Quite, the opposite here - deserted. Last weekend we saw 4 cars which were not locals and wondered if it was picking up, but no - zero over Easter. We have a series of bridleways and foot paths in the area. Dog-walkers are down to two whose cars we now recognise, and we haven't seen a horse and rider for month. Quite a bit of lycra though, admittedly...
Been watching more nature documentaries. I've been having a hard time doing anything productive (but I'm finally starting to get better) and nature documentaries are the closest I've been able to get that. They grab my attention enough to distract from my anxiety and they're pretty calming compared to loud, bright, intense TV shows and movies. PBS Nature had an episode on weasels and I think an obsession is developing. Also gonna finally get to reading my Spanish copy of "Vaquita".
Haven't been able to find a thermometer in weeks. Found a pet website still had pet thermometers in stock so I ordered one of those! It looks just like the human thermometers and I read that you can use human thermometers on pets, so the reverse is probably true, right? I know that the nearby Dollar General gets their truck in on Monday so I'm gonna check for thermometers there as well. That store doesn't run out of the big demand items like the major grocery stores and pharmacies are so I just might be able to get a thermometer there. Otherwise I'll just fall back on the pet one, lol. If it doesn't work out, well, it's not like I spent a ton of money on it.
Not much has changed dramatically for me since my last report. I am sleeping better again than I was at that time - in fact I am sleeping quite well and relatively much lately. But I still feel tired and low on (mental) energy. I'm also quite irritable lately. And I don't feel at all like I am productive (including with regards to work) or getting anything done (even though I have gotten some things done - but not as much as I had planned or wanted when this crisis began). I don't mind being home but not being able to go anywhere is getting to me sometimes. I would really like to take a walk or go on a little bicycle ride, but the roads are just pretty busy with cyclists and hikers here, and I think it is too risky to do so. I'm still struggling with feelings of anxiety and depression and fear for the future in general and for the future of the places I love (zoos et cetera) especially. I'm also still struggling with finding a balance between not exhausting or frustrating myself and not causing anxiety with Covid-19 related news and staying sufficiently informed. The reports about the Belgian government's exit strategy earlier this week have not given me much hope. It will likely be at least a few more months before there will even be a limited reopening of Belgian zoos - and I still fear they won't (all) reopen at all. Hopeful outlooks for some opportunities for zoo visits during the summer months were one of things I used to keep myself going, but more and more I'm seeing all those hopes dashed and destroyed. I really want to be hopeful and optimistic, but it is very hard at this point, as I see ever fewer perspectives for recreation during the coming summer and ever fewer reasons to be hopeful and optimistic. I think the next few weeks will be hard and at times frustrating for me.
My anxiety has subsided a lot, and I realized this is the perfect time to work on my sewing. I ordered a bunch of this fabric (don't I have excellent taste?) to make a few nightshirts/swimsuit coverups and a crop top. So I'm finally doing something productive.
If I understood the most recent information correctly, I will likely be working from home and not returning to my office in Brussels until at least June 8th. Now that medical practices are partially resuming their services I will normally be resuming my mental therapy next week and I think that comes timely as I'm starting to feel like I need it. Hygiene measures and a mandatory face mask will be in order for safety reasons.
This weekend I did zoo visits again for the first time since late December 2019 and early January 2020. Yesterday I visited Zoo Planckendael, today I went to Zoo Antwerpen. The visits were quite pleasant and it was very nice to be able to walk through a zoo and see and photograph animals again. I enjoyed it. I am going to try to report on my exhibit and animal related observation in the appropriate topics in the coming week. In general people were fairly disciplined with the hygiene and social distancing measures. I found the mandatory face mask wearing in indoor and walk-through areas not super pleasant, but less of a bother than I expected it to be. I did find myself being rather skittish, maybe even somewhat anxious, and irritable when being around so many people, given that since the lockdown in mid-March I only went out four times before this weekend (twice to see my therapist, once to buy chicken pellets and once to take a chicken to the vet) and hadn't been around so many people for months. I think this might become an issue in the future when I go outside more again, for example when I do finally return to my office (probably in mid to late June). I am planning to start posting pictures in the gallery again at some point in the relatively near future so I can share some of the pictures I have taken. I just hope that the photography results will be decent, as I didn't do any photography for months. Today I also saw my grandmother back for the first time in two and a half months, since limited family visits are now allowed again here as well. And I had my first take-away meal since before the lockdown.
The news of UK travel corridors being opened on 6th July just confirms how poor my luck has been this year, for breaks from work. My first full week off coincided with the first week of lockdown. I had a Thursday & Friday booked off for a long weekend away in June, so the government open the zoos the following Monday. Although I can look forward to a day and a half at Chester in just over a week, I really wanted to get over to a few European zoos. It really doesn't help that I'm sweating my nuts off working in strangers houses, then being rewarded with clouds and rain at the weekends. So, should I forget plans to go to the USA in September/October?
I personally would go no-where near an aeroplane or the USA, for the foreseeable... Public transport and English beaches too...
