The Day The Reality of Covid 19 Dawned On Me
I am a glass-half-full sort of person. I don’t know why; maybe, in my case, it is just luck and a total lack of cynicism. I believe that chaos breeds new opportunities in the long run. It’s all about soldiering on. Of course, it’s not easy. Let’s face it, the world as we know it is changing by the day, and we just don’t know how and when this crisis will end up. But hey, it’s not as if we have a choice, right? And in Sydney, we are three weeks behind Europe. To an extend, we are fortunate: we know what will happen and we can prepare for it. Well, that’s the theory. Mind you, we weren’t taking the situation very seriously so far. Pictures of beach goers on Bondi beach this weekend showed that this social distancing was considered a bit of a joke, especially amongst the younger generation.
In the meantime, my home country, France, is in lockdown, and my elderly parents can’t get out of their home. We have it way easier: right now, in Sydney, it is virtually impossible to find a roll of toilet paper, pasta or rice in a supermarket, but the rest is pretty much unchanged. At work, I am trying to build a resilience plan, and looking at all sorts of options to manage the crisis as best as possible. Things are ramping up pretty fast. I work for Sydney Metro, on one of the big infrastructure projects, and stopping now isn’t an option. You can’t ask a tunnel boring machine to stop just like that. We have to carry on. So we do. And with the actual high level of uncertainty, it’s very hard. But we owe it to the general public.
As restaurants and non-essential businesses are starting to close down, things are becoming more tense. My daughters have stopped going to school. It feels like the threat is about to hit much closer to home. Needless to say, I am not ready. How could I be?
As I keep going to work, having meetings and trying to progress a multi-faceted project, it suddenly dawns on me that I am more at risk of being contaminated than anyone who is self-isolating or working from home.
And I start to worry. Not about me: I am healthy, and would have a good chance of recovering from this virus. No, I worry about my family. Some of them have asthma, others fragile lungs. What to do? How can I make sure that I am not putting them in danger?
Don’t get me wrong: I have it much easier than the medical staff. I am not in contact with persons who have been infected. But is it fair to endanger my family, even a little bit?
I don’t think so. The decision is therefore made. I’ll send them away for a few weeks and hopefully we will be together once the crisis is over. I will be on my own, a bit like an older single girl, but without the fun. My family will work from home and have very limited contacts with the outside world. Better safe than sorry, right?
This is a decision I had never envisaged I would have to make. Maybe middle managers, just like me, are the unsung heroes of this crisis. I take comfort on he fact that I am privileged: as a government employee, I won’t lose my job. I feel for all the employees who will lose theirs, a nasty ripple effect of this virus crisis.
That said, I must admit that I am confused about the whole thing. We are bombarded with contradictory information, and I don’t know where I stand.I have read that you can get the virus without displaying any symptoms. All of my team has had some sort of flu recently. Maybe I have already had Covid 19 without even noticing. Maybe I haven’t. I don’t know. The uncertainty is killing me. I hate not knowing. I am a control freak and right now I don’t control anything. Why don’t they test everyone? How can the government be sure of anything if they don’t test everyone? I am a mathematician by background and this current approach doesn’t make any sense. So yes, I am angry too.
This crisis will get much worse before it gets better. Let’s face it, right now the outlook is pretty bleak. Tonight, as my family is driving away from me, I indulge in a bit of self-pity. But then again, what to do? I’ll soldier on…
