Command and Control

Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels

I've just been to the pharmacy to collect my heart drugs. I wore a face mask in the shop for the first time since Covid19 struck. On my walk home, I was pondering why.

It's not to protect me, it's to protect others from me (in case I've got it and don't know it). 

Having exercised pretty strict social and physical distancing from everyone except Mandy, including our grown-up children, I'm fairly sure that I'm not infectious. But I felt the need to reassure the hard-working - and similarly masked - pharmacy staff, that I was being careful on their behalf; that it mattered to me.

Because it does. In the face of what I see as an unseemly and ill-judged race to lift restrictions, I am genuinely concerned that we will soon experience a second wave of the pandemic in the UK.

And I am fearful (that word again) that many others think that it's worth taking the risk of that possibility, to regain some semblance of 'normal' life and freedom of movement and association. To take back control. 

Sound familiar? I'm not judging (well, I'm trying not to).

In the early days of Lockdown, the Government instruction was unambiguous: Stay Home - Protect the NHS - Save Lives. Who wouldn't want to get behind that? It mattered to everyone. So the instruction was pretty universally followed. And the numbers started to go down.

Now it's all gone a bit wooly, a bit less directive, a bit more discretionary. It's introduced an optional element into how we can behave. And we're seeing people respond according to what matters more to them now than it did initially - social interaction, being physically closer, shopping. Their own needs have superseded their willingness to recognise the continuing greater risks of taking the brakes off.

So I'm sticking with it. I'm continuing to maintain 2 metres distancing, to cross the road when someone comes towards me, to use click and collect for the weekly shop rather than go into the store, to wear a facemask if and when I absolutely have to be in a 'confined' environment, to sanitise and/or wash my hands, to work from home.

In my small way, I'm trying to keep you safe from me, just in case.

Footnote: There's a training analogy that could be made here about one of the reasons why people do or don't buy into different kinds of learning - whether it matters to them, whether there's a benefit for them or for others. Compliance training springs to mind. But that feels a bit contrived, so I won't go there. You could probably write that bit yourself anyway.