On 19th February (a month ago) I took the train to London to meet Barrie for a long weekend to celebrate being together 9 years. We stayed in 3 hotels, went to 2 theatre productions, Hamilton and School of Rock, saw friends in London and even managed to have lunch with my brother in Edgeware, an event that I seldom remember occurring, before returning back to Sheffield. At no time did we consider washing our hands more than normal or worry about where we were staying, who sat next to us on the train or walked past us. Suddenly a month later the world has turned upside down in a seismic way that none of could have imagined.
In January we started seeing news report of this virus from China but non of us really took on the enormity of it at that time. It’s a new virus, so what? Reports of death rate less than flu, that will be ok! As we went thought February with our normal lives the reports from China became more worrying and other places started reporting illness and deaths, particularly Italy. Suddenly flights started to be cancelled, first to China, then to Italy, Israel took drastic swift action to shut out tourists after a group of Korean tourist left leaving the virus behind.
In the UK the first cases were detected late January from people returning from abroad but it was not until 28th February that cases were detected that had been passed from person to person in UK. On 4th March I remember someone asking how many cases in the Uk and I replied 40, today there are 3,269.
Friends and family in Israel who were seeing their lives change drastically while still a low number of cases and no reported deaths were asking what is the UK doing? The UK was monitoring and from no action we saw a swift change within a week that led to rushes at the supermarket as people feared for supplies running out, isolation of the elderly and at risk and finally 20th March last day at school for the majority.
Life as we had known it has gone from 3D hugging and kissing to 2D waving from a distance. Social interactions are limited to video calls, we did one today with Barrie’s 92 year old mother, and work has either gone online or ceased for a large number of people. This is the start of very different reality for all of us. Travel has stopped, the furthest most of us go is to the nearest food store. The next few months will bring darker times as well as stories of hope and kindness. We all need to adopt and adapt and come out the other side wiser. We have adopted a new cat to keep us busy and entertained (photo to be added) and are thankful to have each other and good communications to family until we can hug them again.
The link below is to an article giving detailed timeline.
timeline-china-coronavirus-spread