So life as we know it has changed!
At the beginning when we first heard about Coronavirus, I listened or read about it and then happily carried on with the rest of our day. Taking the kids to school and baby groups without a care in the world.
Fast-Forward to last week and it all starts to get a bit real and people are panic buying toilet rolls!
#toiletrollgate
Good old social media at its best never fails to deliver the stupidity of the British public. It’s like an elongated Christmas when the shops shut for a whole day and everybody panics that they aren’t going to be able to buy milk and bread.
But toilet roll has baffled me since the coronavirus as far as we can see doesn’t give you the shits, but here we are fighting in shops, sitting in wait for the delivery vans to arrive so we can run in and buy as many multi-packs of bog roll leaving none for anybody else.
This then also extended to pasta, tinned tomatoes, bread and frozen foods. People filled their trollies without a thought to other people, people who live on a strict budget and the elderly.
Nappies, baby wipes and baby formula shortages left mums crying in the aisles of supermarkets and taking to Facebook to plead with people to see if they’d seen any stocked in local shops.
Unfortunately the greedy panic buyers then led the rest of us to follow suit for fear that we won’t be able to get essentials to feed our own families.
The TV is full of doom and gloom daily updates from Boris Johnson with impending school closures leading to all schools closing on Friday apart from children of key workers.
School Closures
This should have happened sooner in my opinion. We were told not to socialise and keep a distance of 2 metres from each other and yet we were expected to send our kids to school where they all sit closely together spreading their germs around like they do.
We took Isabelle out of school last week so her last day of school was Monday 9th March. She gets seasonal asthma and pretty much has a cough and cold for the duration of October to March every year so we weren’t prepared to take the risk.
This past week we’ve done some learning but we haven’t kept to a strict routine, but come Monday and we’ll be up doing our first PE lesion with Joe Wicks.
We’ve found a whole load of craft ideas, learning resources and apps that we can keep Isabelle entertained with over the coming weeks which I’ve written a separate post about. Lots of parents are setting up timetables which is great, but I think we’re going to give Isabelle tasks that she can do in her own order at her own pace so that she doesn’t feel too pressured.
It’s going to be a huge learning curve for all of us parents and kids. I get told how quiet Isabelle is at school and how she just gets on with her work. This couldn’t be further from the truth at home where she can’t sit still for any given time and the noise that comes out of her!
Key Workers
We all awaited news to see if we were on the Key Workers list. It arrived and the list is long!
It’s not just NHS workers that are needed during this time. The Key Worker title extends to a huge majority of the country as we all play a part in keeping the cogs of the UK turning.
Self-isolation
For all people showing active signs of a persistent cough and a temperature the original advice was to self-isolate for a period of 14 days. It was then changed to 7 and then back up to 14 days. The advice was that only the symptomatic should self-isolate and that also changed to all members within the household.
Vulnerable people were advised to stay indoors and only allow deliveries of food and essentials to be dropped at the front door without contact. There was much question over who was classed as vulnerable, but it was thought that the main groups were the over 70’s, people with health conditions and pregnant women.
Unfortunately people aren’t sticking to advice given as they’re not sure this ‘applies to them’.
In our household Chris is currently I’ll with sickness, a headache and a cough. He also has a temperature that has gone above the norm a few times. We have no idea if this is the Coronavirus but we aren’t taking any risks.
We’ve been keeping our distance from him and I’ve been cleaning behind him to try and ensure that the kids don’t get him germs. It’s horrible as I’m getting annoyed at him for touching things like the TV remote and the fridge.
As we don’t have a spare room he’s currently sleeping on the sofa to minimise the risk of Freddie and I getting it. It’s not ideal but it’s the only thing we can do for now.
He’s not a very good sick person at the best of times but he looks and sounds really poorly.
Social Distancing
So it seems that we should all stay at least 2 metres apart and this is supposed to be only essential contact for delivery of essentials or working.
We were told that it was okay to go outside for a brisk walk but to avoid other people and not congregate in groups or instigate any social meet-ups.
Well we well and truly bolloxed this one up! First of all the National Trust announced that it was to close its houses etc but the outdoor areas would be accessible to all to allow us to get some much needed fresh air with the social distancing rules in practice. What they didn’t foresee was that everybody would head outside meaning that the outdoor areas were full of people!
Dartmoor carparks and roads were fuller than an August Bank Holiday with people getting their bit of ‘fresh air’. So it seems that we should try and stay at home where possible, only going out for essentials.
Again this seems to have fallen on deaf ears for most people, probably the same people who could build and live in their own bog roll fort living off the sacks of pasta they’ve stockpiled.
Currently we’re not on an official lockdown, but if people carry on like this it’s going to be inevitable.
This is a bit of a run-down on where we are currently but I thought it would be interesting to keep a bit of a diary to see how things progress.
Will we pick up on life as we left it?
Will things change for the better?
Who knows……….