We are over two months into this lockdown and I can report that I’ve been a good and responsible citizen throughout. Apart from two necessary short journeys around the city, I have not ventured further than one mile from my home.
Of more importance though I can also report that neither herself or myself, nor either of our two, (adult), children caught this flipping virus. I have a sister in the city, another two in West Cork and a fourth in Belfast and none of them got the virus. Between the sisters they have eleven kids, many married and with children of their own and they are scattered all over the country. Yet again, none of these people were brought down by this virus.
The area I live in is a sort of old fashioned community based area and news is passed by word of mouth, much as it was in the past up and down the land. The local supermarket, the post office, the butchers shop and several other ‘nests’ in the community are places where people meet briefly and share anecdotes. One glaringly obvious piece of news or gossip would be if someone locally had tested positive for this damned virus and yet I haven’t heard of a single person in the area being infected. Information such as that would spread like wildfire here in Mayfield so I can only assume I live in a Covid-free zone and I say again, I haven’t been outside it since March 23rd.
What I did hear about a fortnight back was that between all of the hospitals around Cork, there was only one single person left in intensive care. There are over 200,000 people in the greater Cork City area and a half million in the County as a whole so Cork appears to be a pretty safe place to live at this time.
Two days ago it was reported that nationally, only two people had died of the Covid that day. To put that in perspective, the daily death rate in Ireland averages eighty people a day so seventy-eight others also died around the Country but they are not national news. So any foreboding I may have felt about catching this cursed Covid is now well past me. I will still practice some caution of course but on balance, I reckon the worst is over.
If I have one small nagging fear it is the lack of herd immunity due to the lockdown. If there should be a round-two of the virus, as some so-called experts are warning, then all bets are off. But as I predicted a month ago, our Finance Minister has sounded several warnings that we are running short of money and there are already huge bills to be paid back due to the cost of the lockdown to the economy. A second lockdown due to a recurrence of the virus could not be funded so the option of staying home is unofficially off the table.
Fingers crossed folks!