Will this never end…though these days I’m used the quiet and my daily walks which involve much jumping onto roads to get social distancing right. Some walks are more anxiety inducing than others.
It’s been a good day, though tiring. Working on a grant application, watching a couple of webinars, going for a walk*. My brain hurts! But this is a good thing. It doesn’t give me time to dwell.
I did have a moment when I began to dwell. I didn’t want another day like yesterday so I refocused. If only I was able to do this every time.
Will this never end … though with talk of some relaxation of lockdown, it soon might be the start.
Boris Johnson, the PM, is planning to make a statement on Sunday. It might mean some relaxation on being outdoors. It might mean some businesses can reopen under specific conditions. There are questions as to why the statement isn’t being made in Parliament which would be standard for significant policy announcements. Lockdown also wasn’t announced in Parliament, but rather from inside No10.
I’m one of those people who was distressed that lockdown took so long to happen. It was announced on a Monday. The weekend before the PM announced his engagement and that his fiancé, Carrie Symonds, was pregnant. I remember feeling calmer once lockdown was announced. I’m nervous about talk on the relaxation of the current measures.
Are we ready? Do the numbers stack up – what’s the current rate of infection? How can this be determined without widespread community testing? What’s happening in care homes as there’s a significant data timelag? Again the figures make grim reading with another 649 deaths across all care settings bringing the official total number of deaths to 30,076.
And I have many other questions – Would a relaxation of lockdown spark an increase in new infections as we’ve seen in other countries? How do we do this safely and in a way that people don’t become too ‘relaxed’, many frustrated at so many weeks at home, perhaps working, perhaps furloughed, perhaps newly unemployed? Where do we start – with schools, with some businesses but not others? Are we going to introduce quarantine arrangements for people coming in from outside the UK?
And principally, if we do this too early, what’s going to be the impact on a reintroduction of full lockdown which could last for many more months and have an even more devastating impact on the economy?
These are all questions for which I would want to feel confident about the answers. I don’t think I’m alone in this.
So that’s it for Day 44. Stay safe, stay well, and stay home!
*Note on the photo – taken outside a local school that’s open for children of essential workers. It’s a small children’s library. There’s even hand sanitiser and returns are to be put in a separate box. I assume the books are then wiped down to limit the risk of infection.
I’m nervous about it although allowing two trips a day would be nice for my friend and her dog, who have been running together a lot, not always the most fun every single time!
Yep, I get that. And important for folks with dogs, and I think for those with kids. Have a good long weekend!