Keep Calm and Carry On: Covid-19 Edition

There's a pandemic going on. You may have heard about it.

The UK announced delay measures on Thursday, and I sat the kids down after dinner for a family meeting. Handily, they've been studying World War II at school, so we did a light comparison of how the entire country had to make major lifestyle changes at that time: blackouts at night, hosting evacuees, etc.

Fortunately, the pandemic shouldn't last for years, but we are in a part of the world which is having to recognise that their governments don't have the resources to handle this without lasting impact.

I'm not interested in political nitpicking here: let's skip to the general scientific consensus:

• Most of us will catch covid-19.
• Most of us will recover.
• All of us will be dealing with this situation for weeks if not months.

I don't want to play down the death toll, but I don't want to foster panic either. Taking this seriously is a good thing; freaking out and hoarding your own personal cache of plague supplies while demanding personal attention from the health service is only a bad one.

My view is that government mandates are inevitably a generalisation: i.e. the minimum precautions we should all be taking. It's up to each of us to come up with a personalised plan that accounts for our individual situation.

Imminent Risk
Our situation is extremely rural, luckily, and as far as I know, there are only five confirmed Covid-19 cases in Cornwall (I assume that the actual number is closer to 100, but that's out of almost 600,000 people.) Chances are high that we haven't been exposed yet. We might get lucky enough that it never really takes hold in Cornwall, but I'm working on the assumption that we'll just get hit later than most of the country.


We were supposed to be running an inflatable race in Exeter today but that was called off, much to my relief. While mass gatherings haven't officially been cancelled, I'm OK avoiding them and urban areas in general where there's no inconvenience to myself or others. With lots of beaches and outdoor walks around, it's not particularly difficult for us to practice social distancing in our leisure time. 

But this isn't a totality yet: I'll save that for when the risk is higher, though I don't know if that's in two weeks or tomorrow. My son's hair was not-quite-due for a haircut, so we went into town today to get it done. My daughter had a coughing fit in the barber's, and although everybody was very nice about it, I took her outside so neither of us felt so self-conscious. She cleared up almost immediately... it was possibly embarrassment setting her off.


Who's Vulnerable?
It's a massive relief to know that children usually aren't badly affected when they get sick, both on a purely selfish level and because that's the demographic we have the most interactions with on a day to day basis. The kids will stay in school as long as it's open, and I'll continue as a supply teaching assistant when offered work.

The only vulnerable people we do come into regular contact with is my parents, and up until now, I haven't had to worry about them for the ironic reason that they've been on a two week cruise. They got back today. Again, it's unlikely we're carrying the virus, so my parents have assured us the pandemic is not an excuse to get out of seeing their holiday pictures. We'll decide together at what point our visits should stop.

Planning for Isolation
My most pressing concern is the UK mandate that anybody with a (new) cough or fever should self-isolate for seven days. My kids were home sick with a cough this week. At this time of year, that's par for the course. I might come down with the same cold in the next couple of days, and if I don't, another will probably come around. Basically, we're almost guaranteed to have to self-isolate in the next few weeks.

This was the main thrust of our family meeting on Thursday. I'm the only adult in the household and we all tend to be on top of each other most of the time in our flat. My bedroom has an en suite, so we could isolate up to two people in there, with a healthy member of the family bringing in food and drink if necessary. If I'm sick, that means we subsist on a diet of beans on toast, instant noodles and similar things the kids can cook. If I'm not sick, I get to bunk in one of the kids' loft-beds for the duration!


In discussion, we agreed that if one of us has to self-isolate, all of us should self-isolate and we won't fully separate the household. However if one of us appears to have Covid-19, the sick person will move into my room for the fourteen days of quarantine... Or until we all come down with it.

Managing the cats is TBD. Still reading up on that one. I also only have contact details for two of my neighbours (we're in one of five flats), and I want to get the others so we can help each other in the event of an emergency.

My biggest fear is what will happen to the kids if I'm one of the unlucky cases that needs hospitalisation. I don't want to send them to my parents who are much more vulnerable. I have no other family close by and their father is in the States. We have friends here, but asking another family to take in two potentially infectious minors is a big ask. This is not a "let's cross that bridge when we come to it," sort of thing, but I think I am going to have to wait a bit longer to find out what resources I have for this one.

This year is not going to go how we planned
When we left the States last year, the kids were promised that they would return for a visit at Easter. That's been a beacon for them this whole time, and they've been increasingly excited for as the time drew closer. We had booked their flight and made plans... today the US banned flights from Europe.

We had anticipated that this would happen and we'd already told the kids that they should expect for the trip to be rescheduled for half term at the end of May. It's very possible though that we still won't be able to travel then. They've been amazing about it. They're crushed, but there were no tears at the time. (My daughter and I had a little cuddle and a quiet moment later.)

This is just the start of a lot of sacrifices. Yet I've got a good feeling about my team.