20-03-23 Monday I - Covid-19 Day #7 - All At Home

Today was the first day of the new regime, with the children at home as well. We all set up in the dining room, and were quite busy for the morning. TW had a conference call at 10am, so she booked the living room and closed the door.

Email traffic for my job was much reduced compared to normal, and my expectation is that it will slow even further. I personally think that things will slowly grind to a halt. The next thing I expect to see is more stringent conditions on leaving the house, and we will virtually -if not actually- be on lockdown. On occasion in the past I have suggested that Nature is self-correcting, and possibly we could be hit with an epidemic that would affect us so quickly that we wouldn’t be able to react to it. When the news programmes first started discussing the novel coronavirus, they advised a vaccine wouldn’t be available for 12 to 18 months, and that fits with a doomsday scenario like the one I’ve outlined. With the fast infection rates and exponential growth in the number of those affected, I don’t think we can wait that long, but if we were to go on virtually total lockdown, we could break the chain of transmission. And then maybe, just maybe, it could die out.

I’ve read a few descriptions of how the severely affected have suffered or could suffer, and I’m more than happy to stay at home. The issue is supplies. We need to get food. I went out twice today; both times to the Post Office to post some comics I’d sold and one of those times I visited the Co-Op. I was able to get humus and butter, but not able to get pasta, tomatoes or ketchup. TW will have to brave the supermarket tomorrow to get a bigger haul of food. Hopefully the shelves may be back to some semblance of normal. I don’t think that most people are stockpiling; as others have pointed out, now that most of us are housebound, we’re eating at home rather than snacking out. In addition, if we are going to have to quarantine, we need food in the house. It seems that we’ve all changed our shopping patterns at the same time, and it’s just screwed the supermarkets; although they might be the only winners out of this whole sorry episode – especially if they get their supply issues resolved.

TTFN.

Our home office, previously known as the dining room.