China is starting to come out of lockdown, with reports of no new cases. Other than Wuhan it was a 50 day lockdown, so a maybe an indication of how long we'll be like that for? People have been saying that in Wuhan they acted quickly in going into lockdown... did they really? It was detected in December, the doctor was silenced, it was already escalating for Chinese New Year and people were allowed to travel which is what caused it to explode.
Whilst our measures may not seem like we've done enough, actually have we done more earlier? Other countries have done more still early on, Poland went into lockdown very early on because they knew their health care system is nowhere near good enough to cope.
People say we're two weeks behind Italy. But Italy has a very diverse demographic to ours. They have one of the oldest populations in Spain. It is common to have multiple generations living together, so the young spreading it easily to their grandparents, whereas here many of us have our grandparents safely in care homes, sheltered accommodation etc which are now on lockdown - the sheltered accommodation my granny lives in has put in restrictions several weeks ago. The smoking rate in Italy is far higher than here, and they've said that that is one of the key factors. Same for Spain, when I lived there I forever had coughs and colds because of the sheer amount of second hand smoke I was exposed to all the time. So actually, will we follow on as they have?
I went to Asda earlier (I had to do my normal shop), and it was far quieter than expected, it was quite easy to keep a distance from people. And when I went for my run this evening the streets were eerily quiet, are people finally listening?
I am trying to stay optimistic. I may go insane otherwise.