This has been coming for ages, it’s really not a shock.
Since the schools opened it’s all just gone so rapidly down hill. I have a year 11 and year 6 child, so two different school. The secondary school don’t inform or advise to isolate after a positive case in the same class/group, they now only let pupils know to do this if they know there has been close contact, and only if that contact was for longer than 15 minutes. At the primary school, drop off and collection is a joke, all the classes are supposed to exit school and be collected at specific times to reduce parents and different year groups mixing. Little point to this when parents are stood shoulder to shoulder having themselves a good natter, without masks, and continuing to stand there chatting long after their children have come out of school, and while their children run around mixing with other year groups/classes!
During the first lockdown we as a whole family shielded due to living with and caring for extremely vulnerable family member. That family member lost their life a little over 3 weeks into the lockdown. We tried hard to get end of life care and pain relief administered, sadly due to Covid and lockdown this did not happen. It’s been one of the most traumatic things I’ve ever been through. By the way family member did not have or die of coronavirus.
One thing that this has brought home to me is that despite what happened to us being bad, there were and there are people suffering much worse. No life is ever expendable, there are so many people dying and to many, these are just statistics, numbers on a page, but behind those numbers are people, family, loved ones....real people!
I think the government have done an extremely poor job handling this virus/pandemic and certainly I don’t relish a lockdown, school closures or whatever may come. I don’t see what other reasonable courses of action there is left to take. We can save lives now, mitigate risks now, and yes the economy and mental health will be hanging in the balance. If you or a loved one were ill, what would rather? That there was hospital bed, ventilator, care when they/you needed it, or struggling to get that same care and feeling as though you/they were sacrificed for the economy? That sacrifice whilst needed in part, as we of course do need an economy isn’t going to be of much comfort and consolation when you are dead or have lost a loved one.
I don’t believe that the R rate will drop to below 1 with these new measures if I am honest, and it’s all too little far too late as is usual with this government. Personally I think the government knew the tier system was a crap shoot, but it made them look like they were doing something, and when it didn’t work they could blame it on the public not following the rules, and hold their hands up, point the finger and say look....not our fault!!
The reality is, is that this virus is going nowhere fast. It’s been shown that immunity doesn’t last very long, and there have been cases of reinfection. That puts heard immunity out of the window, so we now all rely and wait on a vaccine. If track and trace is anything to go by, the manufacture and delivery of this vaccine is going to take a long time to roll out to the vast majority of people. I think we have another 12 months at least of dealing with this situation, sad as it is to think that. I’m sad about my children, I’ve a toddler who would love to play with friends their own age, a teen who is worried about GCSE’s, and my 10 year old is really struggling. The important thing to remember, and what I keep telling myself and my children is that this is not forever, it’s just for now.