Covid-19 in the community

Because every day we would like make a habit of watching BBC News at ten o’clock. We just go, “What is the infection rate today? How many people, what is the death rate, how many people died like this?” So, every day we see the tally and we see that it’s going higher, higher, higher and was worried about what happen. When it’s like the death rate had gone down, then we were so happy like our favourite team on the game penalty, you know, like shoot out, we are, yes, yes, yes, but there’s still people dying but we were happy that it’s less people dying, not that many people.

Television, you know, I ahhhh, my mother is a television addict, you know, news so I’ve got that in my blood but there were weeks when I couldn’t turn on the television at all because uh it was just too overwhelming, and it made me angry and upset so I stopped that. But when I was watching I could not turn it off so it’s that or nothing and what it does to you, you kind of know where so yeah it was media, media, media, media, radio, radio and television, Sky, CNN, BBC News, you know, flick, flick, flick, flick, flick of.

How I started to hear about coronavirus, because I used to work, I watch the news so much, I was watching BBC. How I had, I watch it from the BBC talking about the new virus coming in from China, you know. In the in that village called Wuhan I think, you know. And then they were talking about it you know, how, but, at that time, I was not quite sure how, you know, when you get it what happens to you, how does it affect people, you know, how people can get it. But we were, I were concerned for my friends. How, oh my god, this virus is killing so many people and this and that and this and that, you know. What is it happening? Why? Who brought it, you know? And I will get more information, you know that Chinese people ate frogs, and they ate different things, you know. And then it, they ate animals that they shouldn’t be eating and from these animals they, they caught the virus and then it got transmitted to other people, and how we started to be transmitted from, one people to another, from one area to another, and then from one country to another. Oh it was a mess, how I heard what is coronavirus.

The other thing we didn’t even talk about or just mention is that, because it was in the news today is this whole business of test and trace and its effectiveness. The NHS staff when I had to go into hospital were wonderful. The people on the phone were next to useless. Even the Covid line. I remember one time, one of our kids had tested positive; it was quite early on. We called three different times and got three different answers about when the isolation period was. And then called Public Health England because as a place of worship we had to speak to them, and they gave us a completely different answer as well, and it was like the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. And generally speaking, it was pretty much you called NHS 111 or later 119, and basically if you, if you could manage the symptoms yourself, that was pretty much it. Now they’ve got more welfare in place, but it was pretty much “right, are you okay, you’re not dying so you know, just stay at home.” Which you know, doesn’t help your anxieties.

It was a bit confusing then. Before, I think when it first came in, I thought it was by touching, never knew it could be spread by air, I just thought it was more or less touching, so you need so, no handshakes, then you need to just put, use hand sanitiser. Then later, we knew that we heard it going, Covid passed through air. Then later we were told that it could actually stay in air for a number of hours or so then it will have, maybe somebody has passed some minutes or hours and you passed it so yeah, the ways that which you could catch it was a bit confusing and again, that also, I understood that, because it’s a new virus, everyone is trying to investigate so there’s a probability that we might get things wrong. I mean the scientists, the government might get things wrong, and they will keep trying until they get it right, so I wasn’t really bothered. That’s why I stayed indoors.

I think, my mum kept saying a lot of, to be fair, a lot of my information came from my mum, because she was kind of like my fact checker that I’d go “Is this correct, is this not correct?” She kept saying she was like “Outside very low risk. Inside an enclosed space is quite a high risk even if you wear a mask, close contact”, things like sharing drinking glasses I would assume and then yeah. Information probably, I mean the uni was putting out information but they were just as guilty in my eyes as the government, because they were still taking 9 grand off us, but telling us we need to stay home. “Oh, wait no come back, oh wait no go home.” So yeah, information probably, I mean I spent a lot of time I feel like especially when things got a bit panicked, Googling what the rules were. And I found it quite difficult to ascertain what the actual rule that applied to me was, according to the government advice, so the news probably the government website and my parents, were my main sources of information.

I was able to keep track of things on Twitter. There was a lot of useful, a lot of useful stuff on social media like things broken down into twitter threads that made it a lot easier to understand. And I got a little bit from the government and the news and things and other, and then also a bit from friends explaining it to me.

