WELL, this is all a bit strange, isn’t it?
Just two weeks ago I was asking a pharmacist in a small Yorkshire village if we were panicking over nothing (he said we were) and at the weekend, I was helping my mum escape Poland after the country went into lockdown.
She’d only visited Warsaw for a long weekend and on day two the hotel receptionist said all international travel would be banned from midnight that day.
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I felt like I was in the movie The Matrix. My sister Holly State-Side in the US and me, just outside Dundee (not quite the same ring to it), frantically trying to get her and husband Alan on a flight.
All the direct ones were full. Holly booked the last two seats to Bucharest and I found a flight from there to Glasgow. Finally, they were set to come home.
It’s sudden, it’s scary and, on occasion, scare-mongering.
I’m no medical expert but I do know that avoiding certain tabloids and bait-clicking reprobates is the best thing you can do.
I won’t be alone in being kept awake for hours in a state of panic after a peruse online just before bed. You’d think it was a the end of the world. And though far from ideal, it’s happening and the facts should keep us grounded.
Four in five people will have the virus with mild effects.
Even those over 80 years of age face an 86% chance of recovering. I don’t think I ever got 86% in an exam. And yet, I don’t hear many people saying most of us will be OK.
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This is when we have to come into our own – the healthy and low-risk among us looking out for the elderly and vulnerable.
Ordering online shopping for them or standing two metres away on their doorstep for a five minute chat to break up the day, should months of self-isolation come into play, asking pals who’ve moved away if elderly relatives here need help.
Even healthy people are worried – and then probably feel guilty for worrying because there are many more worse off.
Look around. Yes there’s panic buying with empty shelves where loo roll once sat in almost every Dundee supermarket – but there are also food bank donation boxes spilling over because people want to help.
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Let’s stay as safe as we can, protect our families and loved ones and keep sane amid the confusion and fear of the unknown.
This is serious. But we stand tall in adversity. And we have humour – always we have humour.
On which note, I’ll end with this, courtesy of Scottish football site Pie and Bovril: “Mind blowing how some boy in China ate a bat, and eventually it led to the postponement of Elgin v Brechin . . . let that sink in for a minute . . .”
https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/fp/nicola-sturgeon-announces-that-scottish-schools-are-to-close-from-friday/
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