CoVID-19 Day 51
Damn this introspection. Admittedly I was avoiding yesterday but I did effectively have 5 meetings/extended conversations. Yet it wasn’t what I’d achieved that I focused on but what I’d avoided. And ‘avoided’ isn’t even the right word. Self auditing shouldn’t be a lifestyle, it should be a task one engages in periodically. I’m a time and motion freak — I spend a good deal of time going through the motions and am currently too invested in other people’s motions. Yesterday I was in shock worrying about how disastrous our lockdown exit was going to be. Maybe I shouldn’t have let it get to me or maybe I just needed to get it out of my system.
I am not a statistic and I am not a constituent of ‘us’ soup
The news and social media create a false reality where we all become engaged in everything and think responding to it emotionally, in tweets, posts or conversations makes a difference. In most cases if there’s nothing you can do immediately to directly affect the situation its better to let it drop. Occasionally there is something we can do but only over a period of time. Unfortunately the hit you get from reacting to the news is very short lived so unless something is put in place where you are engaged over time you will inevitably look for the next hit. Its addictive.
The UK population is just under 68 milliion. The official death toll from coronavirus is just over 32,000 which is 0.047% of the population and that is approximately 1 in 2000. Therefore given that the virus favours certain conditions, if you are able to stay at home, only occasionally go to the shop and can exercise outside without being shoulder to shoulder with others its highly unlikely you will be infected and extremely unlikely you’ll be added to the statistics. Given that there were 26,610 people killed or seriously injured on the roads in 2018 you are more likely to die from the coronavirus than be seriously injured in a car accident. As we know you are more likely to have an accident in the home than anywere but they only account for 6000 deaths per year. However one of the most likely places to contract CoVID-19 is in your home if you live with others. Its a mixed bag.
The thing is you are unlikely to catch the virus and less likely to be critically ill from it. But who hasn’t been in a road accident or has a close friend or relative that’s either been killed or seriously injured? We’ve all had accidents in the home but if you are reading this you didn’t die. So whatever our individual chances we are all in the zone. This isn’t like winning the lottery, its more like stopping smoking, exercising, driving carefully and eating sensibly, not because you know cancer or heart disease is coming for you but because its not worth the risk.
If you are able to take the very reasonable precautions of staying home, washing your hands and avoiding outside contact you are pretty safe and very fortunate. The statistics are on your side. But the more they are weighted in your favour the more they are weighted against those at risk. This is why we are distressed by the incoherent government strategy, the shockingly ambiguous message to the nation and the lack of trust that the crisis is going to be handled any better in the lockdown exit. There is a chance it might be worse.
But that is not going to be helped by my energy being taken up with trying to untangle this mess inside my head along with all I have to do personally. Its always going to be me and others and that division will never disappear. Its one reason why the lack of PPE is so shocking. Nurses and carers are trained to take care of themselves first, otherwise they become useless. That makes their duty of care external even if they internalise their responsibility as they do. Its utterly irresponsible and grossly negligent to ask them to care for others when they don’t have the protection they need.
It boils down to what ‘me’ is. I am not a statistic and I am not a constituent of ‘us’ soup. I am an entity with relationships with other entities and while those relationships shape what I am and might even maintain my existence they don’t subsume me into what the whole is. CoVID-19 has applied the brakes and given us the chance to re-evaluate our personhood and our place in society as well as give us a sense of our own agency. It can feel like being put through the wringer and it involves tearing apart the social fabric. But if this whole experience is to have any value we must establish new definitions of society and our individual relationships to it.