Well I am feeling like I've just been dropped from a great height. I've been enjoying being at home - we've got food, we've got plenty to do and most importantly, I feel safe. We can sit this out. I'm limiting my news and social media to just enough to keep informed, without getting overloaded and I'm trying not to focus on the negative 'what ifs' and just to assume that we'll come out of this well rested, with lots of jobs at home done and a new appreciation for having the freedom to go out when we want to and easily buy food.
But a friend just rang and took me aback with her approach. Despite the fact that she works at a day centre for old people and they are now making up meals on wheels deliveries for them all as they can't go out, she is of the opinion that old people should die. She thinks the virus is a load of fuss about nothing, people die all the time from flu, cancer etc (which is absolutely true, they do) and she isn't adhering to the lock down because she doesn't see why she should. I was a bit blown away and I'm looking back on the conversation now but, from what I can see, I didn't get angry or upset on the phone, I was saying to her that she should be very careful because it is very bad, they don't have enough beds or equipment and that they would never have locked down the country if it were for no good reason. She got quite angry with me and I'm not sure why. I don't claim to be an expert on this but it has been announced here today that they think 20,000 dying in the next few weeks is the best we can hope for. They've built a new 4,000 bed hospital and two new morgues, and even with that doctors don't think they'll cope. I have medically minded friends who've both said this is going to be horrific and one friend's daughter, a paramedic, is self isolating as she has symptoms. She said that people die anyway, which of course they do, but I think the problem with this is that it is/will happen in such a short space of time and it overloads the health service. Currently the death rate in ICU here is 50/50. People are, apparently, having to be left to die alone because it's so infectious, so they can't have family or friends in there with them. Family and friends then have to self isolate in their grief, in case they picked it up as well, and can't arrange funerals with more than five people attending, I think is the current situation.
I pointed out that my son won't make the grade for a ventilator if they don't have enough to go round and that we're quite likely to be completely inside for three months now, if not longer. Not even going out for walks. I am aware that people die every day, of course they do, but I don't imagine that anyone wants to die on their own, in pain, knowing that their own family won't be able to gather together to bury them. Surely no-one thinks that's alright? Surely most people would avoid that, if they could? And most people aren't being asked not to go out at all, they're just being asked to only go out if it's essential. It's not too much of a sacrifice, surely?
The thing that really shook me up is that she got angry with me and then hung up the phone. I don't understand why she did that. It's shaken me up and left me feeling quite wobbly.
