Coronavirus — My Thoughts

When I started this blog it was intended to be a place for me to express myself through my writing. As it turned out I’ve used it more as a book review site, and in more recent times I’ve been posting short stories and poems. I think the beauty of having your own blog is that its use can morph and change and grow with you.

That’s also the beauty of writing. What you write and how you write evolves over time. You hone your skills, you grow, you learn, you change. Your perspective changes, opinions change, what’s important to us changes, sometimes gradually, sometimes overnight.

Our lives changed drastically this year almost overnight. Although I pay attention to politics and world events I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly political person, for reasons that I won’t go into here. Yet today I find myself becoming increasingly vocal about my thoughts on current events, compelling me to write this article.

Purely for the purpose of context let me tell you a bit about my situation. I live in a deprived part of North London with my 22 year old son. He works part time and goes to university. I have several chronic health conditions that affect my day to day life but I find ways of being productive the best way I can. My immediate family live in Wales, including my 99 year old grandfather who now lives in a care home. I have a friend who is a care home worker and a friend who is a primary school teacher.

Much to my surprise I have really struggled mentally dealing with the outbreak of the coronavirus. I’m an intelligent, reasonable, studious person with critical thinking and common sense. I’m not a weak minded person, though I have had struggles at certain points in my life, and I feel no shame in admitting that.

Yet here I am struggling to fight my way out of this mental black hole that had sucked me in. Let me preface the rest of this article by saying I’m doing much better now. I seem to have found my footing and struck the right balance of keeping up with the current, ever changing landscape and not completely losing myself down the coronavirus rabbit hole.

Firstly, let me acknowledge that many people and families are suffering due to the various detrimental aspects of the lockdown, not just those that are infected. Families are struggling to feed their kids, sick people are suffering due to hospital appointments being delayed and thousands of people have lost their jobs, and that will most likely continue for some time. The death toll of this virus will be much greater when we count the “collateral damage” as well as direct Covid-19 deaths.

They ALL matter.

Here’s where I get anxious.

The government did not start testing soon enough or broadly enough. The government has consistently been unable to successfully meet their testing targets, only reaching the 100,000 daily test target a handful of times. Here is a link to an interesting article about testing in the UK written by BBC Health Reporter Rachel Schraer. The government have blindsided people and businesses in England with these hasty changes to lockdown measures even though they have not met their own 5 step criteria for reopening. They have not worked sufficiently with the various sectors involved in order to ensure they are prepared for the increase in traffic whilst still observing social distancing.

Businesses are being forced to fend for themselves, to desperately come up with ways of reopening their business in light of the confusion that now seems to be the standard operating procedure of the government.

This, too, makes me nervous.

We’ve seen the unmitigated disaster that is our care home system with countless unnecessary deaths both of residents and staff due to lack of testing, lack of adequate PPE and, quite frankly, a lack of consideration by the government completely until the damage was already done. Talk about closing the barn door after the horse had bolted!

Yet now they want us to send our children back to school? Even though we know nothing of the long term consequences of Covid-19 on adults or children whether they are actually sick or asymptomatic. We are just beginning to hear of a possible connection with Covid-19 and paediatric inflammatory syndrome. I must say at this point it appears to be extremely rare. However, for those children and families affected, knowing that it’s rare doesn’t help. What helps is facts, transparency and communication, not political wrangling and verbal gymnastics.

During this worldwide humanitarian crisis politics should take a backseat. But I have to say, never has my trust in the government to do the right thing been lower. At a time when accurate information should be freely shared so we can all be part of the solution, simple honest truths seem to be hard to find. Instead, it seems as though the government has shifted from trying to save lives to making peace with acceptable losses.

How many deaths are “acceptable”?

Why are we sacrificing our old and using our children as test subjects? Why are we risking our most vulnerable?

I no longer wait for the government to spoon feed me what they want me know. I no longer blindly swallow all the misinformation and disinformation that contaminates so much of the news. I read, I watch, I listen, I fact check. I educate myself as much as I can. I try to share what I learn with my loved ones. When democratic governments around the world are seemingly tearing down democracy from the inside we must use our voices and our actions to solicit truth. We should not settle for less.

Does that mean that we will always get the truth? No.

But is that a reason to stay silent or inactive? Ask Martin Luther King.

I know I’ve rambled on a bit, but I care very deeply about what is happening all around the world, as I’m sure do you all. Every day those numbers hurt me deep down in my soul to such a degree that I felt compelled to share some of my thoughts on what is taking place.

I’m not an expert, and I’m not suggesting any of us ignore the guidelines, quite the opposite. We all must do our bit. But if we can’t get the information we need from our leaders in order to make informed decisions, we must empower ourselves with knowledge the best we can in order to protect our families and communities. I know that this approach has helped me greatly in dealing with the mental aspect of coronavirus. For me, knowledge is power, and is empowering.

My thoughts go out to all those families who have lost loved ones, to all those in recovery, and to the NHS, Carers and all the frontline workers and their families who have sacrificed so much for us. We owe you all a debt of gratitude that we can never repay. From the bottom of our hearts we thank you.

Stay safe everyone.