This country makes me sick. Yesterday was VE Day and the news coverage of people just abandoning everything and having street parties is astounding. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of nationalist, jingoistic BS at the best of times, but there’s a depressing irony about people getting together to celebrate the sacrifices of others whilst refusing to do the same themselves. I can’t help but wonder how many people will suffer as a result of this, or how many would have been saved if it was raining yesterday.
I just choked on a crumpet. The only thought that popped into my head while I was trying to cough was how sad it would be to die alone in my flat because of a crumpet. And then there are people living with their families in suburbia, with gardens and people around them who just can’t possibly be denied the chance to throw up the bunting and risk making everything worse. I haven’t had a meaningful non-virtual interaction with another soul in months, but somehow, I just can’t bring myself to endanger other people or to contribute to this goddamn situation carrying on for longer than it has to because I want to see everyone I know. Even if I’m risking a premature carb-related death in the process.
In all seriousness, please don’t think I’m going out tutting at families who go out and play frisbee on the playing fields, or taking pictures of people sitting on benches – everyone is dealing with their situations as best they can, and lots of us don’t have the luxury of our own outside spaces. But somehow, I just can’t see how it’s legitimately okay to throw a massive party.
My brother is a paramedic and he is having to deal with some awful stuff at work. I was on the phone with him yesterday and he had to pause to report the house across his street to the police for having a huge get-together. His job is so difficult and dangerous right now, he was (understandably) pissed off. For people (potentially the same people banging on pans for the NHS every Thursday…) to just say “fuck you” to everyone like that…? It’s sickening.
I feel like I should write something positive… I spoke to a counsellor for the first time this week. Online – I wasn’t brave enough to phone. I have okay days and thoroughly terrible ones, but I’ve been worrying about going off the deep-end recently, and it was useful to talk things through with someone neutral. He made me feel like my concerns were legitimate which was surprisingly useful, being that I’ve mostly been trying to cope by dismissing them as irrational. I’m doing okay at the moment, less existential worries, and all that comes with it. I hope it lasts.
I’m not sure if that counts as positive…? It’s the best I’ve got right now.

Two days ago I received an antibody test, as I was sick for six weeks from February through March with a heavy cough and respiratory pain. I am still awaiting results. It is approximately day 75 of the lockdown. People are becoming more and more frustrated, and many are no longer complying with official orders. Guidance from our state governor is vague and non-committal, and people are becoming frustrated with the lack of an exit strategy from lockdown. Unemployment locally is sitting around 35%, there are sporadic food shortages at major grocery stores, however restaurants remain well stocked.

We have lost four people at my job, and the disease has gone around in three waves. Everyone on the job has been exposed by now. I have stopped keeping track of close contacts that have tested positive. The total death toll for transit workers in the city sits at over 100, more than every police officer killed on duty in the last 40 years. Over 5000 have been sick.

Public transport is a key essential service, and the buses are still very busy. Most riders are hospital workers or other essential workers who cannot work from home. Routes to and from hospitals have become very busy, I have been working to schedule extra buses to relieve crowding. I am so proud of all the drivers and mechanics I have worked with who continue to come to work to provide these services, despite all the illness around them.

The extensive time and extra hours I spend working has led to me feeling in a bubble, disconnected from what is going on outside of the bus garage and its environs. Outside of work, everyone is angry. Angry at the governor, angry at China, angry at the President, angry at each other. The level of human suffering from economic causes has without a doubt overshadowed the initial suffering from the virus. There is a huge debate going on, both sides without any rational arguments or data, those who want to reopen everything and those who want everything to remain closed indefinitely. A reopening is needed without any further delay, however it needs to be done carefully, and hypercharged polarized debates aren’t helpful.

My own mental health seems better than normal lately. Extra work keeps me sane. In addition to working I pass the time to exercise a lot, I am now running several miles a day to stay healthy and exercise my lungs, and doing push ups and pull ups at home to retain muscle mass. Virtually all the deaths here have been from people in poor health, so exercise, especially lung health, is a major priority for me. I have also increased my sleep from 7-8 hours to nearly 10-12 hours per night, mainly because of boredom and fatigue from running.

