CV moral dilemma - take this child into my home or not?

[ITasteSpring]

Ok, I have young children. Someone in my village is a key worker in a hospital and has a young child too. Currently the child is in nursery but my friend is worried the nursery with close soon. I offered a couple of weeks ago to look after the child if childcare fell through. Do I honour this or not?

If I look for moral guidance on other CV mumsnet threads I am either:

1. utterly selfish if I don't look after this child as I am preventing a key worker from saving lives, and the risk to my own children is irrelevant and my utter selfishness stands
2. A selfish idiot who doesn't understand social distancing and shouldn't go near any other adults or children, and my selfishness will lead to people dying.

None of this is easy!

The nhs worker is vulnerable to pick it up at work and could pass on to their child before symptoms show therefore passing it on to you and your family. But I would help an nhs worker is more vigilant of signs and self isolation etc.

Are you vulnerable. Are your children vulnerable are you in contact with any vulnerable relatives?

Don’t feel
Guilty of you don’t decide to do it! It’s not your responsibility x

Tricky! But as a frontline worker, she could pass it on to your family...

We are older parents - 45+ but fit and healthy and have no contact with anyone who is vulnerable. Our families live a long way away and we won't have any physical contact with them during this whole episode.
There was going to be a family bbq in a couple of months but this has been cancelled due to CV.

Would she consider letting the child stay at your house so she wouldn't be coming and going? Would reduce the risk of her child catching it too.

Is anyone in your household high risk? If you’re already extreme social distancing for age / health reasons then I’m sure they’ll understand that you can’t. Otherwise it’s likely you are going to be exposed sooner or later so do help the front line worker stay working if you can xx

@TW2013 if the child is young enough that she is in nursery I don’t think it’s practical / in anyone’s best interest to separate them from their family for months on end.

I thought that let workers were being offered places in regional ‘hubs’ where their owns schools couldn’t accommodate?

Nurseries are open to key workers, as are schools. My colleague’s son is still going to nursery as we are key workers. Perhaps she’d prefer him to be with you as we have been advised to keep our children away from nursery/school if possible. It might not be the usual nursery he attends but this situation is recreation why schools/nurseries are still open.

*the reason!

How old is the child? Could they stay with you part of the time to minimise the risk?

My SIL's 4 have moved in with us so she can work uninterrupted. For the safety of everyone she's not going to be taking them home every day or even every week atm.

They've been practising not hugging her etc for the last 2 weeks so they seem to be dealing with it quite well so far. We have a loose plan for her to go for an at-distance walk with them next Sunday, but we're reviewing it all the time.

My friend hasn't asked me to look after the child, I offered. But since then the risks have got clearer and more restrictions put in place. MY friend mentioned that they were worried the nursery would close. I guess it could if their own staff started having to self -isolate. There is not a lot of childcare choice here. I'll just have to hope it stays open!

Is anyone in your family high risk? If not, I’d personally say it’s worth the risk. You are taking a much smaller risk than any hcp or teacher. If you had one of these jobs, or lived with anyone who does, you’d not have a choice.

It’s much harder when you do have the choice to put your family at risk, but it is a decision only you can make.

I lived with the story of my grandpas regret at not helping with his boat during Dunkirk. It has shaped my response to Coronavirus.

Child is 3. I don't think the parent would want the child to live with us all the time. We haven't discussed that. I know my friend is worried they will get CV, thought they aren't in critical care, but do still have direct patient contact.

I would take the child in and prepare to all get it.

Yeah, apparently they only have one seventh of the ventilators they think they may need around here. So if we did need ventilators at the peak of the epidemic we could be screwed.

This is all so hard.

I think it would be a very kind thing to do. I'm fit and health and working as a nurse. I am not worried for me about Covid 19, I worry for my patients. If it came on to the ward, some would likely not survive which is a horrific thought.

All the evidence is that fit and healthy adults are not likely to suffer serious complications from Covid 19. It's the elderly and those tight underlying health conditions that are high risk.

As you offered, I don't think it would be kind to renege on