See Week 4. Repeat.
Except, without working on Friday, and now being the mother of a 41-year old. Yes, Ben, my eldest son turned 41 yesterday or, as he told me, 14,974 days.
Talking of numbers … the numbers this week are much bigger than last week.
1,700,816 cases as of April 11, 2020, 7:38GMT (5:38pm Melbourne time). Of those, just over 22% have recovered.
It’s easy to look at the numbers and forget to feel anything, because … well, because they’re just numbers.
But they aren’t, are they?
I read an interesting piece in The Guardian yesterday, written by a junior doctor. She made the point that politicians and some commentators have the perspective of gods – in that they see the big picture. They see the numbers of people hospitalised, the numbers of ICU beds and ventilators and PPE required, the number of refrigerated trucks to house the bodies of those who’ve died, the numbers of businesses affected, the number of unemployed people … numbers. But she was seeing people. People struggling to breathe, people struggling to cope, people who are fearful and anxious and scared for their own lives.
I’m finding it a challenge to deal with patients who are so unwell because I wish this hadn’t happened to them. When you’re providing one-on-one care, it hardly registers that there are hundreds of people in the same position. We talk of curves and peaks but that has nothing to do with lived experience. Politicians and journalists now speak with the perspective of gods. They have an overview of the situation that I just cannot have. As a doctor I feel like an ant standing next to an elephant: I can barely make sense of what I see, and it’s hard to throw my tiny weight against it.
We can look at the numbers and keep the situation at arm’s length. We can protect ourselves from the reality and head off to our holiday homes at the beach or in the bush. We can flaunt our privilege, like Justin Timberlake did in a radio interview recently, when he said that him and his wife weren’t exactly coping with ’24 hour a day parenting’. Is there any other sort?
Apparently, there is.
While I don’t flaunt my privilege, I feel it. I have a house, it’s (mostly) warm, there’s food in the fridge and running water. Things it’s so easy to take for granted. I have the technological means to contact members of my family so we stay connected.
I also have a job I can do from home, unlike many of those in places like New York where the coronovirus has split the city into two unequal parts.
Different boroughs, even different neighborhoods within each borough, are experiencing coronavirus almost as though it were two different contagions. In wealthier white areas the residential streets are empty; parking spots that are fought over in normal times now stand vacant following an exodus to out-of-town weekend homes or Airbnbs.
In places like the Bronx – which is 84% black, Latino or mixed race – the sidewalks are still bustling with people making their way into work. There is still a rush hour. “We used to call them ‘service workers’,” Williams said. “Now they are ‘essential workers’ and we have left them to fend for themselves.”
Source: A tale of two New Yorks
I feel uneasy everytime we get a parcel on the doorstep. Someone has had to put themselves on the line so that I can eat and have the medication I need. Someone who can’t work from home has packed that item, and someone else has delivered it. Am I putting them at risk? Or am I keeping someone in a job they might otherwise not be in? The answers seesaw through my mind and I’m yet to feel as though I have an answer that I feel at ease with.
Perhaps it’s both and there’s no easy way to reconcile my dilemma.
I’m writing to remember, so that next year, when all this is over (will it be over by this time next year?), I can look back and read some of the things I’ve been thinking about during this time of isolation.
Not social isolation, of course. Well, not for many of us. We’re lucky to live in a country with a relatively reliable internet connection, and to have access to so much technology. And we’re lucky that there’s a ready supply of pens and paper for children to use when they write letters to those living in aged care, or to their own grandparents. Who says you need digital technologies to stay connected?
But we now talk about having a ‘Zoom’ as if we’ve been doing it all our lives – and even many oldies who hadn’t thought FaceTime was worth their while are now using it to stay in touch with family members. HouseParty is something I’m hearing a lot about, but it’s mostly negative at this stage, so I’m staying clear of it until I can see a use for it.
I scrolled past a Facebook post earlier that mentioned something about the ‘interminable long weekend’, and I have to say, I haven’t felt that at all. If anything, it’s going way too fast for me.
Tim set us both a challenge yesterday – a photography challenge (my favourite kind). We are to take a photo of things around the house for every letter of the alphabet.
We set to work yesterday, writing lists, storyboarding ideas (well, that was me, Tim doesn’t storyboard), and then we got clicking. It meant the day sped by, and even better, meant I wasn’t sitting in front of a computer all day.
I mentioned it in our post-exercise hangout yesterday and Deb decided that her and Grant would join in … so between now and the end of the month we’ll be taking photos that we’ll compile into a book I’ve decided to title Images in the time of coronavirus: An alphabet of isolation.
Or should it be ‘from isolation’? I can’t decide.
Plenty of time for that.
Anyway, while I was taking a photo for ‘I’ yesterday, I noticed the yellow rose out the front was open, so I captured it and thought I’d share it with you.
Musings from the cold 