Social isolation diaries week 7
The numbers this week are utterly depressing. 178,000 people have tested positive for Coronavirus and heartbreakingly 28,000 have passed away. The daily death rate is still somewhere between 400 and 800 every day yet Boris Johnson has said we are now passed the peak. I am really not sure I believe that. People are desperate to know when the lockdown will be lifted, but how can we discuss that when so many people are still dying?
The media seem to be fixating on how we will get out of lockdown now, coming up with their own theories and to be honest it is doing my head in. The honest truth is that we don’t know how it will happen, if schools will re-open first, if we will have to wear face masks, or if 0ver 70s will be banned from leaving the house until Christmas, why speculate? It doesn’t serve any purpose other than to either give people false hope or annoyance. I would like to see them all stop quite frankly and concentrate on reporting actual news and facts.
Other countries have begun easing their lockdowns, all in different ways so I am interested to see how we might begin doing it and hopefully news will be announced next week.
Even if schools did re-open in a week or two will parents feel comfortable sending their children back in? I truly don’t believe many will. Certainly I wouldn’t be sending mine back in just yet if they were still of school age. I get that everybody is so over the lockdown they want life to go back to normal but a) the old normal may never return, and b) we need to make sure we don’t have a second wave that kills more than the first.
On Monday Boris Johnson was back in charge but it wasn’t long before he was gone again to welcome his latest child into the world later in the week.
It was also announced that a life assurance policy is being launched for frontline healthcare professionals, allowing their families a lump sum of £60,000 should they pass away from Covid19 and that it would be paid retrospectively those who had already passed away.
The 8th Nightingale Hospital was opened this week but nobody is really talking too loudly about the fact that they haven’t actually been used by more than a few dozen people. I guess that is a good thing as it means the NHS has had capacity in hospitals but all the fanfare and money spent on a 4000 bed hospital that has only treated 40 odd people seems a bit eye raising to me.
At least testing has been rolled out more widely this week, close to 100,000 people a day are now able to get tested and it is possible to be tested at home or by post if you are working in the NHS even if you don’t have symptoms, if you are over 65 with symptoms and people like plumbers who dont work from home but also have symptoms.
On a personal level it has been a week of planting for me. As soon as lockdown was mentioned, and it became evident that people were panic buying food I went online and ordered a vegetable patch in a box. Okay, so it might be some time before they actually grow big enough to eat, and the stocks are all now back to normal stock levels so I dont really need to grow vegetables but hey ho. There is something very therapeutic about shoving plants into mud and watching them grow.
And cooking. I turned Scotch pancakes into a bread and butter pudding, and made some KitKat fudge which is quite possibly one of the sweetest and messiest things I have ever made.
I also shared the above on Instagram which seems to have been widely well received, dont forget to let me know if you need a lifebelt.
Photo of a teapot courtesy of Shutterstock
A very measured summary. I am embracing my blog at the moment – it’s so good to have somewhere to log everything that is going on in our world (the good, the bad and the ugly). I agree with you regarding the media, they need to get on with reporting facts and stop scaremongering. The bread and butter pudding sounds amazing!