Things are looking grim here with virus rates increasing all over the country. If you are planning to visit zoos I suspect many of them will not be open and traveling around the country will be difficult and unpleasant.
I haven't been to the USA, or on a plane for more than 4 hours, so I think i'll have to put the adventure off, as it sounds like too big a gamble. I rarely plan far ahead, but had to book my holiday periods with work near the end of 2019 and was looking forward at the time to researching my options. Even going away for a few days here could require a phone upgrade just to get a 'casual' pint or two.
It's not going to get better until there is a workable vaccine and most people have been immunized, IMO As long as political leaders and the general public in any country dismiss the seriousness of the pandemic travel is especially risky. Look at what is occurring today in the UK and Florida for example. Normal contagion containment measures are being ignored. Even if you consider yourself at less COVID19 risk the hospitals in many areas are so over-stretched that an otherwise simple traffic accident could get very serious when there's no hospital bed for you. Besides, the USA as it gets closer to the November election will be even more crazy. Live to travel another day
This is something I wish all of the younger people who think themselves at low risk from COVID-19 understand. Once a hospital's ICU is full with COVID-19 patients, if you then are unfortunate enough to suffer a serious accident (unrelated to COVID-19), you could find yourself unable to get the care you need to recover. Even for less serious cases - once there are no regular beds remaining in a hospital, or indeed in any of the major hospitals in a city - then people with other serious health issues or have suffered an accident can no longer receive adequate care. The whole "flattening the curve" thing is about keeping hospitals functional because people (including young people) still get sick and injured regardless of COVID-19. My wife was an emergency department nurse for 20 years working at one of Sydney's largest hospitals. There were many times the hospital would go on "bypass" meaning that all beds were full, the emergency department was full and all ambulance bays were full and so any new emergency cases would need to go to another hospital some distance away. This is just during normal operation - before COVID-19 was ever a thing. It doesn't take that much to overwhelm a hospital. Please be safe and don't take risks.
Yeah, things are getting pretty bad here in Texas. City I live in is popular with tourists so that has me worried. I heard the crowds were insane on Memorial Day, and 4th of July crowds are expected to be huge too. City is cancelling celebrations but that's not gonna stop people from crowding the beaches. We topped off our grocery supply a few weeks ago. Figured that with cases starting to rise so much, people would start stocking up again and I wanted to beat them to the punch.
And you can forget any non-urgent procedures. Plus you don't need to go to hospital to be in trouble. My healthy early twenties niece living in London caught it about 6 weeks ago. She was sent home to recover but is still suffering a number of debilitating side effects.
Here in the low countries a study came out recently, and there were media reports also saying that even many people, many of them young and previously healthy, who had a "mild" case of Covid-19 and did not need to be admitted to hospital, are still suffering the effects months later, including tiredness, shortness of breath, heart palpitations and a host of other physical complaints - and many of them are still not able to resume their normal activities. It is likely that not all of them will ever fully recover. And some people have continued to be mildly positive for the virus and thus have to remain in quarantine far longer than the two weeks generally mentioned. For people who have been hospitalized, let alone those who have been in ICU and have survived, one can I think assume that many of them will not fully recover and that they are generally looking at a very long and hard rehabilitation. This is a dangerous and insidious virus that we do not know a lot about yet, including the long-term or lasting effects, and what we know so far definitely is not comforting. So everyone, including the young and healthy, be careful. It is understandable that many of us want to and do go out, but when you do so, please always do your very best to follow the rules and to keep yourself safe. Practice social distancing, wear your mask, try to avoid crowds and when you do have social contacts keep it safe. Please do not participate in any of the irresponsible behavior we have been seeing lately such as social drinking and large scale partying, protests and so on. Doing all that is also important so that we can all hopefully keep and enjoy our regained freedoms as long as possible and hopefully keep the second Covid wave away for as long as possible, and hopefully also limit its severity. The more people break the rules the sooner unfortunately we can all expect to be cooped up in lock-down again, perhaps an even stricter lock-down next time. As for me personally: not much has changed. I have done a few more zoo visits. One turned out pretty bed in terms of Covid safety, but today's visit was quite good in that respect. With regards to work I am still working from home and not currently required to return to the office until the end of August, although I now can two days a week on reservation. I will normally be going back to my office on July 10th, exactly four months after I was at my office last. I never expected it to take that long to be honest.
Yeah, hearing about those long term complications really scares me. I'm out of shape as it is, I do not need to add breathing problems to that. Even if it means not doing a lot of fun things for a year or whenever they get that vaccine out.
Covid hit close to home a few weeks ago. My mother contracted it from one of her nurses (she works at a hospital) and she, and the rest of my family, had to quarantine. She isolated herself from the rest of my family for about a week, and we all had to get tested. (Which by the way is not pleasant.) Surprisingly, our tests came back negative. She had a few symptoms once they kicked in, but nothing to serious and she was able to recover quickly and return to work.
