The issue isn't one of personal risk but global risk and this is why this pandemic/illness will have and continue to have a lasting impact for some time yet.
Although only life threatening to a small percentage of the world population it is highly, highly contagious and left unchecked will overwhelm and would have overwhelmed not only healthcare but the economy and productivity worldwide, the knock on impacts of these situations would still affect you and I and our families in significant but perhaps different ways, probably much worse. It really isn't flu!
It is very difficult for most people, we have all had personal struggles and are facing huge change and loss and will all be going through the different stages of fearfulness, denial and acceptance at different times. This wasn't something that any of us had in our plans or could have been prepared for.
My advice myself, my Mum and daughters to just roll with it, take each day, try to see ourselves as part of a local, national and worldwide community working together to do our bit to prevent this thing getting out of control and to be kind and understanding about how difficult it is for everyone for all sorts of individual reasons. In our family we have between us, lost jobs already, had a family member die too young and too soon, had to give up work to educate children, lost months of critical schooling, missed each other, shown our greys, cancelled pet insurance and lost holidays, retired 5 years early (without the income needed) put the family home on the market to downsize to help all of our financial struggles …..but, we are intact and have taken what control of what we are able to, we will ride it out and be more resilient and we won't take anything for granted and we will embrace our love for each other to get through this (and recognise that we have taken each other for granted perhaps in the past)
This virus will not be around forever, or it possibly will be, but will be controlled through vaccines or losing strength or through low level controls of outbreaks. However this shows that we are vulnerable worldwide to something similar in the future and hopefully has given governments a bit of a kick to make sure systems are in place in time to manage it better.
I would love to think that the world will become a better place out of all off this and we will become more compassionate, environmentally friendly and selfless - I doubt that unfortunately, but for some of us, I am sure, it has given us a time for reflection and opportunity to prioritise what is important for us as individuals; this will be very different for me and you, and equally valid.
So for those of you really struggling, you are not on your own most of us are struggling in different ways, we are in this together and should support each other.
For those of you that this situation will change your life for the better, then this is positive and we should all look to these positives for reassurance.
For these of you who feel like they are living some kind of groundhog day with no light at the end of the tunnel, this isn't true, we are getting more freedom but because you are at a different stage of acceptance it probably feels worse - it will get better, might take a few steps back sometimes but it will move forward.