Covid-19.... scary as hell.

I'm not actually sure what day of the lockdown or near lockdown we are on.  I barely know what day of the week it is... and they all seem to be morphing into one another, and making it the longest April on record....  Feels like we've had more than 30 days already, and I'm told it is only the 10th.   The situation with Covid-19 in the UK is absolutely dire.  Today 980 people died in hospital with Covid-19 in the UK.  Thats just those dying in hospital, it doesn't include anyone dying in the community or in a care/nursing home for example.

Hospitals are short of personal protective equipment (PPE), so those at the front line can't protect themselves, and unless you are admitted to hospital you can't get tested to find out if you have the virus.   I spoke to my mum's care home yesterday and asked if they needed anything, if there was anything we could send that could help - their answer - send them any sort of PPE, wipes, sanitiser as it was getting increasingly difficult to get supplies.   Mum is apparently ok, but it is so hard knowing that she is in there and nobody can go and visit her.  She's thankfully probably oblivious to all of this, as her understanding is so limited, but it must be scary for her having all her personal care done with people wearing masks and PPE.  I should explain that she has very advanced dementia - she's in a really bad way.   My worry is that she won't get the care that she needs because of the pressure everyone is under - I accept that she may get Covid-19 and if she gets it she will probably not survive it, but I want her to be well looked after and as comfortable as she can be.  There have been a few news stories about care homes were 13-15 people have died in a short space of time due to Covid-19, and if a carer brings it in, they are pretty much at its mercy.

The biggest news in the press has been that Boris Johnson is in hospital with Coronavirus.  He who was bragging about shaking hands with people and herd immunity, managed to catch it and spent 3 days in ICU.  Not on a ventilator apparently, but ICU nonetheless.  Although I am not a fan of Boris Johnson & his politics, I am glad to hear he is on the mend assuming the information we are getting is true.  I hope the experience has given him plenty of food for thought - and he will realise the need to fund the NHS properly.  I won't hold my breath though.  

I don't think we'd be in this horrible mess if they had managed the situation properly in the first place and got us on lockdown sooner.  Compared to other countries, the situation in the UK is one of the worst.  The government started out by basically saying we would have to take it on the chin until the population developed a kind of herd immunity.  Then, thankfully they realised how many people that policy would kill (something like 250000), and started to act.  That said, it should never have come to nearly 1000 people losing their lives in a single day - it is just so scary.  We are so lucky to live where we do, in a small village - it must be really scary to be in a big city like London or Birmingham where there are so many cases.

On a lighter note, for us it seems to be getting easier to do an online food shop -  We even got the toilet roll and a bottle of hand sanitiser that we ordered in the last delivery...