask wearing will be ditched, he says, there will be no fines or charges for those who scream in anger at supermarket workers, so that’s a welcome change for many people waiting to buy milk and getting embroiled in a small domestic at the tills in your local shop.

This will be a welcome relief to so many people, especially the hospitality industry and the NHS. Yet, some folks are opting to stay masked up and abiding by the covid rules that have been drilled into us over the past 14 months.

Meanwhile in Scotland we have six out of ten of Europe’s Covid hotspots according to the WHO. So, things aren’t moving as fast as we hoped up here north of the border, every day we wait to see what the R number is as the Scottish summer disappears fast before our very eyes and we slowly pack away our sandals with a ‘maybe next year’ frown on our sun deprived faces. Holidays in rainy Scottish loch side cabins are going to be the biggest Instagram hits this year and I am here for it.

It has been said that the vaccine is breaking the link between hospitalisation and deaths, and I for one have been “double jagged” and I am optimistic that we can finally come through the other end of this horrific pandemic.

Still, I won’t drop my mask. It’s a personal choice for me and makes me feel secure as it stands.

This pandemic and the fall out of disinformation and conspiracy theories has split many families and friendships. I have blocked a few people I know on social media who presented as virus experts in-between working in the local fruit shop or selling hand crafted scents on their Facebook group.

I tend to take my medical advice from medical people, not Big Tam who breeds hamsters and has inside bacteria knowledge from his pal who once worked in security at the local chemist.

My brain goes dull when people privately message me about how the masters of the universe are out to make the public comply to their devious rules, that Covid is a manufactured fake fear and that one day my ovaries will be harvested to make baby otters become the master race. I might have got that wrong, because I stopped reading and blocked the ‘insider’. To be honest at 60 years of age, my ovaries are worth less than 60 Embassy coupons or 20 Greenshield stamps (remember them?).

My point is, many friendships and families have been at loggerheads with each other on ‘who believes what’ and it’s time for that anger to heal. Can we forgive the pal who came into work refusing to mask up or use a lateral Flow test?

Will we welcome our cousins back into the family fold who decided the vaccine is just a way to control us all, so they won’t be partaking in the national drive?

I know there are people in my own circle who are angry at me for believing that Covid actually exists, and they can ‘run up my hump’ as my mammy used to say, but I am trying to rationalise their thinking. It’s hard when they laugh at me for wearing a mask and mock me when I tell them I wipe down my milk cartons with hand sanitiser wipes before I put it in the fridge.

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The grievances run deep and can have long lasting effects within our own communities and friendships. When we hopefully look back on this time, we will need to accept that people had different views on how they coped and some people didn’t want to wear a mask, abide by the rules or take the jag. If the press is happy to keep pushing the agenda that the notion of Scottish independence split the country and some families, it needs to accept that Covid rules did much of the same. It’s the nature of trying to get everyone to do the same thing at the same time, it’s going to cause problems. That’s humans for you.

Arguments over which football team at which event on which side of the political divide spread covid the most, is just a benign form of division all over again. It doesn’t help anyone or add anything to debate, it just causes more anger and hatred online.

Then we have the government ministers who openly broke covid rules, like Hancock, Cummings and in Scotland Margaret Ferrier. We have political parties using their opposition as ‘covid weapons’ to sack, vilify and publicly shame whilst we, the general public have had to witness the constant grassing, sniping and sneaky images on the front pages of the tabloids.

We could have done without all of that and had all the leaders of all the nations actually focus on getting us out of this horrific terrifying pandemic.

We needed leadership and support, not to stand on the side lines pointing fingers and displaying massive hypocrisy in their own personal lives whilst the elderly were perishing in care homes.

The “Sturgeon V Johnson” Covid competition benefitted nobody in the UK, it wasn’t what we needed, as information was being flip flopped on the national news and snark being traded on the Andrew Marr show, people were terrified for their lives and for their business’s.

Mind you when Andy Burnham started a beef with Nicola Sturgeon, that took the heat off Matt Hancock for a short while and then the media focussed on George Galloway on his UK tour trying to win a political seat first in Scotland and then in England, yet failing at both, who knew the Cat in the Hat would unify us all with his particular brand of politics?

I have great optimism for the vaccine roll out, I believe that we will be able to enjoy theatres and concerts again. That we can sit in busy restaurants and not fear for our lives, if I can’t have that hope, then I have nothing.