You do what you feel you have to do, Margo.
Stay well. Definitely do your gardening. Your friends, if they are vulnerable, should make their own decision to stay home or not, and not be waiting for the government to say "shut down" to their employers. They are responsible for themselves. I am fully aware of the chance of losing a job as a consequence. But you do what you have to do in this life, and you cannot be waiting for someone else to smooth the road. Sometimes the choices are brutal, but you have to do what is best for yourself. I am willing to bet that if they stay home and "self quarantine" there will be legislation or regulations that (if not already in place) retroactively will protect their jobs. Having to go into debt (or similar) to replace the lost wages is just a lousy turn of the cards. But you have to play them as they are dealt.
I'm going to ramble here, sorry. I wish I could drink. Or that I had a big bottle of prozac. (Either would work well, probably. And I certainly need it.) But:
We are also returning to the States, when it's feasible. The government is a good part of why. In our camp it's no so much that we think they don't care or have plans to get rid of us, it's more that there's just an institutionalized incompetence here at so many levels that we think we'd be, in the long run, better off back home. (Where we don't really expect much of the government, and have more opportunities to be self-sufficient in the broader sense of the term.) That "ii" does definitely include the government, but it also bleeds through the rest of society as well. It's so antithetical to our inherited and ingrained culture that, although it's usually only a minor annoyance, it's always there bothering us like a thorn. For people who were raised with it I would assume it's probably invisible or "just the way things are." But to us it is definitely not and I don't think it's healthy for us to stay because it is so visible to us. It's not something we're ever going to assimilate to.
Love the people here, I really do.
They've been very nice and friendly. I've met a lot of really good people. And financially I'm better off here. There is so much I really like here. It would be easy to just slide into my pigeonhole and spend my afternoons feeding the pigeons in the park, and having a nice cup of tea with the old ladies from the walking group a couple of times a week. But I'm going to bite the bullet and go back, and take my chances with the insanity that is the USA. Because although I thought being here would provide a safer life for the Daughter, I now see that she'd be shunted off into the appropriate box and kept relatively safe and relatively cared for (if it came to that), but would have more limited chances to live up to her potential and have a really good-quality life. There's just no route for her here to do that. Surviving wrapped in cotton wool on a shelf is not a desirable life. It's not really living at all.
IMHO - disabled policy here: from what I have been able to see it's fifty years behind the curve. While there's a lot of government adverts about inclusion, life here is more geared to keeping us warehoused, with a carer, and out of the way, rather than leveling the playing field so that we can all participate equally in society. As for things at the street level, I have to say, nowhere in the USA would it be ok to grab someone's wheelchair and start pushing it without being asked to do so, and then be offended if you were offended. I've seen it happen here - the hive-mind seems to think it's ok to do that, a good thing to do that. That's freaking scary.
But they seem to put people in pigeonholes/boxes. (And expect them to stay there.) Painting with a very broad brush here: Pensioners are expected to fit a mold - you're no longer productive, here's a minimal pension, now get out of the way. Schoolkids - "slow" school kids shunted in one direction and "bright" school kids going elsewhere. Poor kids v rich kids. Uni kids v dropouts. Low wage workers. "Credentialed" workers. "Degreed" workers/managers. Disabled people. Etc. Etc. Etc. They all appear to be pigeonholed into a nice, orderly, society. The obsession with credentials seems to fit in there, somewhere. People think you need a credentialed electrician to fix a lamp plug. You only do what your pigeonhole allows? You only expect out of life what your pigeonhole allows?
And what was it with that older English couple on the cruise ship who were constantly complaining that the government hadn't helped them, and that the ship quarantine wasn't working well? Did they not realize the quarantine was to keep
them away from the people on the mainland - they were potentially virused, after all. In effect they were the disease. It wasn't to keep
them safe. And yet they had this outlandish expectation that someone (the government) was going to swoop in and fix their situation immediately. That's just bizarre to me.
Maybe it's just Glagow where co-workers give you hell if you use a professional phone voice on the telephone at a place of employment. (Oooh, posh voice!) Or are competent. Although I do see it reflected in national tv commercials - the one that subtly puts down the young woman for being competent (calling her "clever clogs" in a dismissive way) and then telling her to join the army to use her competence. I wonder if it's left over from the old (yes, let's not go down that rabbit hole) class system/medieval mindset? Everyone has a place, and you don't step too far out of it? All of that generally on some weird subconscious level, of course. So while the treatment of the disabled and elderly is meant to be a kindness (in a patronizing way), I do think it's benign and don't think there's an active plan to shunt us off into the viral virtual death camps.
I'd rather be here during this than in the USA, though. I think. I'd like to say it's because we'd get better care here, but that's not true. The NHS does what it can, but it's like being on Medicaid, from what I've seen. The very well-heeled here have private insurance and private doctors, and they will get better care - what care there actually can be given, anyway. The great lump of the rest of the population will be cared for as best as can be done with the system that is in place. There are limits.
Given there really isn't much that can be done, I'm not sure how much it all matters. If we went back to the States I have medical insurance. (Technically, it's good over here as well. But only for me.) The Daughter would be on medicaid. In this particular pandemic, I doubt it would make a difference in our treatment. As there really isn't much of anything other than anti-inflammatory meds and, if things get really bad, a ventilator. But we would eventually get tested so we would know if we were carriers/immune/clear. We won't get that here. In the US it would be our choice, once the systemic capacity is ramped up. I really don't think it ever will be here. Choice is the issue, I think. While the USA has botched things badly so far, they are trying to put it right and eventually there would be some choice for everyone. It may be an illusory choice, and it may be that the UK govmt no longer is testing everyone because it's pointless, but I would still rather have the choice. Even if it is an illusion, I want that tiny bit of control over my own destiny. Even if knowing doesn't change anything. So I can make choices for my life based on all the facts. And, so, eventually (assuming I'm around to do so) I'll be going back.
As to the unpublished report. There are probably half-a-dozen of them floating around. Someone will have had to have listened to all the arguments and then made a "best guess" as to how to proceed. I'm glad it wasn't me who had to sort it out.
