Corona
There's too much to do about Corona and yet since this blog is also a bit of my diary I want to have a trace of the Corona outbreak on here.
I consider myself as a rather down to earth person with a rational approach to most of things. And so I was reading all news about the Corona outbreak as of mid-January with great news interest. First it was far away although it was clear that it was going to spread in this global world. And so it did.
But it's ok, I'm not afraid of the virus itself for me or my family. But I must admit that a week ago all of a sudden I was taken by fear 2 evenings. All of a sudden the constant flow of media push messages but also work instructions that arrived even on a Sunday afternoon to take measures (no colleagues returning from "forbidden area's" allowed in the office for 2 weeks etc) and friends in 4 different countries posting about a lack of toilet paper on FB and unclarity whether Jan could leave on the planned travel or not...all of a sudden it was too much.
My fear was more linked to irrational behavior of all of us (yes I do hope next time our stock of toilet paper is low, I can simply go to a store and find some stock available there), and organisational challenges that the future might give us (how big will this epidemic become and what measures will impact our lives in the coming weeks). Jan was about to travel for 12 days, the longest he's done in a long time so I was looking ahead to a time of solo-parenting and my intuition told me that if he left, he might not return exactly on the intended day due to flight changes or quarentine rules or ... I also worried about being ill myself (which is not to bad on its own) but not being able to take care of our children at that moment.
Don't get met wrong: I do believe it makes sense to try to slow the outbreak down for as long as we can. Even if the disease is not "worse than a flu" for most of us...it is dangerous for some people that have less immunity. We all know people who have fought cancer, who are diabetic, who are at older age, who have high blood pressure. It's our duty to protect them. Unlike the flu where I take a vaccination each winter, nobody has immunity to corona at this moment. And an uncontrolled outbreak of such a contageous virus would take out all possible medical resources (the care givers are not immune themselves!) and therefore once again make access to medical services hardly possible for those that need it in the coming weeks.
So it is scary because trying to slow down the outbreak means to kill economic progress. It's tough times.
But this week I feel better. We seem to already get used to the fact that more colleagues work from home because they have a running nose, just out of respect for all of us. The new updates of the number of infected people doesn't trigger a news push alert anymore each day. We'll have to make the best of it. We'll see what happens, I don't have a crystal ball. But being fearfull is also lost energy.
I consider myself as a rather down to earth person with a rational approach to most of things. And so I was reading all news about the Corona outbreak as of mid-January with great news interest. First it was far away although it was clear that it was going to spread in this global world. And so it did.
But it's ok, I'm not afraid of the virus itself for me or my family. But I must admit that a week ago all of a sudden I was taken by fear 2 evenings. All of a sudden the constant flow of media push messages but also work instructions that arrived even on a Sunday afternoon to take measures (no colleagues returning from "forbidden area's" allowed in the office for 2 weeks etc) and friends in 4 different countries posting about a lack of toilet paper on FB and unclarity whether Jan could leave on the planned travel or not...all of a sudden it was too much.
My fear was more linked to irrational behavior of all of us (yes I do hope next time our stock of toilet paper is low, I can simply go to a store and find some stock available there), and organisational challenges that the future might give us (how big will this epidemic become and what measures will impact our lives in the coming weeks). Jan was about to travel for 12 days, the longest he's done in a long time so I was looking ahead to a time of solo-parenting and my intuition told me that if he left, he might not return exactly on the intended day due to flight changes or quarentine rules or ... I also worried about being ill myself (which is not to bad on its own) but not being able to take care of our children at that moment.
Don't get met wrong: I do believe it makes sense to try to slow the outbreak down for as long as we can. Even if the disease is not "worse than a flu" for most of us...it is dangerous for some people that have less immunity. We all know people who have fought cancer, who are diabetic, who are at older age, who have high blood pressure. It's our duty to protect them. Unlike the flu where I take a vaccination each winter, nobody has immunity to corona at this moment. And an uncontrolled outbreak of such a contageous virus would take out all possible medical resources (the care givers are not immune themselves!) and therefore once again make access to medical services hardly possible for those that need it in the coming weeks.
So it is scary because trying to slow down the outbreak means to kill economic progress. It's tough times.
But this week I feel better. We seem to already get used to the fact that more colleagues work from home because they have a running nose, just out of respect for all of us. The new updates of the number of infected people doesn't trigger a news push alert anymore each day. We'll have to make the best of it. We'll see what happens, I don't have a crystal ball. But being fearfull is also lost energy.
Comments