Living With Lockdown

The pandemic of the Coronavirus started at the beginning of this year. More than 6.9 million people are known to have been infected, more than 400,000 people have died including 40,542 deaths in the UK , the most deaths in Europe. Boris Johnson always wanted to be first and he can be proud of leading Europe in the number of deaths of his own citizens.

The source of the coronavirus, which is related to the SARS and the MERS viruses, is alleged to have started in a wet market in Wuhan in China where they sold both dead and live animals including fish and birds. There is a massive risk of viruses jumping from animals to people because hygiene standards are difficult to maintain if animals are killed on site. They believe that bats were the original source which infected other animals at the market.

In the UK a total of 286,194 people have tested positive for the virus. Eventually the Prime Minister ordered quarantine and lockdown on the 23rd March. Wherever you were in the country is where you remained, so families became separated or suddenly women and children were trapped with their abusers.

The good side of this was that families who were hardly together because of work, school, TV, ipads, playstations etc. suddenly were together full time and had to learn about each other all over again. They ate together at the table for the first time in a long time and they communicated with each other.

Communities started to help each other and checked on their streets where people lived on their own, or were vulnerable or elderly. Because people were not able to earn money and many could not receive furlough money from the government, food banks started to become a way of life in local areas. The amazing thing is that most food banks are run by volunteers and wherever the NHS needed volunteers, people flocked to help, and they became key workers and were allowed to be a part of supporting others in greater need. This is something to be proud of and it shows how wonderful human beings can be in a crisis.

People were making sacrifices like shaving their heads to raise money for food banks. Shops were donating in a big way to help the food banks build up stock. Ordinary people donated to food banks adding items to their own shopping to help others. Neighbours and friends would do shopping for those who were vulnerable.

Local people here in Wales have done extraordinary things to help others. It has been a real testament to love and caring. People have not seen it as a duty. They have truly wanted to help and have stepped forward to be counted against the Covid-19 virus.

The Welsh government has seemed to act appropriately, although the hospitals have had a difficult time, 1,393 people have died in Wales from the virus although there were over 11,706 confirmed cases. We are still in Lockdown in Wales because the Welsh government is taking a more cautious stance.

How do people cope with Lockdown?

The instruction was to STAY AT HOME. Easier said than done if you are homeless. What is home, the street? At long last they were being given temporary accommodation to get them off the street. The difficulty will be after Lockdown. The Welsh Government is making every effort to ensure they do not end up on the street again. What will the UK government do ?

If you have a garden, it is much easier for you. It has been lovely weather so people work on their gardens or sunbathe. There is an outside space.

It is much harder for people with families , trying to educate the children as well as having the children there 24/7. As already mentioned, it can be a great time, mixing with your children, but it can also be difficult not having a break from them.

What’s harder  for people to cope with are the problems of living in flats or high rise buildings so no outdoor space. How do you deal with the children, the meals (especially if no money is coming in), all sharing a small living space?

Another problem with Lockdown is the elderly who live alone. There have been many who have been left alone and died alone and their bodies are not discovered for many days until somebody calls the authorities. The body has already started to decompose.

People have also forgotten certain disabilities. So the making of masks by local people has been marvellous. However, no-one has thought of deaf children and adults. They are not able to lip-read because the masks hide people’s lips. There should have been thought of making see-through masks so that they could protect from the virus and allow deaf people to understand what is going on.

There are so many issues around health and lockdown. There are mental health issues where people are left on their own or they cannot cope living in a flat with all the family. There is also the embarrassment of having to go to a food bank because there is no income. Food banks are there to help but there is a sense of shame at having to ask for help. The volunteers are very happy to help and deliver but the shame can still be there.

So on the one hand people are trying to help in the communities but at the same time there are people being left to die alone.

Lockdown is such an awful way to have to live. It is unnatural and brings on different stresses.

There are people who enjoy Lockdown because they have so many interests and like the solitary lifestyle. These are normally well-off and healthy pensioners. They don’t have to worry about money and they can carry on their lives as if nothing has changed. These people are few and far between but they do exist.

Then there are the extremely healthy over seventies who are angry at being told that they have to self-isolate for weeks just because of their age when they could actually be helping others, younger than they, who are more vulnerable.

Even after Lockdown, many of these problems will continue and the issue will be that people will then need to look for jobs or deal with the loss of a job or starting work again, but this does not mean that we should stop caring however busy we become.

There are so many issues raising their snake-like heads which Lockdown has seen fit to expose and the Clint Eastwood film could easily describe it as releasing into the community, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.