I fear the current path is unsustainable, and I know the levels of unemployment will lead to more disaster in the future. I fear a disenfranchised working class will only add fuel to Trumpism and other extremist politics. Bipartisan rhetoric is becoming increasingly isolationist, and I am sure the post Coronavirus era will be one of closed borders, restricted movement and suspicion of immigrants. I feel certain that the globalized world we once knew will cease to exist, and global mobility will not exist in the way it once had. I feel fortunate to have traveled extensively last summer, flying to Europe twice, and I know it will be many years before I will be able to again. I take solace in remembering the trips I took over the summer when I am feeling trapped in my apartment.

The playgrounds have reopened. A child was scared of my youngest daughter. As it turns out, she’d never seen a child with curls before and it freaked her out. Then her mom asked: “Can I touch her hair?” I said of course. Later a family member told me we should have kept social distance. Hadn’t thought of that.

Measures are gradually being loosened here, and today the cleaning lady came back. I’d done my best to keep up with the cleaning while she was gone, sort of, on weekends, but there’s just no comparing to the job she did. My kid looked around in wonder and said “look, mama, this is how one should do it!” My husband had taken out the money to pay her, including the weeks she hadn’t been able to come; eight weekly wages. I didn’t realise we’ve been in lockdown for that long.

We are moving out of this country in less than 100 days. So are many of my colleagues. At this point, it’s not clear whether we’ll see each other before some of us start going to new postings, to other countries all across the globe. I hope we’ll get a chance to say goodbye. I also hope I get a chance to take pictures, to take our kids out a few last times to the places we’ve frequented over the years. Preparing to move out of this country without being able to say goodbye to it, is a weird kind of grief. Most of all, I hope the preschool opens back up, even if it’s just for a few weeks, so that our eldest has a chance to get his backpack and spare clothes and toys, and so that he can say goodbye to his friends, before moving far far away.

Today, I lost someone because of Covid-19. People in Turkey are not capable of understanding how powerful this virus is. They go out whenever they want, even my own father doesn’t obey the curfew. I don’t know how to feel about it. I am losing my sanity. I’ve been inside my home occupying myself with dozens of different things not to lose control for 40 days but as long as these people go out, me staying at home means nothing. We are in mad times. I’ m furious. Please, stay home.

Reflections on a students life in lockdown. – 1st May 2020.

For myself and the four other students I live with, we went into personal lockdown a few weeks earlier than the rest of the nation due to one member of the household falling ill of covid-19. I tried to ignore it at first. I thought surely the 14 day incubation period cannot apply to us. I had a dissertation to write, exams to revise for, books in the library with my name on it. It took many strange phone calls home for me to come to the realisation that doing anything but staying at home was being selfish. It began to sink in more. My mum was on the front line and I am sat worrying about seemingly mediocre things in comparison. I felt awful.

For a while it was almost bearable. I set myself daily targets so that I would not miss important deadlines, I tried not to get bogged down with the fact that all of my third year holidays had been cancelled. After all, me and my friends were fuelling off the naivety that after our 14 day period life would return to normal. On March 23rd it all became clear how untrue that reality would be. But of course we carried on. The kitchen table was converted into a library silent floor desk, the living room became the new gym, using chairs and sofas as equipment. Gifts and deliveries from friends and family came nearly everyday, and every phone call felt more important than before.

It’s hard to imagine now what structure we’ll have when our dissertations have finally been submitted. The document of stress will finally be gone, but so will also the only form of pre-lockdown structure we have left. We try not to dwell on it. I signed up for the volunteer scheme last week, I feel it’s finally time to help out those who need it most. I keep hearing news stories occasionally, amongst all the noise, that nature is thriving amongst all the pain the humans are suffering. I do hope some climate change enlightenment will come out of this. I can’t bare to think the world could sit in silence after it was put on hold by a disease that is less a threat to human life than global warming. Naivety cannot surely be that powerful.

01/05/20
I don’t think much had hit me until now – a rather delayed reaction.
I have just handed in my dissertation and my final year at university is over! Whilst this is a very proud achievement, it is somewhat bittersweet. Graduation is cancelled until November, and my graduate job is also delayed until the current restrictions are lifted. I’ve heard a lot of graduate jobs are being cancelled or deferred, which is quite crushing for fresh graduates; a very odd time for students all round.

