WE’RE heading into week five of the coronavirus lockdown now and if you haven’t gone crazy at least once during that time period, I fear you might be some manner of machine.
In our house we take it in turns to have meltdowns. There is at least one, once a day. It could be over something small like a child drinking the last of the orange juice and leaving the carton back in the fridge to taunt the next child who comes looking for it, resulting in a screaming match. Or it could be a teenager arguing about why they can’t go out with their friends, even though they know why, but are just so flipping fed up with staying in the house.
Everyone is stressed out, not sleeping well, out of routine, worried about either work or school while trying to adjust to the new normal that doesn’t show any signs of changing any time soon.
But we’re sticking to it and staying home, because we know what’s at stake here.
The lockdown was called on Thursday March 23, but in reality ours started the week before that because I pulled the kids from school, started working from home and isolated my mum who is getting treatment for cancer. I didn’t feel safe letting the kids mingle in high numbers in school and I wanted to reduce my chances of getting this while out at work, dealing with dozens and dozens of people every day.
Last week Boris Johnson’s stand-in Dominic Raab extended the lockdown for a further three weeks and said that restrictions will not be lifted until changes can be safely made. I think this is the right move.
Even if the restrictions were lifted tomorrow I would be at pains to venture out into the world. This virus is circulating in our cities and our communities and making people very, very sick. It is making people sick enough that they need hospital treatment and it is making people so sick they need to be kept alive on ventilators. It is killing people.
Even though this virus is destroying our economy, impacting negatively on our children’s education and having a detrimental impact on every section of society, I think we need to keep the restrictions going.
As self-employed people, the virus has all but wiped out our incomes, stalled business plans we had and made our future look really uncertain. And it’s very frightening – but so is the thought of the people I love falling ill with this virus, which could them very sick or kill them.
I know people who have come down with suspected coronavirus and have been very sick for a month, or for five or six weeks. They have not been ‘sick enough’ to be admitted to hospital but totally out of action, can’t get out of bed, weak as water, horrendously sick and with problems breathing. These are young, fit and healthy people totally wiped out by the bug.
When I see people starting to push back against restrictions and break the lockdown, have parties with their friends, congregate in groups and get totally complacent I think they must not realise or care that this virus can strike any one of us down.
It might make you sick – sick enough that you have to go to bed for a month – or it might land you in hospital struggling to breathe. It might kill you. Every time you cross the threshold of your door you take your chances. It’s like Russian roulette.
When we look at the numbers of infections, hospital admissions and deaths we seem to have flattened the curve. We need to keep that going to protect the NHS’s ability to cope with and be confident in the fact that they can provide good critical care to patients who need them.
The worst thing that we can do now is to ease up on the great work we are all doing and allow a second peak to hit our health service and our loved ones.
We’ve come this far. Let’s keep going, walking through this storm together until it is truly behind us and the sun can shine.
