Covid19: Day 4 – Our company has gone on lockdown

Dear Diary

Ever since I left work on 12 March, things have spiralled out of control. And I’m not just talking about the lack of toilet paper. I’m talking about social distancing from my colleagues at work.

I was due back in the office tomorrow, Tuesday 17 March but got the call from my boss: “It’s official, our offices are on lockdown. Don’t come in to work tomorrow. We’ll be working from home until further notice.”

I honestly don’t know how to feel. The Corona virus epidemic is now a pandemic and I’m not ready for this. As soon as I got off the phone, I flashed back to last month when we were all talking in the office about the woman infected with Covid19 that took an Uber to the hospital. A hospital less than a mile from our office by the way, which meant big news for us.

Every time I popped into the breakout area for a glass of water or a cup of tea, the gossip was about how close to home the infection is. Since January we had been following the hand washing, cover your mouth when you sneeze, cough into your elbow rules. We even had hand sanitisers installed on all floors for safe measure.

None of this stops us from panicking internally wondering who might have the virus. On the one hand I’m glad the office is closed on the other, I now need to come to terms with the fact that whilst our company has taken this step, the government has yet to advise on stronger measures. The take it on the chin/ herd immunity mixed message from last week, didn’t go down too well with all reasonable people.

Of course the virus will spread as we all go about our daily business. Social distancing and washing our hands for 20 seconds isn’t going to cut it though. At some point we need to do what China has down and go into full lockdown.

There are those who follow the government unquestioningly who will see this as a storm in a teacup so we could be seeing the number of people infected rise to thousands before anything is done.