A couple of reasons; I’ve got a couple of friends who I call “intelligent”, and they were like anti-vaxxers to begin with and they kind of changed their tune through all that and says, “I’ve had it.” So, I have to say that influenced me because, you know, as I said, I don’t know, I don’t have the answers. Who does? I don’t have the answers so you’re listening to people but you, you’re listening to people who are educated, who can explain the pros and cons and, you know, I’ve still got friends of mine now who are refusing to have the vaccine and, you know, saying ‘Oh it’s, it’s conspiracy theory this-, you know, some people are really strongly against it, and I’ve had a couple of people who are anti-vaxxers who’ve got Covid and they’ve been really, really sick from it as well.

Rumour come from is, you know, the society, they find people. When you find someone, get hear something, they get a message, they pass it to others and by this service it is spreading very quick and maybe someone without judgment, they just believe in it. Before believing you have to justify it because these things, whether there is halal or haram, it need to come from authorised person. If they say it is haram, okay, we follow you. If they say it is halal, they follow but we should only listen to about this halal or haram need to come from authorised person, authorised person in our community, maybe our Imam, like a head of the mosque. And you know the East London Mosque is the largest mosque in Europe. There is a there is a head of the Imam. If they declare this, this is fine, they should follow because they go, they study, they have all the information, then they can pass it to them, then we know this is legitimate social information and you can, you can have this information not by whispering from other or getting the message, email message from others and believing it.

You know, I work in an open office next to eight other people and we were just talking about it and we were just discussing how crazy it was that there was this new virus. I was joking with people saying, “Well, we are due a virus because they come along, you know, every hundred years.” You have to look at the Spanish flu and then before that there was another flu. And I was totally unconcerned about it because I thought, yeah, whatever it is, it can’t be that bad, you know. Maybe there’s a few restrictions but I never envisaged the whole country would lockdown and that we would still be suffering with the consequences of it. But, in terms of actual research, it was just what I was reading on the BBC or the Guardian. I like to read the BBC, the Guardian and the Daily Mail so I get a different viewpoint on all the news.

I think one of the issues was credible sources at the time that weren’t either over exaggerating and I think that’s just a, a slight problem with British society at the moment. It’s the lack of credible authority. Where do you go to find viable untainted view on any subject, frankly? You know, you gotta, I think you've just sort of look to those sources that you've found in the past that sort of ex post facto you could rely on. And you know, which is why you might trust the Financial Times and broaden your trust the Daily Express or whatever your political views. But you, you, I think we’re all becoming much more conscious of the role we play individually in constructing the truth that we think applies to different scenarios and I don’t and I think pandemics would be included in, in that. You know, there’re people, I have a younger, say younger relative in his 30s who says he’s not an anti-vaxxer, but he’s just read so much that it’s more likely to do him harm to have a vaccine than not, you know. But that’s his version of the truth from what he and his presumably his cohort and his immediate group of friends honestly believe. I mean, why would he believe anything otherwise? It’s just his sphere of influence happens to be different from mine. And, you know, I’m slightly more convinced of my thinking than I am of his. But I think it does go partly to that problem of where is the reliable touchstone? Who, who do you, who do you trust, you know?

So I read a lot, I read lots of different publications but I have to say that overwhelmingly, what’s enabled me to understand how horrific this pandemic is actually the connections I have with people who’ve lost people and in my community, I mean other than ones in my community as far as I’m concerned but, you know, people often specific from working class South Asian communities who’ve been hit very badly, lost loved ones, we’ve lost loved ones. Have a lots of friends who are doctors who are just devastated. Nurses, I have friends who are nurses. One of my friends is a senior consultant, he, he is a migrant doctor and he contacted me quite early on to say he was absolutely terrified of dying of Covid and his family being deported back to Pakistan and he was really scared of this and he was just giving me chapter and verse and what’s happening at work and then he kept telling me, “You can’t tell anyone, you can’t tell anyone.” I said, “Well I would never betray your confidence so I never tell anyone, but you can’t just keep this to yourself,” and then month by month more and more people were telling me the same stories over and over again and so the information I’ve been getting is from people I know personally who are frontline medical workers.