Argh! Have mostly been lurking on these threads, but just had my Mum dementoring away and generally panicking over nothing, or rather things that have no bearing on her life... she’s very scared although in no way vulnerable...governments have done far too good a job of terrifying us about this virus.
Anyway, I’ve not caught up with the thread this morning yet, but feel in need of a rant!
My position, if I may pull up a soapbox, is that lockdown was necessary, and should probably have been harsher and happened earlier.
But the time is now right to ease the lockdown, nobody is suggesting forcing people into going anywhere they are not yet comfortable with, but those that want to go the Primark, or shopping centres, or travel, or visit relatives should be allowed to make their own personal risk assessments and do so if they wish.
We can’t lock down forever: the economy is in the toilet, and poverty is also a killer. Mental health issues brought on or exacerbated by lockdown, will likely cause more long term damage than the virus itself. The people suffering most form this in the long term are children and we need to focus on getting them back to normal as much as possible. So many are frightened, lonely, receiving no education or in unsafe environments for example. My kids are lucky, they have great provision from their private school, the equipment they need,and a Mum at home who’s not having to juggle work to help them. (furloughed) Most kids are not. And in any case I still have one struggling with mental health problems and the other two would happily not leave the house again, which I suspect stems at least part from fear of the virus as well as their underlying unsociable tendencies.
It would seem the level of infection in the general population (discounting care homes and hospitals form a statistical point of view, not a compassionate one) is extremely low, the chances of the majority becoming seriously ill is extremely low, the chances of children being ill or transmitting virus lower still and yet govt is still banging on about blended learning. ( I’m in Scotland).
My kids will be luckier than most when he new term starts with the provision the school is suggesting, albeit still not full time learning... but what about the rest of them? We should be planning for them all to get back full time with increased hand washing and other hygiene, no social distancing (or at least reduce distance to 1m) and use track and trace to monitor and handle local spikes if they occur. I accept that will be a hard sell, but part time education is not a viable solution.
The SNP campaigned on a platform of improving education so that should be their focus now. Quit scaremongering in the media and focus on solutions. There’s a massive, expensive, empty Nightingale hospital that was pulled together quickly and efficiently, can’t we put the same effort into working out solutions for schools? If they insist social distancing is still required in school then they need to find more space within communities to allow classes to spread out.
And breath..... rant over, soap box returned to garage. Was nice to vent that.... feeling the lack of another adult here to debate such things....
Anyway, Do what you feel comfortable with and allow others to do the same within the realms of reason. Let’s just start the road back to normality and go at our own pace... but let’s put children first when planning the route....