(CV related) Wwyd - decamp outside London?

[new0rules]

I have a 5 year old dd, we live in central London. Schools are obviously still open. I must say I am getting more worried now. I am working from home for the foreseeable future- all I need is my work laptop and WiFi.
My dad has a flat he rents out in my hometown (midlands/countryside) and currently he has no tenant. He’s offered it to me and dd if we want to decamp from London (which is apparently ahead of the U.K. in terms of corona spread). The flat has a garden and 2 bedrooms, generally more space than our little flat in London, and if they close schools it may be easier for dd to have the extra space to play etc. I am also concerned about the pollution in London and how that might affect us if we get the illness.
Please be kind as I have anxiety/ocd and well aware that I tend to panic over health issues.
Would you take dad up on his offer of the flat at this point? I also know we have more doctors and hospitals in London and more shops in case of disrupted supply chains which could be a reason to stay.
Would really appreciate your thoughts.

As I said upthread, I'm higher risk and in London. You and your child are low risk, you can WFH and pull him out of nursery. I don't know where you are but the shops round here (corner shops, not supermarkets) have plenty of everything, even loo roll and disinfectant. I don't think there is any issue with you staying here. Obviously it would be nice to have a garden but presumably you have all you books/games/craft stuff here rather than at the other flat.

Decamping is extremely selfish, this is what happened in Italy and Spain and it massively massively contributed to the spread to other areas. It's why the whole of Italy had be to locked down instead of just zones, and why the peak is further ahead. While it's concentrated in some areas patients in need can be moved elsewhere and the burden spread, that's not possible if everywhere is hit at once.

As well as others, you are also putting yourself at risk because small towns, rural areas which are less densely populated etc are likely to have much lower capacity in terms of beds, number of doctors and won't cope.

Do all you people calling the OP selfish not realise how many people in the Midlands commute into London every day?!

London isn't a bubble, just look at the number of trains going in and out daily from every corner of the UK.

It's not like she's hopping on a plane to infect fragile communities in Greenland, she talking about going somewhere within a few hours radius of a city that is highly fluid with huge amounts of movement daily.

I don't see anything wrong with your plan OP. You could always get a big shop delivered and self isolate when you get there if you are worried about bringing down the entire Midlands.

Also possibly worth mentioning that my London flat has had black mould in the bathroom for ages and this is partly fuelling my worries as it’s so bad for respiratory health. We were supposed to be moving and this has now been put on hold..
the other flat (afaik) does not have mould.

How will it spread if we are driving and self isolating? I’m not an idiot.....

Because there is a chance (small, but still) you already have the virus unknowingly, and if, god forbid, you do need to access healthcare you will need to access it in your new location. This exact scenario has happened multiple times in Italy, with people from Lombardy deciding to quarantine themselves in their holiday homes, even hiding their presence from the neighbours etc, but then 10 days, 2 weeks later needing hospital treatment and bringing the virus to previously unaffected areas that way. The situation in Spain and Italy has been dramatically worsened by people escaping quarantine zones and not sef-isolating, going to the beach etc. But it's wrong to present the OP's scenario as risk free.

For heavens sake it's all over the UK already. We haven't got one area of outbreak like Northern Italy, it's everywhere. It's no surprise it's spread faster in London but let's not pretend that there are swathes of unaffected hospitals in the Midlands. I'd be surprised if there are any unaffected hospitals in the Midlands at all!

We are staying in London, we will be OK staying at home, we have all our belongings here, food in our cupboards, lots of toys, friends nearby who we could ask for help if we are self isolating or unwell, in local community groups, registered with a GP practice which is better staffed than most of UK, excellent hospitals nearby which, although busy, are again better staffed and resourced than many other areas, we know the local area and know where we can go for quiet walks, we have friends nearby we could agree to meet at a 2m distance from one another if we get really lonely. Just looking out the window and seeing familiar faces passing this morning made me feel better. I wouldn't underestimate the benefits of these things.

I don't think it's necessary to leave London. Although we are a few weeks ahead in terms of spread, I assume we will reach herd immunity sooner. And we have great resources (medical, police, shopping delivery services and supply chains, community groups) compared to some areas. We also have a relatively young population, and this virus is most dangerous to elderly, so I'd feel wary decamping to an area with a larger proportion of elderly people where medical services may be much more stretched if you do need them (perhaps to reasons unrelated to coronavirus).

@new0rules ScarlettBlaize wtf? I’ve lived in my London community for all my adult life, I volunteer weekly in the community, every Xmas at our homeless mission. I am active in our local school.

But you're very happy to leave every single one of them behind at this time of greatest need.

