I can’t believe we’ve been in lockdown for over a year! It’s almost seems like I went to bed last March and fell into a long dream. I’m glad that restrictions are easing and the city doesn’t look so ghostly any more.
Even basic things like shopping in the High Street, became a luxury in lockdown and it was interesting to see the long queues to the stores on April 12th, when the government lifted non essential shopping restrictions here in the UK.
Getting Back to Normal
It all points towards the hope of getting back to normality. It’s been a long, hard challenging year and start to this new decade of the 20s. We have all discovered that we are much more resilient than we thought of ourselves.
We have had to navigate isolation, fought the coronavirus, adhered to restriction measures to protect ourselves and others by socially distancing, relentless hand sanitising and wearing a mask in shops and enclosed spaces outside our homes.
How Far We’ve Come
We’ve had to replace our normal outdoor entertainment with creativity, social media, Zoom and a lot of reading. I hope there’s something positive you’ve learnt during lockdown that enhances your life. I definitely have!
So, now that we are coming out of lockdown, I have to work at deconstructing all the thoughts and fears that have kept us in lockdown and socially distancing from one another. Further restrictions in the UK officially ease on Monday 17th May to permit indoor and outdoor entertainment .e.g. cinemas and up to 6 people can meet indoors and two households. I’m certainly looking forward to eating indoors at restaurants again.
We’ve spent an entire year having rules drummed into our ears to prevent us spreading the virus and rightly so. Now that restrictions are being slowly lifted, do we just go back to normal? What do we do with all the memories and cautious behaviour we’ve learned during lockdown? How do we attempt to deconstruct the fears we’ve spent a year building up in our minds?
Processing Learned Fears
There are so many questions that are important to process as we come out of lockdown if we want to integrate into social spaces and not demonise each other or subconsciously develop agoraphobia.
So here’s a way to deconstruct fears and process things clearly, and I will use the “How do you eat and elephant” saying – One bite at a time:
Facts about Covid-19 – It is a highly infectious virus transmitted by droplets from the nose and mouth that affects the respiratory system. The elderly and people with underlining health conditions, such as cancer and respiratory issues, are at a higher risk of infection. Others are A symmetric, so they can contract the virus, but develop mild or no symptoms, but might infect others with it. The way to catch it is through people spreading the virus, which rapidly replicates itself.
Measures to contain the spread
We have spent over a year in lockdown, adhered to social distancing rules, wearing a mask in enclosed spaces, such as supermarkets and shopping centres. Most unessential stores, pubs and restaurants have been closed as a measure to curb the spread and large gatherings became illegal. We did this well.
The Covid-19 Vaccine and its effectiveness
Since last December, the government has rolled out the Covid-19 vaccination programme, starting with the most vulnerable to the less vulnerable.
So what does the Vaccine do? The vaccine enables the white blood cells in our bodies to develop an immunity to the virus and it also stops us from getting seriously ill from it. It requires two doses for the vaccine to be fully effective. How to get the Covid-19 vaccine in the UK
If everyone gets the vaccine, we can all have a better chance of returning to normality.
Over the centuries, we have had plagues and viruses, which we have fought with vaccines and medication and Covid-19 will be no different.
The government announced that their move to ease restriction further is based on four tests of the vaccine’s effectiveness.
According to the National Health Service (NHS), the COVID-19 vaccine meets strict standards of effectiveness and quality set by an independent medical regulator. The BBC reports that, as it stands now, over 36 million people in the UK have received, at minimum, the first vaccine, which is over half the population. It is very reassuring that we are making headway.
Can the Vaccine Protect us from Covid Variants?
The World Health Organisation (WHO), states that approved vaccinations available, provide a protection against variants to the virus that might develop. This is because the vaccines provide a wide range of antibodies and cell response to fight mutations.
Health researchers are constantly studying the behaviour of the virus in order to make a quick response to changes that might be problematic.
So, given the above information, we can be confident that the coronavirus is under constant militant scrutiny.
In view of all that is being done, we can safely deconstruct fears built up in our minds over the last twelve months and feel a lot more confident and informed about where we stand regarding getting back to normality.
Brief Personal Update
I have finally found a poetry editor and my poems are in the editing process. I should get a first draft before the end of the month and I hope to get my collection of poems out soon as I complete all the editing.
Here is a poem I wrote about lockdown:
Photo by Alberto Bigon on Unsplash
Joanne Sojinu