From a friend in London:
Yesterday [March 16] seems to have been a turning point. Whereas on Sunday and even Monday morning it was all in the background, and in middle class enclaves toilet rolls and hand washes were gone from supermarkets, there was still a sense that it wasn't quite happening here yet. That idea of something bad elsewhere disappeared by the time evening came. And today things are shutting down rapidly, one by one. Libraries, art galleries, cafes, pubs are largely empty, and the nature of conversations and social media exchanges are more sombre and less flippant. It looks like schools will close by Friday. There's some blame being pushed at the government from some quarters - why no screening earlier than now, why aren't all cases being tested etc - but there's also a growing sense that there are no easy calls and an understanding that the government is listening to medical experts who are being asked to make big calls without knowing whether they're the right ones.
I think last week it was easy to be cynical about the government response, I think people are a bit more frightened now and so it's as if they can't afford to be so cynical. Someone talked about the Greenfell Towers disaster we had a few years back when the fire services initially asked people in the towers to stay in their rooms. It was the wrong call but at the time it seemed like a good call. This person had an uneasy feeling that we were making calls that seem the best but could well be disastrous. Another firend pointed out that isolation could cause big problems: 'loneliness kills' was her stark message. I guess making decisions with limited knowledge is making everyone jumpy.
What is new is this talk of dying. Since yesterday my daughters keep checking that I'm staying out of social gatherings of any kind. They're anxious about the whole thing. My old mum who's in her late eighties was coming down on Sunday but cancelled because London's been identified as ahead of the rest of the UK. Another friend of mine who runs a school was telling me that she'd noticed that in poorer areas near her school toilet rolls were plentiful because no one could afford to bulk buy them. And she asked what would happen if a familiy had to isloate themselves and there were five people living in a single room which many of her families have to endure? The class lines are very visible when working in London state schools. I'm not seeing much about this in the media yet but I think if and when schools do get closed we'll be seeing a lot about this.
