Things We Can take Away from the Pandemic- New Blog Post

 So we are here now after all lockdowns have been ended in Ireland. Whether this was just an election ploy, used because we are coming close to some important rugby games and St.Patrick's Day or that it genuinely has come from a genuine place this remains to be seen.

What now? What exactly defines how and who we are as a people after coming out of all this madness we have had to endure. What are the takeaways we might be able to bring with us and remember going about our own day to day. Well first off, the whole issue of public hygiene. By public hygiene I mean, cough and sneeze etiquette. And by this, not only coughing or sneezing into the elbow. But when needed, just simply covering our mouths with our hands (and then sanitizing afterwards lest we pass on bugs or viruses to people.) Also by keeping sanitising our hands where possible. This is particularly still pertinent as even though we have been thrown out to the wolves by government, we are still in the middle of the pandemic. This leads me on to another lesson we need to take with us moving forward. We need to show some empathy and patience for those around us. Some of us were a little shocked with the sudden lifting of most restrictions including social distancing. Rather than just reducing to 1 metre, this was scrapped altogether. This has made an awful lot of people including me a little anxious having had gotten used to not being too close to people for the last two years. I have though slowly gotten more used to people being a little closer to me again and find that it's a balm to have the masks still, even though the time for mask wearing might be coming to an end.

So what am I going to do after all of this is done? Well I have decided to mask wear during flu and cold season don't care about the stigma which would be now attached to wearing a mask once restrictions end fully. To understand why I am in fact doing this, I am going to relay a story to you that happened to me back in 2019. This is pre Covid remember too. I was in line to an event that I was looking forward to for a while when someone in line started violently coughing. This person had a chest infection, it was very clear from the nature of the cough. I thought that management and security would turn that person away given they were so sick however later on I heard that individual coughing out. No matter of repositioning could help, around a week later I got a very bad chest infection that I was nearly a full month trying to shake.

So yeah, I'm going to keep wearing my mask. I am also going to do something that we all did during this pandemic that some people have become a bit lax in doing and that is sanitising and washing my hands. I have gotten a few looks from wearing my mask and I have been in places where I have been the only one wearing a mask but I don’t care. I don’t want to get sick like that again. So even if that means that  

Postscript: When I started writing this post, our world was a much more hopeful and peaceful place. Hopefully we will all see peace in our time again.