And also, no my parents rental property is not my “second home”. What are you on?

It is literally a second home that you have available to you to move into if you want to. What else do you want to call it?

@AvocadoOwl Do all you people calling the OP selfish not realise how many people in the Midlands commute into London every day?! confused

How many people do you think are doing that at the moment?

London isn't a bubble, just look at the number of trains going in and out daily from every corner of the UK.

Yes - under normal circumstances. Which these absolutely are not.

All the wealthy privileged people like the OP will bugger off leaving those in desperate need abandoned at the time when they most need their neighbours' help.

OP is apparently so connected to her local community that instead of seeing how she can help, she wants to take herself off to another, far less affected area of the UK - spreading it just like people did in Italy and Spain.

If everyone like her does that, it will have a huge, appalling impact on spreading the virus. But hey, she should do whatever she wants, fuck everyone else, and saying otherwise is 'virtue signalling'.

How many people do you think are doing that at the moment?

Plenty. My husband for one. Be interesting to hear how busy his (usually rammed) train into Euston was this morning following yesterday's press conference but until the govt introduce proper restrictions or limit public transport there will still be loads of people travelling in and out because their jobs depend on it.

@AvocadoOwl Travelling numbers are down MASSIVELY. It will be interesting to hear what your husband says. The measures are intended to try to cut down as much as possible on people moving around.

What OP is proposing is exactly what people did in other European countries and massively contributed to speeding up the spread of the virus around the country.

London is far far more seriously affected. There are at least five families at my kids' (small) primary school with at least one symptomatic person. My kids are home today but yesterday I reckon the school was only about 70% attendance, if that.

Hang on a minute though- I'm sure numbers travelling are down but there are still significant numbers going in and out throughout the day, every day. Yet the OP gets hung drawn and quartered for making the same journey once with her family, and she's not even going to be infecting people on public transport

Leaving the boundaries of the M25 and driving an hour or so is hardly the same as fleeing Northern Italy for the South. If Scotland were largely unaffected and people were heading there from London then that would be more comparable (and I agree it would be very concerning) but my point is that the lines between London and the Midlands are very blurred anyway.

Yet the OP gets hung drawn and quartered for making the same journey once with her family, and she's not even going to be infecting people on public transport confused

It's not about the journey, it's about once she is there. If she or her daughter need medical attention (for COVID-19 or for anything else) she will be taking it into that community.

Latest info from Germany is that as many as half of cases may be totally asymptomatic. They could have it already. People may also carry on being infectious after they have recovered (whether or not they knew they were ill).

And ideally we would see no inessential journeys happening. We just need employers and gov to be more supportive.

It's already all over the Midlands! 🤦‍♀️

Dreading people doing this. Londoners and others flock down here to Cornwall at Easter anyway and I expect many second homers might relocate permanently, bringing a swell of the virus down here with them, to our poorly resourced hospitals. Smashing.

@ScarlettBlaize great, I promise never to move my nasty provincial self into your London, especially if you Londoners will stop moving up north buying up all the best houses and pricing local people out of my lovely Yorkshire hometown.

Not that I think OP should do this necessarily, but you're hateful with your "not a Londoner" and your "people from the provinces" and your little "real Londoner" club.

@Escapetab ScarlettBlaize great, I promise never to move my nasty provincial self into your London, especially if you Londoners will stop moving up north buying up all the best houses and pricing local people out of my lovely Yorkshire hometown.

I literally have never considered moving up North for one second and nor has anyone in my family. You're confusing people who moved to London for a bit after university and then moved back out again, with people whose lives, families and communities are here.

I'm from a non-white, non-British background and would absolutely not want to live away from London - I've found a lot of hostility elsewhere in the UK (e.g. when I lived in Wales for university).

Not that I think OP should do this necessarily, but you're hateful with your "not a Londoner" and your "people from the provinces" and your little "real Londoner" club.

It's exactly the same as the attitude of all of the people from Cornwall, the South West, Yorkshire, Wales, etc. many of whom have expressed exactly the same sentiments on this very thread, and yet funnily enough it's only when it's about London that you find it 'hateful'.

Wish I could say I was surprised but I'm not. Apparently people from everywhere else in the UK are allowed to object to people who come in, push up house prices, destroy local culture etc. but not if you're from London.

orangesamphire don’t worry, scarlettblaize has already told me that the second home owners round here aren’t real Londoners so they don’t count .

My Dh is still (for now at least) commuting weekly from SW to London. He is still going to be required to go to work however serious this gets, it’s just worrying to think he might not be able to come home for a while.

In your shoes i would go op.

I’d go.