Calendargirl
Just as a matter of interest, how many GN’ers are still quarantining their post and shopping, disinfecting it and not putting it away for three days?
I have never done this, and wonder if others are.
I have not used disinfectant, basically because such things tend to get up my nose and make me feel ill, but I do quarantine the post, the shopping and anything else, including prescription medicines, that arrive here, using disposable gloves to get it into the house after the deliverer has gone and doing the handwashing too. Also after grocery deliveries changing my clothes and quarantining the discarded clothes for a week before washing them before wearing them again.
I am in total lockdown and intend to stay that way unless I need to go to the dentist or hospital.
The fact of the matter is that the government has a COVID-19 threat level number and, as far as I know, it is still at 3.
I am in my seventies and have a physical frailty score of around 3 or 4, so not too bad, but I must not lift anything more than about three kilogrammes due to a medical situation. But for most things around the house and taking rubbish to the bins and so on I am fine.
On Sunday 15 March 2020 a government minister said on Sky News that the government were thinking of advising people 70 and over to go into voluntary self-isolation as a precaution, but there was no need to do it yet.
I decided to do it from that moment.
I had noticed that Tesco had for a while been offering "leave it in bags on the doorstep" delivery for people with COVID-19 or who were self-isolating in case they had caught it. I was due to get a delivery the next day. So I logged on and changed my delivery notes to request the "leave it in bags on the doorstep" delivery, though pointing this was as a precaution not because I had COVID-19. Tesco did that for me. It has continued and is still the way, though now they do not use the bags but I put boxes out on the doorstep and the delivery driver puts the shopping in the boxes. I label the boxes so that shower gel and food are not in the same box, and so on.
After the delivery driver has gone I get it in a bit at a time using about ten resusable shopping bags of various designs so that a bag used for shower gel is not used for food the next week and so on. Unloading takes around twenty minutes or more but as the driver has gone and I am retired I just do it at a gentle pace. I just accept that this is how I do it these days, just part of life, not upset about it at all.
Everything else is social distance delivery. For example, before the pandemic if a recorded delivery package came I would go to the door and sign for it. Now the postlady knocks the door and stands back, I reply from upstairs and she offers to leave it on the doorstep and sign it herself, I accept and thank her.
This has all happened quite naturally with no fuss. Everybody knows that the pandemic is on and have offered to do it that way.
In March 2020 I genuinely feared that I would not survive beyond July 2020 everything seemed so bad.
So I decided to try not to just worry but to lie on my bed and quite calmly work out what I could do to try to minimise the risk to the extent that I could.
So, wash my hands as the advice said.
So, try not to get them contaminated in the first place either though, so the disposable gloves that I had got from the vet were here, so it seemed sensible to use them.
I learned of the possibility of fomites that remained infectious for 72 hours, so as shopping is weekly, it seemed natural to quarantine for six days before getting the shopping from quarantine.
So as I might get things in contact with clothing or might touch my clothing with potentially contaminated gloves, so changing clothes after a grocery delivery as a routine practice seemed sensible.
I do all of this calmly, not in a panic, just matter of fact routine procedure now. I feel content doing it and safer for doing so. I know that I may be regarded by some people as foolish and overdoing it, but I am still here in July 2021 and as far as I know I have not caught it yet. The threat level is still at 3. So for me, better too much caution than too little.
Yet I appreciate that my situation is not the same situation as the situation of many other people. I am retired and did not go out much anyway and had needed to give up
driving. a few years earlier. I had not been away from the house since mid-2019 when I went to the dentist, supported transport by a driver from the volunteer centre.
Having got into the routine of doing all this and feeling safer because of it, on what basis would I stop doing it?
For me, in my particular circumstances, a threat level of 1, which is that it is not known to be any COVID-19 in the country seems a good test.
If I stopped doing it at present it would save me a bit on gloves, a bit on hot water and washing, a bit of effort and in return I would probably go from being quite calm and relaxed to being anxious and worrying.
So for me, it seems that to continue doing it all is the best option for me.
