10 months on from my last post – and the milestone of reaching Herzliya Pituach and our home in Israel – and I have been unable to visit Israel let alone to hit the trail. With UK deaths heading toward 100,000, two million deaths worldwide (and still rising) and huge travel restrictions the COVID 19 pandemic has brought us to a place I have not experienced in my lifetime. War, plague and famine may have been with the world for millenia, but I was one of a charmed generation in the UK that had never really experienced any of them.
Israel had its challenges in managing throught the pandemic – it started well but suffered from a lack of discipline as it went on – but is now well advanced in its vaccination programme and hopes to complete it by the end of March. A great achievement. The most remarkable achievement of all though must be the speed at which vaccines have been developed and rolled out; without them the position today would be extraordinarily bleak. As I write, the UK is in its third nationwide lockdown and has been one of the most badly affected countries – healthwise and economically – in the world. The government has dithered and failed time after time to act early and decisively. With the lunacy of Brexit on top, the reverberations and consequences will last years – if not decades even if we get our vaccination rollout as planned.
So, whilst I hope to be vaccinated soon, it seems unlikely that I will be able to get to Israel until May, and getting back to the shvil may have to wait until October. Let’s hope the world will be on its way to conquering COVID 19 by then, although I fear the likelihood is that we will still be struggling in many places next winter and beyond.
Hiking the Israel National Trail 