Dr Kristopher Lovell

It’s been just about four months since I last saw my boyfriend in person and I know we are lucky to still have jobs (even if they barely resemble are pre quarantine roles) and had a fairly limited impact to our families from Covid but there’s still an anger that has built up.

We both have friends who work in essential roles with one even being a community nurse who goes into other people’s homes, but they have been acting as though life has returned to normal. When they have a day off and the weather is nice, they’ve travelled through two counties just to get to a sandy beach. The county they do live in has lovely rivers and meadows/woods if they wanted a day out. It just feels irresponsible and for us hypocritical for someone who has seen the harm first-hand to not realise what they are doing is harmful. Sensible decisions seem to escape lots of people at the moment.

I know this is most likely only a small insight into someone working in healthcare and we know those who do are doing so much for society. That one person we know is making a joke of the sacrifices made by other NHS staff such as those who haven’t been able to see their kids or managing single-parent households throughout this.

It’s been hard being split up from loved ones and even worse when your loved one made the decision to go home to be with their family which include someone who needs to shield. It makes it feel like the strict version of lockdown continues whilst others return to normal, even for those on the front line. People need to make their individual decisions about what they are comfortable with and so if that means continuing to shield those around us who most need it then I guess that’s how it needs to be.