Corona Virus - Covid 19 - Now is the winter of my discontent

This is the winter of my life as well as my discontent.

 

Discontent because my life is not as it was 5 months ago. It is far emptier, far less rich & interesting. Time does drag in a way that I am completely unused to. Discontent because I am not at all optimistic that things will get better. In fact I believe they will get worse. Much worse.

So I feel quite guilty that I am discontented. I haven't got a family to feed & a mortgage to pay. I am retired so I don't have to worry about losing my job & having no liklihood of getting another. I don't have children who have lost the best part of a year's education - Many at a crucial time for their future. 

My small family are well & in secure jobs. The grandsons are priveleged & go to independent schools, so they have continued to be well educated.

Yesterday N..... came to collect an old cool box for Oxford Mutual Aid. They need them to deliver free meals to people. OMA & co-operatives like them, run by volunteers, are making sure that people have the basics. A lot of people. Last week they delivered 70 food parcels & over 750 meals. They have drivers, delivery co-ordinators, a small army of people who help others who are struggling.

I can't imagine the logistics of that, but they have been doing it since lockdown began. Without organisations like OMA & foodbanks there would be a lot of people in Britain in 2020 who do not eat properly!

I wish I could say that I think this has been handled well by our government. I am sympathetic to the unique difficulty of the situation. But the list of cock ups is too long. The National Risk Register first warned that a flu Pandemic was coming in 2008. Then 5 more warnings were issued untill 2017. The last time a strategy to deal with such a pandemic was published was in 2011. The last Pandemic Influenza Communications Strategy was written in 2012. They knew. They ignored all the warnings.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/coronavirus-government-preparation-boris-johnson-pandemic_uk

They were so besotted with Brexit they took their eye completely off the ball. To date the total number of Covid 19 cases in the UK is 318,000. The total number of deaths is 41,366. In the first 16 weeks of 2020 20,045 more people died than the same period in 2018.

 

I think the coming "winter of discontent" is going to be far worse. Be prepared.