As the shadow passes across the land...

Coronavirus Diary

Friday, 13^th March 2020

It’s coming. For a few weeks, I have watched (rather obsessively, rather morbidly) the shadow of the virus spread across the globe. I have watched the ‘contain phase’ fail to contain the virus and it is here.

Today, the media states that more than 120,000 people have contracted Covid-19, of which 67,000 have recovered and 4,600 died. Different news outlets and different countries seem to report the mortality rate as between 1-4% If they can be believed. In the UK, today, there are 596 confirmed cases but Boris Johnson has declared that ‘as many as 10,000’ people may already have it.

As things stand, people I know are still at the making jokes about it but it’s a grim sort of humour about how to shake hands and will we see each other again. I played tennis early this morning and the park was still and calm, the sun out and everything seemed good with the world. However, one thing is on everyone’s mind and conversations quickly turn to ‘what next…?’

On a personal level, I am worried for my children (despite statistics showing young people are fighting off the virus with a very low mortality rate), and I am worried for my parents, who are 76, and my mother-in-law who has leukaemia and often suffers a dramatic fall in her white blood cell count. And my sister-in-law who had pneumonia before Christmas and still has some fluid on her lungs. And then there is the fact that even with a mortality rate of 5% that is one in every 20 people I know.

Apart from the mass statistics, the news is now reporting ‘celebrity’ sufferers so we have Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, and Tom Hanks, the actor, and several football players. Next, it will be celebrity deaths, as if these have more value than reporting on ordinary people dying.

Three days ago, I went shopping in Lidl, just before they closed. It was shocking. Sometimes the shelves are missing some items because they don’t always re-stock the shelves until they close but this was on another scale. Of the items on my list, the shelves were stripped bare of pasta, rice, eggs, frozen vegetables, soya products, most of the milk, toilet roll, antiseptic wipes, soap, and hand sanitiser. It had the look of an eastern European supermarket during the cold war; you took what you could find.

This kind of panic among shoppers induced a brief panic in me. Should I stock up and buy extras? If I don’t, am I being blasé about the future and my family’s health and wellbeing? I dismissed the temptation to follow this herd mentality but it gave me an inkling of how people might behave when things get more serious. It could engender a Blitz spirit of ‘we’re all in this together’ but society has changed in the last 70 years and I wouldn’t be surprised to see fights over loo roll or the last tin of tomato soup in this era of me-first.

Then there is work, which is complicated for me. I have been off work with depression since November and I am due to return to my full-time teaching job on Monday. A phased return to work is planned whereby I build up my hours towards being full-time again but there is lots of talk of schools closing for two months. As a public sector worker, I will at least get paid but it is more disruption on a personal level.

In addition, my eldest son is due to be taking his A levels in May and June but nobody knows what will happen if the pandemic (Covid-19 was officially declared a pandemic by WHO yesterday) has taken hold of the UK at that time. He just wants things to go ahead so he doesn’t have his summer plans disrupted and so he can take his place at film school in October.

So many questions – do I still visit my elderly parents, when do I stop hugging friends and family, should I stop going to the hot yoga studio where I am breathing heavily with 20 or 30 others for an hour and a half – but it’s coming and soon we will all know the answers. Will we know them in time…?