Being a first gen migrant during COVID-19
This is a rough draft
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Just had to say no to my mom, again, re flying to Moscow.
My parents are looking for loopholes to get me over to Russia, and it’s difficult to tell if I am being too cautious.
For various reasons, my mum needs me right now. My parents are in their 50s and 60s, both clinically at risk. Yours truly can boast, among other things, mild-moderate asthma. Still they seem confident I should travel, as a family friend hitherto stuck in London has recently been able to book a ticket to Moscow. My December tickets have been cancelled as Russia has formally closed its borders to the UK over Christmas. A quick phone conversation with the somewhat terse and sarcastic gentleman at the Russian Embassy revealed that my compatriots are flooding back in via Turkey. ‘Do as you wish at your own fear and risk’, I was instructed.
Travel risks aside (lol), there’s still a fair bit to consider. The argument is basically that Russia is, give and take, on top of things. If I go to Russia, I can easily get vaccinated, free of charge (true). My mum had the two Sputnik V jabs and believes she’s safer now. That may well be so (to some extent), but it doesn’t make it any safer for me to come in contact with my dad. Immunity takes weeks to build up once the vaccine has been administered. It is perfectly possible to have the virus and receive the jab at the same time.
Another issue is that my family indicated on several occasions they would expect me not to self-isolate for the full time period required, as tests are readily available. I am weary; as I understand it, to be remotely meaningful isolation has to last at least 5 full days before the first test is administered. Even then, tests do not reliably detect the virus. A French study (Nature, 21 Dec) has found that in the first 7 weeks of the lockdown (May 11- June 28) the surveillance system failed to detect 9 out of 10 cases. With time, as the virus slowed down, the detection rate increases to 38%. However, a survey showed that out of people with symptoms only 31% reached out to a doctor; ‘large numbers of symptomatic COVID-19 cases did not seek medical advice despite recommendations, as confirmed by serological studies’. That roughly means (plz correct me if i’m wrong by all means) that for every person that managed to test positive, we could expect two more symptomatic carriers to be out there (wrt the European context).
I am only human. It’s been 12 months, I want to see my mum, to wait this out in the snowy Russian countryside, have the Sputnik-V solve all our problems. But how can I trust the officials? Russia has also continuously altered its reports of the vaccine’s efficacy in response to announcements from other countries, all the while playing down the epidemiological part of the picture. Despite having the fourth-highest global caseload, Putin continuously insisted mortality was low. As early as May, a respected statistician publicly named his employer, the State data agency Rosstat, as responsible for misclassifying C-19 deaths. In July he was, naturally, asked to leave his job. (Radio Liberty, July 13). And yet, last week Russian deputy Prime Minister finally admitted the true death rate was behind only Mexico and Brazil. ‘“More than 81% of this increase in mortality over this period is due to Covid”… meaning that more than 186,000 Russians have died from Covid-19’ (Guardian, 28 Dec).
Is the Sputnik-V effective against the UK strain, which has infected 1 out 30 people in London? Russia (and its vocal investors) seem confident that its technology, which dates back to a period of rigorous Soviet standards and key advancement in virology, will handle it. It does seem like the vector tech has a lot going for it, which makes me term more positive. Still, I would like to eventually see some evidence that it’s both a) genuinely safe and b) effective against the strain I could carry. Ideally that evidence would come in a form other than just words out of a guy’s mouth, before I risk my parents’ lives. As a comrade said to me a few weeks ago, fuck killing your family to please them.
Finally, UK seems to have indicated it will require a negative test for inbound international travel (BBC, Jan 6). The Home Office has stopped direct flights from South Africa. Who is to say borders won’t get tougher over the coming weeks? I might struggle to come home to London, be cut off from my GP and support network indefinitely.
I realise all this is quite haphazard and I wrote it on my phone in a panic to try and process my thoughts/feelings/balance the guilt with the facts. If anyone can think of any more coherent reasons why I shouldn’t travel (or maybe why I should), let me know. Cheers
