Rory Fitzgerald
We decided to triple my wife’s potential exposure to the coronavirus. It seemed like the sensible thing to do. This decision saw my wife go from working one to three shifts per week in the emergency department of our local hospital. This is on top of her normal GP work. As a doctor, she can make a real difference as the pressure piles onto the health service as this epidemic unfolds.
The downsides of this either brave or foolish decision – depending on your perspective – are obvious.
They include the risk that my wife catches the virus, or brings it home to our four children. I could also do without catching it, especially since I have asthma. We risk becoming sick and, in the worst case, we could die. With grim common-sense, the night before she went in for her first extra shift, my wife anxiously asked if we should make a will – even though we know the statistics are in our favour.
For those of us in our 30s and 40s, the risk of dying from the virus is thankfully quite low – but not negligible. It’s estimated that somewhere between 0.2% and 0.4% of this age group who catch it could die. Yet the risks for healthcare workers appear to be somewhat higher, perhaps due to the greater exposure they can receive. Hopefully, the treatments already being discovered will soon hugely improve all such grim reckonings. Thankfully, the risks to children already appear to be extremely low.
My wife’s mother, who is in her 70s, is now cocooned in an apartment to the side of our house. Her welfare is our greatest concern, and we are taking every precaution. We also bade my parents farewell, knowing that the kids might not see them in person for weeks, or perhaps months. The fears of the older generation are entirely rational, given the higher risks they face. We owe it to them, and to others who are already unwell, to be as careful as possible. A daily chore for our kids is to disinfect the door handles and other items around the house.
When my wife comes home from work, myself and the older kids distract our one year old – who would be unable to understand why her returning mother could not cuddle her as normal. We stay in one room, playing with her, while my wife sneaks upstairs for a shower, before putting the scrubs she wore at work in a hot wash. Only then does she embrace the kids.
Just last week, I overheard English tourists loudly dismissing the whole coronavirus thing as a media invention, a thing of nothing, akin to the winter flu. They are on a journey towards reality. For we all saw this virus as something distant, abstract and uncertain until recently.
Now, the risks from this malevolent virus are undeniable to all but the most obtuse. Just this week, the news came that a first cousin of mine had tested positive for Covid-19 having contracted it here in Cork. This thing spreads with great ease, shutting down modern civilisation as it goes.
The kids’ lives have been turned upside-down. They are now removed from their beloved grandparents. Their school is shut, and playdates are banned. The first day of home schooling came after St Patrick’s Day. They kids set up their desks carefully. I went onto the app, where their teachers had already designated work. The older two settled into their new routine with relative ease, but our five-year-old struggled with this strange new reality. Break time came and I joined the kids for a race up and down the laneway that leads to our house.
After ‘big lunch’, my eldest daughter finished her work and then took on the role of schoolteacher to her little sister with some relish. She adeptly helped her with reading and writing. Her little sister relished the attention, and suddenly it all seemed like a game to her, with her older sister playing teacher. They even started calling me the principal. Yet a home school principal’s life can be hard, especially when working from home – or trying to.
Our local town is now eerily quiet, with closed pubs, restaurants and playgrounds. Once bustling supermarkets have become desolate places where a few nervous shoppers coyly avoid proximity, as warning messages blare out on the loudspeaker. Flights are grounded and holiday plans are shelved, while stock markets implode and fear gains ground. Our family’s world has shrunk to our house and garden. We have cheerfully met this adversity so far. It’s best to roll with it, and welcome this reminder that humans are not masters of our destiny, but supplicants to it; fragile creatures who need the medicine of hope.