I already feel as though I don’t know what to do with my time. I’ve (luckily) been very distracted prior to the last few days, with new online teaching, university exams and working on my dissertation. That being said, I’ve not been oblivious to the current situation. I have a family full of teachers, NHS workers and hospice volunteers, all risking contact with the virus on a regular basis. It’s hard when you have more time to not dwell on that fact. As a history student, I find this particularly interesting because the reality at home is that all of us are healthy, positive and carrying on – something I reflect on as a little reminiscent of attitudes such as the blitz spirit (although of course, in a very different context). I want to be careful when referencing history, however this point in time most definitely challenges my nature as a history student. In this sense I often find it interesting to forensically analyse the activities of the present through the experiences of the past, particularly in relation to social reactions.

Although the boredom has began to hit me, I have more hope now than before. The Prime Minister, having recovered from the virus himself, announced yesterday that we are past the peak, a very hopeful and promising statement. This is another prospect I find interesting as a history student. I don’t think I ever understood the rather deep relationship between a Prime Minister and the state of public attitude during war, or times of great strain. I honestly never thought I’d be waiting each day to see a figure like Boris Johnson or Dominic Raab speak at a podium, and yet here I am. I find watching the updates somewhat reassuring, I like to know as much as I can, some find it morbid but it comforts me to be up to date – I wonder if this is a common reaction?

The time I learned that covid19 have been appeared in Turkey I ignored how dangerous it was. Ministry of national education announced that schools have been closed for 2 weeks. Then they announced another report about vacation. while these decisions happened, the number of the dead people increased. I was at home. Normally I do everything to stay home, watching my favorite tv series but that time it was so different. Some people was fighting against the deadly virus. Some was dying. Ministry of health was announcing the numbers everyday. Actually we’re still watching the same process. But last month was so dramatic. Now the number of the dead people are getting low. But I’m still afraid of never seeing my lovers faces again. All around the world countries are fighting against this virus but none of them manage to control it. For that reason I’m losing my faith as the time goes on. I used to dream incredible things before I slept but now I just dream of wandering with my friends and drink coffe with them. To be honest, there are many things to share with you about what I faced while being in this process but I’m sure that we all have the same feelings. Same sadness, same hopelessnes, same pain. I wish I could do something for us. Only thing we can do is to stay home and pray for each other.

I care for my mam, who has dementia, Parkinson’s, and epilepsy so when we first started getting cases in the UK and we started getting suggestions that vulnerable people would be advised to stay in for up to 12 weeks, I was worried. I didn’t know how that would affect us, how I would deal with getting the time off work, how I would cope with constant caring of mam and no respite. I found the last week before the lockdown very stressful, simply because we were getting suggestions and rumours about what the government were planning, but nothing definite, so I was unsure of what to do, even though everything seemed to be winding down. My boss insisted on our shop staying open, even though we’d had barely any customers for the last two weeks, which compounded my stress. So when they announced the lockdown, I was relieved because the uncertainty was removed. We are five weeks into lockdown now, and I was expecting to be much more stressed and upset, instead I am just bored and irritated,
I no longer watch the news, (or much TV at all), at first because it was too worrying; too much rolling, constant information was sending me into a panic, so I cut back.

I was on the phone with a friend and diplomatic colleague the other day. One of us is posted in Africa, one in Asia. One of our countries has, as far as we can tell, four ventilators for the entire country. Another has no confirmed cases of COVID19, despite being surrounded by countries who do.

The Economist and other media outlets seem to be having a pretty good time with the absurdity of the latter.

Our countries, in Western Europe, are all about flattening the curve. Which makes sense if you don’t want to overrun your healthcare system and you want everyone to have the best chance at treatment. We are not running a campaign to extinguish the virus. We are running a campaign to make sure everyone gets it in waves and/or until we find a cure or vaccination.

Here, and in my friend’s jurisdiction, that doesn’t quite work. There is no healthcare system. You get it, you survive or you don’t. So flattening the curve is more or less moot, as there is no conceivable level in which the healthcare system would be able to respond.

Meanwhile, these countries are petrified to lose their harvest, and *now* is the moment people should be out on the fields ensuring there will be food in autumn.

So, what’s the point of getting everyone scared so that people won’t turn up in the fields? They might get sick a few weeks later, but meanwhile everyone will go hungry very soon and that also kills.

Frankly, if I were in charge of one of these governments, I too might be sorely tempted to say there’s no corona.