{"id":23138,"date":"2020-06-23T10:28:25","date_gmt":"2020-06-23T00:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=23138"},"modified":"2021-04-13T10:04:17","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T00:04:17","slug":"life-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=23138","title":{"rendered":"Life during the coronavirus pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"edomask\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”<\/p>\n

– Lenin<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

W<\/span>e’re living through history.<\/p>\n

I don’t remember the first time I heard about corona virus in the news.\u00a0 I guess I would’ve seen\u00a0news of it in December when it\u00a0first hit Wuhan.\u00a0 But it didn’t feel different to reading about Swine flu, H1N1 or any other modern virus.\u00a0 It still felt like something that happened “somewhere else” and that modern science would contain it quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n

It began to feel ‘real’ when I read about the drastic measures the Chinese government had taken to contain the virus (a total lockdown of a city of 11 million) and I was alarmed at how quickly it spread to Europe,\u00a0 and\u00a0how terrifyingly deadly it had been in Italy and Spain.\u00a0 Then, overnight it felt like every country announced its arrival on their shores and no one was really certain what it all meant.\u00a0 New language and terminology quickly entered into modern lexicon – social-distancing, contact tracing, self-isolation – and then just as quickly in Australia we developed our own colloquial versions – roni, rona, iso etc.<\/p>\n

Some world leaders treated it like a deadly plague and acted accordingly (perhaps most famously New Zealnd prime minister Jacinda Adern).\u00a0 Others seem to shrug off the advice of medical experts, such as British prime minister Boris Johnson who declared he would shake hands with corona-virus victims (he did, then got the virus which nearly killed him), and Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison who famously said he would ignore pleas to avoid large crowds and “go to the footy” on the weekend and look to initiate new precautionary measures on Monday.<\/p>\n

In the early days, it was hard to parse the mass of information and understand how seriously we should treat corona virus.\u00a0 Bizarrely, one of the early moments of coronavirus “feeling real” in Australia was the news that Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson had contracted it on the Gold Coast.<\/p>\n

Australia’s first coronavirus case was on January 25.\u00a0 Our first death was on March 1.\u00a0 Most of us went into some sort of lockdown in early March.\u00a0 For me it was March 9th.<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>

My home office<\/p><\/div>\n

Lockdown in Australia during the early days meant only essential businesses stayed open (supermarkets, medical clinics etc) and the total shutdown of sporting events, restaurants, pubs, cinemas etc.\u00a0 I was fortunate to keep my job and not have any reduced hours.\u00a0 I know plenty of friends who lost work or were\u00a0reduced to working just a couple of\u00a0days a week.\u00a0 Day care remained open for the children of essential workers so Penny’s week day routine stayed the same as Jen and I were deemed ‘essential’.<\/p>\n

Technically, working from home was a seamless transition.\u00a0 Writing web content is pretty much a job you can do anywhere as long as you have a computer and an internet connection.\u00a0 I had morning video calls on Teams and then I’d spend my day in the study doing my thing, stopping to gently nudge the cats off the keyboard and to take the occasional walk around the block.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, I really disliked working from home.\u00a0 I’m more of a social creature than I realised.\u00a0 It wasn’t until lockdown that I worked out that sitting at home in a quite suburb in near total silence wasn’t what my brain was comfortable with.\u00a0 Fortunately, I was never given the order to work 100% from home and each week I’d have some days in the office too.<\/p>\n

Weekends were pretty challenging to begin with.\u00a0 Being in lockdown with an active and energetic two year old is\u00a0tough<\/em>.\u00a0 With no playgrounds, swimming pools or shopping centres available to us, we went all in on getting climbing equipment, painting sets and other activities to keep her occupied at home.\u00a0 At least we have a big yard and a good neighbourhood to take her biking.\u00a0 Taking Penny for a trip around the block became a daily occurrence.<\/p>\n

\"Going<\/a>

Going for a walk around the neighbourhood with Penny<\/p><\/div>\n

March 2020 was probably the weirdest month of my adult life.\u00a0 Time stood still.\u00a0 You took nothing for granted any more.\u00a0 Life as we had known it in the developed Western world, changed in an instant.\u00a0 We all held our collective breathes to see whether these drastic isolation measures would stop the virus.\u00a0 Each day, I fell into this morbid routine of logging onto a website called Worldometer<\/a> and looking at their corona virus statistics from around the world.\u00a0 How many tests were done.\u00a0 How many new cases.\u00a0 How many deaths.\u00a0 Mentally I became very numb.<\/p>\n

The early days were a struggle.\u00a0 I missed my weekly routine terribly.\u00a0 No netball on Tuesday nights.\u00a0 No swimming with Penny on Thursday morning.\u00a0 No soccer on Thursday nights.\u00a0 No pub dinners with mates on Friday.\u00a0 No weekends at the park as a family.\u00a0 I was miserable.<\/p>\n