So many groups must be experiencing the pandemic in completely different ways...
- Key workers
- New work-from-homers
- Have-to-workers (not key roles, but employer refuses to allow working-from-home or furlough)
- Newly redundant
- Slip-through-the-gaps (self-employed etc.)
- Key workers
- New work-from-homers
- Have-to-workers (not key roles, but employer refuses to allow working-from-home or furlough)
- Newly redundant
- Slip-through-the-gaps (self-employed etc.)
- Furloughed workers
- Long-term work-from-homers
- Retirees
- Students
- Critically at risk
etc. (I am sure I've forgotten many groups!)
Each of the above will have had a very different experience of the last few months.
- Long-term work-from-homers
- Retirees
- Students
- Critically at risk
etc. (I am sure I've forgotten many groups!)
Each of the above will have had a very different experience of the last few months.
Some will have kept working throughout, even worked harder than before. Others will have been "forced" to not work (furlough) or not been able to work even if they wanted to. Some will have seen their income preserved, others drop, still others become reliant on Universal Income.
I mention this for a specific reason: even if we're conscious of the above, it's easy to think of what "we're all experiencing" as some kind of single shared experience. In some respects, yes. We'll all have noticed the shortage of toilet paper. But in other respects, not at all.
Some people quite literally will not have left their homes or seen another soul in the flesh except at a distance for over 2 months. (Thank goodness for Zoom/Skype.) Others will have packed onto trains or the Tube every single day, turned up at factories, carried deliveries.
Still others, including carers, and teachers teaching the children of key workers, won't have been able to stick even vaguely to the suggested social distancing rules, and will have spun the roulette wheel of health every day.
Some will have been in lockdown with family members, or with what are effectively strangers (HMOs). Others will have faced the long nothingness alone.
Some businesses will have stayed open in the real world. Others only online. Still others will have been shuttered by Government edict. Some may have plenty of cash, and Government loans. Others may be scratching behind the sofa for pennies to keep the enterprise afloat.
Every single situation I've described, and thousands more, is just as real, confusing, scary, lonely, strange, different as your own. Some people will have problems you could only dream of ("our lovely world cruise was cancelled") but you can't play Top Trumps with broken dreams.
