Covid should have taught us a thing or two about isolation

THE Christmas before Covid came I spent a couple of days working on a feature about loneliness during the festive period.

I'd been struck by figures reported at a council meeting about how many millions of Britons felt isolated all or most of the time - but most especially at a time of year where we're left to assume that everyone, everywhere all at once is having the most brilliant time. 

This is, as it turns out, pretty disastrous for both mental and physical health - in fact chronic loneliness is reckoned as bad for people's wellbeing as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. 

Perhaps predictably my 1,500 long-read on the problem, the consequences and the admirable efforts locally to combat it joined the long list of things I wrote that fell into the "not really that interesting actually" category and an article left to be post online while I was on my Christmas break was instead left for me to publish myself in early January.

I couldn't help but notice how, 12 months on, the chaos of a global pandemic suddenly sent isolation rocketing up the news agenda. I lost count of the number of articles I saw written about if and when people could see their loved ones.

Rather depressingly the issue has, a couple of years on and with Covid receding into memory, once again disappeared into obscurity.

It is easier to assume something isn't a concern if we can convince ourselves it's once again a couple of unfortunate widows and the odd crofter in the Highlands of Scotland for whom the Christmas period is a pretty miserable time.

It's an easy impression to have. The world is smaller now - we can cross oceans in a matter of hours. It seems noisier, figuratively and literally. TV channels never shut down. Social media never shuts up. And everything from our A&Z to our phones have found a voice. We're a long way from the days where your best bet to find a companion was to go buy a dog.

Yet according to Age UK almost two million older people wish they had someone to spend time with over the festive season - this is a cohort of people entirely absent from the cheery calvacade of supermarket ads that blitz our TV from Bonfire Night onwards.

Nor is it just elderly people affected. In fact it's striking how much surveys increasingly identify younger age groups feeling isolated for significant periods.

In an age where almost every friend you've ever met is a click of the button away this seems somewhat odd, but if anything there is probably an argument that the chattering gallery around us can only compound a sense of not being part of things. Just because we're all much more connected does not mean we're all much more involved.

I think also of trends which no doubt don't help. People today move much more often for work, marry later and have children in places away from family networks. We don't tend to know our neighbours and traditional community groups have dwindled in significance.

I'm not sure there's an easy answer to try and deal with isolation, although reflecting back on my former time as a reporter it's yet another reminder of the bone-headed stupidity of journalism by algorithm - where the only worthwhile talking points are the things people are already talking about.

Loneliness is an issue which is important because, quite frankly, it is still a bit of a taboo topic. And refusing to acknowledge it - except in the extraordinary context of a public health crisis - can only be all the more alienating for people who already feel pretty invisible.

Perhaps then we all need to think more about the importance of exchanging pleasantries with strangers, of keeping an eye on neighbours who can't get out much anymore and calling friends you've not heard from in a while. 

These are smaller gestures to start with and don't get anywhere near tackling the problems at a systemic level, but as the formidable Terry Pratchett once said "if you want to slay the demon, you first must speak its name."