Here in rural Poland, we've only recently started taking Covid seriously

At first, Poland and the Czech Republic handled the virus so much better than other countries. My wife, six children and I live on the border of these two, where we have turned the semi-ruin that was Piotrowice Nyskie Palace into a pleasant guest house. We had bumper bookings lined up for 2020. 

Our normal business could not be more friendly to a virus looking to spread. Groups are our speciality. So,  in 2019, we hosted family reunions, big number-birthday parties, an annual week-long tango workshop, an obscure political party called the Pirates, some anarcho-capitalist internet entrepreneurs from Hamburg and, three years in row, a group of young, lithe, slightly squiffy 'creatives' out of Berlin and London doing art stuff, terrifying the natives with their semi-nakedness. 

When the virus came in March 2020, Poland closed down early and efficiently. Come June, we were out of lockdown, there was no virus in the local population and our summer felt normal even if our groups were smaller, and the anarcho-capitalists had cancelled. 

No-one in the village believed in the virus, or knew anyone who’d had it, and nor did people in the big cities. Covid-19 was abstract; in England, Italy, New York, over there, not here. Life went back to normal, children in and out of each others' houses, barbecues, restaurants in nearby towns open, villagers travelling to Germany for work – none of whom fell ill. If you refused a handshake or wore a mask people gave you strange looks. I’d say the Czechs were even more defiant.

Me, I was nervous. My brother in London had been quite ill, as had my son in New York. But I found it impossible to be the one socially distant guy – especially as a host – so I shrugged my shoulders and embraced the situation, and the people, if a hug was their preferred greeting. We ran our annual rugby festival in July and no one got ill; neither did our tango dancers from Berlin in August. 

Schools went back in September, but by October the children were home again, and it had become plain that Covid had arrived and was hitting hard. It was our first wave, and both Poland the Czech Republic started to have numbers far worse than the UK’s.

Our local newspaper editor and recent MP, a friend, was a vehement anti-masker and continued to write that it was all a hoax and lockdowns were designed to take away our liberties. Those were pretty much his last words before being put in an induced coma. He died of Covid in December. Several hundred of us went to his funeral, and Prime Minister Morawiecki sent a wreath.

We had an outbreak in our village in November during which several people got very ill. We all believe in it now. Families were strictly quarantined with a functioning app backed up by police visits. Our lockdown is looser than that of the UK's; here it's comparable to Tier 3.