Dear LPG,

Without trying to depress readers here’s an aspect of Covid-19 that came to me recently.  I must be one of thousands suffering from an affliction that I call ‘dozy days and sleepless nights’ due to the way that recent events have, I think, affected all the lives of those who have no reason to do other than the government have been asking us to do; Stay at home.

We are all traveling down a long road; well that is not actually true.  We are all being prevented from travelling down any roads except the most essential ones and, for many of us elders that means not traveling anywhere at all at the moment and not seeing anyone face to face, for many younger pensioners this is their first experience of being really close to something which could do away with any of us at a moment’s notice.

But throughout history the world has been affected by a few other environmental and health adversaries. My new habit of getting up much too early because of lack of impetus to do very much with my relatively long, lonely days has left me dosing during the days and keeping my tablet under my pillow so that I have something to do when, in spite of the fact that dawn is happening at about five o’clock in the morning at the moment, it is very dark when I wake up.

This morning I found myself wondering about the pandemic we find ourselves in the middle of, and that got me thinking about other health risks that the world has had to combat.  I have to say that I was quite surprised to find out that there have been quite a few in the past, but I think finding myself in the middle of one brings that home to me.  It seems to me that they all happened somewhere else in the world or only touched certain sections of the community until now.  

This one is the first I have had to live through and the seclusion that has resulted has given us all too much time to think in spite of the diversions we have around us; our computers, tablets, televisions and telephones. I found myself wondering how much worse it must have been to live through an epidemic in previous century’s.   

I wonder what the history books, or perhaps I should say webpages, of tomorrow will have to say about this one…

 AV, Nottingham

AV shares some information about previous pandemics…

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