Last night at 8:30pm the PM Boris Johnson announced that people would only be permitted to leave their homes for shopping, medical care, to exercise (1 per day) and to work if absolutely essential. Public gatherings are to be limited to no more than 2 people. Police will be granted the power to enforce this. All shops that don’t sell food or medicine are to be closed.

We all got texts this morning to hammer the messages home.

After this, the first minister Nicola Sturgeon also gave a press conference (although hers was an actual press conference, while Boris’ was a pre-recorded message). While Boris had avoided using the word Lockdown, Nicola has no issues calling it was it is.

It’s still not clear what fines to expect, who is still allowed to go to work and so on. Companies (especially in manufacturing, from some anecdotal evidence) simply do not want to shut down, and are happy enough to risk people’s lives to keep turning a profit.

Such harsh measures seem necessary to save lives, but what’s really frustrating has been the number of people simply not taking any of this seriously. Although pubs and clubs had been ordered to close last week, legislation to enforce it wasn’t passed. Several pubs across the nation decided to stay open and were packed to the gills with happy revellers.

It’s just been maddening. You’ve got some people who either don’t care or don’t think that it’s a real problem, who are going out and doing stupid things that will let this spread. On the other hand you’ve got idiots panic buying and hoarding, resulting in empty shelves in the supermarkets. You’ve got companies forcing employees into work unnecessarily, despite the advice, and it’s all adding up a disaster.

Another thing that’s been happening is that people have been fleeing to the North. For those unfamiliar with Scotland, the country is loosely divided¹ into two geographical regions called the Lowlands and the Highlands.

User Jrockley, via Wikipedia.

The Lowlands are densely populated and home to most of the country’s population, around 80% if not more. The highlands on the other hand are mostly empty, filled with small towns and islands. Infrastructure development has been limited by the (sometimes very harsh) geography.

It’s a tempting idea to grab your supplies and head North until this whole thing blows over, but there’s a lot of issues with that plan.

• If you’re infected and don’t know it, you risk spreading it in the Highlands.
• Some of these places are pretty remote and don’t have the supply chains in place to feed a huge influx of people.
• If you get sick, they don’t have the facilities to care for you.

The people heading North haven’t thought this through it seems, and the backlash has been significant.

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My wife has also been trying to talk people out of this idiotic plan in several facebook groups. Usually when she points out the above, the chat just goes silent; so who knows if they’ve listened to reason or just decided to be stupid in private.

The numbers for Scotland are getting worse as expected. We currently have 584 confirmed cases and 16 deaths. We are now up to 183 cases in Glasgow. The Scottish government for some reason has stopped publishing the number of recoveries, so we can’t work out the mortality rate for Scotland. But it’s not looking good.

Elsewhere in the world things are also looking bleak. Italy now has 6077 dead. Spain has 2800. The USA currently has 616. Total number of deaths world-wide are around 17.5k, but it’s thought that Russia and China are hiding their true numbers. Everywhere is going into lockdown to avoid the spread of the virus.

Things look like they might get particularly bad in the USA. Donald Trump has turned his hand at snake oil and suggested two medicines normally used to treat Malaria can cure Coronavirus. Someone has already died following this advice. Apparently the Chinese response also tried this but found that the drug’s side-effects were far too severe.

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I suspect news from the US will continue to get dramatically worse over time, as Donald Trump seems to be looking for a silver bullet that will get rid of the issue rather than taking steps now that could save lives but might harm the economy further. Many American companies (such as Gamestop) are acting as if it’s ‘business as usual’ and trying to force their employees into work. It looks like they are far away from flattening their curve.

As for my brother and mother, things were looking bleak for my brother last night but he seems to have made a miracle recovery today, about 7 days after symptoms started. His work have asked him to come back in. I’m not convinced he’s needed and should able to work remotely. My mother is still stuck in quarantine for another week, and we’re all hoping that she won’t get it badly. She is convinced she already has had it, but I personally am not.

As for our own adventures in lockdown, they’re very difficult. It’s hard to explain to a 2 year old what is going on and why he can’t go to nursery. On top of that my wife and I are both meant to be working remotely. To make this work, I am getting up around 6am and working from 7am to 1pm. She wakes up with our son and looks after him til 1pm. Then we swap places; she works until 8.30pm while I look after our son and try to check e-mails in quiet moments. It’s stressful but it’s not going to last forever. Of course, how long it will last is a matter of debate. I suspect it will be 3 months or so before things start to return to something resembling normal. For many of us I fear life may never feel normal again.