Day 4 LockDown

30 March 2020

1280 cases
Recovered: 31
Deceased: 2

I find myself musing who came up with the term “lockdown”. It is a word I have never come across before that I know of, and I read fairly extensively. It feels strange to look out of the windows of our home and know that we cannot just go outside of our property. When I try to visualise the word “lockdown” I see a huge padlock and a chain, across our doors, our windows, our gates.

The world is holding its breath collectively, with everything set on pause. To me, it feels as if I am wading through molasses, unable to move quickly. My movements are languid, calculated, constrained. I am asked questions online, and I cannot come up with answers that make sense to me.

Yesterday Thomas Schaefer, the finance minister of Germany’s Hesse state, committed suicide. Apparently after he became “deeply worried” over how to cope with the economic fallout from the coronavirus. My heart breaks for him and every other person who has to deal with so much worry right now.

I find myself increasingly worrying about people who are alone during this time. I also worry about people unable to shop for themselves for essentials. The delivery services are overloaded, with some food services only able to deliver in about a week, and even more. What about people who do not have money for food, or who just cannot get to a store at all? I created a whatsapp group for people who joined who needs someone to chat to or to just check in.

Today I ventured out for the first time since we were asked to stay at home. It was not an easy decision, as my son has a compromised immune system, and I dread bringing anything home that causes harm to my children. We needed fresh fruit and vegetables, some milk and a couple more items. Doesn’t seem like much, but we really needed it, and for love or money I couldn’t find someone who could deliver to us.

Obviously we’ve been trying to explain what Covid-19 is to the twins, because they needed to understand why they cannot go to school, visit their friends, or go out. My son started crying this morning when I waved a cheery goodbye, convinced I was going to die. I was wearing my (what I thought was compulsory when we go to the grocery store) face mask, and we put clean clothes and sanitiser by the front door for when I got back. The new normal… It took a while to calm him down and tell him people are not dying, they are just sick, and I don’t want the germs to come home with me. I couldn’t remember which side of the face mask goes where, but eventually just put it on, and then realised how hot it gets when worn. So all sweaty-faced (but at least masked) I set out.

Up to when I got to the store, the streets were fairly quiet. At the store, though, it was as if everything was back to normal. Very few people wore masks, and the recommended 1m distance between customers was completely disregarded. Yellow lines at the cash registers served as a distance guide. Although there were people complaining about price hikes online with photos of products and prices, at this store prices seemed pretty normal to me, the only “strange” was that there were complete shelves stripped bare. Especially in the cold meats, frozen veg and baking sections. And the deli section for precooked meals was not operational, and no cold meats sliced on demand. There was no sign of cordoned off aisles with so-called prohibited goods. I got most of what we needed, could not find spaghetti anywhere and apparently yeast is currently worth its weight in gold and as unobtainable as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Back home, changed clothes at front door, sanitised everything, at my desk trying to work. What will this first full week of lockdown bring? I choose to be positive – we are doing out best, and that is all we can do.