We gave Covid 19 the keys to our house 31 days ago, how are things going?

It is 08.00 am on Friday 2 October 2020, the thirty-first day of back to school.  

The cheery thing to report

Hey! we have at least remained asymptomatic for our first month of accepting being exposed to the new Covid related school risks – celebrated only by a quiet, deep, sigh of relief from mum and dad. Our monthly summit meeting has produced a new agreement to further tighten our own home anti-Covid procedures in readiness for a renewed viral assault from a local school outbreak and / or from the anticipated national second wave about to wash over us all.

The not-so-cheery thing to report

Mum and dad are into their second week of a self-declared quarantine (*).

(*) we don’t like the word quarantine, it’s too explicit and too emotionally distressing; we now refer to the concept in neutral terms, as an EPA (Extreme Protection Alert)                

• We got caught out when we let Child go to her best friend’s birthday party, in her best friend’s own home and with only after two others from their ‘Best Friends’ group, and only for two hours.

• We said OK, on the logic that, with the reopening of school a month ago, the BF group already get together five days out of seven to meet, chat, play, work, laugh, quarrel, whatever, they enjoy and savour every minute. So, the only additional risk was down to Child meeting directly with her best friend’s mum and dad, as opposed to the usual remote contact via the BF group.

• WRONG DECISION! It turned out that it was not just CHILD plus very BF plus two, it became CHILD plus very BF plus four – our very stupid mistake in not having laid down the explicit rules of social engagement that were acceptable to us.   So, the contact risk due to us letting CHILD go to the party was: direct contact with on mum and dad, and remote contact with four other sets of mums and dads – hence, an emergency summit meeting and the declaration of a two week EPA.

• Mum and dad were not happy bunnies at all when we got that news! The deed was done. It reminded us that we are learning all the time about the variable impact of human to human situations. 

• And now, to cap it all, Child has her own birthday in just six weeks time. We are seriously investigating how to hold a successful, happy-go-lucky party outdoors in the middle of an unforgiving wintry November. All suggestions welcomed!

And meanwhile

Our anti-Covid behaviour outside: We are only in charge of making sure we fully comply at all times with all anti-Covid procedures: wear our masks correctly (snug fit and covering our nose and mouth); make sure they are fit for purpose (clean and anti-viral filtration compliant); maintain a minimum two meters social distance (particularly when others do not even try to); stay away from all unsafe places, procedures and events; and, above all, minimise all non-essential human to human physical interactions.   

Our anti-Covid behaviour at home: we spoke in issue 4 about building a new line of defence in the event of the virus getting into the house. We are now basing the elements of this new line of defence on the assumption that Covid will inevitably make it into our house, however hard we may try our best to stop it. The school scenario, in the face of the current big increases in new Covid cases, is tailormade to create new hotspots.

The mum and dad plan for constructing our final line of ‘at home’ defence reflects the best advice we can get (from my on-tap friend and medic), from our own researches, from changing our own behaviours, and yes, from our personal opinions and preferences, consists of, so far:

• Changing our own eating behaviours: it is common at the family table to make sure all the food that is served is eaten (come on, eat up, don’t let your food go to waste- think of all the starving people in the world!, etc). Now, food that is left, is not passed around, it IS thrown out – it interrupts an obvious source of Covid transmission between the family members
• Optimising personal physical fitness and mental wellbeing:  there are two gentle daily physical routines -a combination of whole body muscle strengthening and cardiac fitness (which also boosts mental wellbeing) and, nightly meditation (counteracts the chronic sleep deprivation that we all have in our Covid stressed conditions and great for boosting mental and health wellbeing)
• Daily dose of fresh air: consists of a minimum of a daily foray outside the house into the nearest parks, and away from the worst of car pollution, for some good clean fresh air to flush out our lungs from the urban poisons
• Getting back to nature: once a week, walking in the forest setting to get back to nature; it helps us to dump our excess baggage of stresses and tensions, brings back a sense of simple reality,   (good for boosting both physical and mental wellbeing)
• Home cooking and eating well: living in Covid times has dramatically changed our eating habits, to the point that home cooking (who needs a restaurant?) and eating well has, by happenstance, taken centre stage of our physical, mental and health wellbeing programme
• Preventing any viral inoculation and/or colonisation of our nose, throats and lungs: we now have a rigid, twice daily routine of hot water salt gargles and nasal sprays, designed to kill any virus that makes it to our respiratory systems BEFORE it can take hold and try to kill us; and, another twice daily routine of home chest physiotherapy (helps to maintain full lung function and to provide early warning of any deterioration in lung performance)

In addition, we are testing a ten day course of Echinacea extract (confirmed to have upper respiratory anti-viral properties and to reduce the recovery time from colds) in order to confirm our compatibility with the product and to then have it on standby as an addition to the salt water regime if justified by symptoms.

• Optimising our general immunity readiness: this is the complicated one, due to the plethora of supposed effective natural products and the mountain of advice that can be found online from Covid analytical studies. We are still ploughing through loads of websites, but nothing substantive to report yet. Pending new findings, we are taking a combination of: Vitamin D (Covid patients in intensive care with low Vitamin D have a higher mortality rate than those with normal Vitamin D levels); and, that old favourite of our own parents, Cod Liver Oil for the Omega 3.

• Finally, after 31 days of exposure to school, what about Mum and Dad – are they coping?:

Our brain function, as measured by a focus on the tasks we must deliver on to keep everything ticking over, is still far from perfect and we are now into coping mechanisms, like making daily lists so that we can’t forget, unless of course, we forget to keep it up-to-date or lose it entirely. Generally, we are pleased that our anti-Covid procedures do not overwhelm us but they really are tedious and time consuming. We have to work hard to stay upbeat, protect our good humour and enjoy the little gems of ‘joie de vivre’ that occasionally pop up, despite Covid’s best efforts to squash everything that is joyful to humans.

By John Saunders

World Health Communication Associates (WHCA) & INSPIRIT Creatives UG NGO,
MediaWise and MediaFocusUK

Strengthening connections
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