Dear LPG,

Since this whole Covid-19 thing started I have learnt not to pay too much attention to all the details.  I honestly had enough problems just working out when it was safe to go out, which countries are affected by which traffic lights and when I need to wear a mask. 

It seems that just when you think you understand the rules, new ones crop up and it’s time to start learning the whole thing all over again, and the one that has me really confused now is the whole set of news surrounding the ‘Pingdemic’ as I believe I have heard it called.

When I heard about the new app that you can download on your smartphone, I decided that it doesn’t really affect me because my phone isn’t smart and, although freedom day has come and gone, I have only got brave enough for a twice weekly walk to my local shop via the park so far. 

But the other day I got a bit involved by proxy I suppose.  We have all learnt to connect more and I have talked a lot more to my two children since all this happened.  I feel that, through their daily telephone calls and the time that working from home has given them to call me more often, I have lived through each of their ‘Will I still have a job at the end of all this’ cries, and their ‘another grandchild has to self-isolate because someone in their class has tested positive’ predicaments.

The Monday before last, my son talked to the wrong person at work.  Hours later that colleague tested positive, and my son got ‘pinged’, while my daughter had to travel to Birmingham for an overnight stay.  She had breakfast before leaving the hotel she was staying in and was pinged while sitting on the train on the way home, because someone else who breakfasted there was thought to be affected. 

I understand the ping to mean that you have to immediately keep away from everyone until you have tested negative, but my daughter was already on a train fairly full of people and, short of telling everyone on the train to go somewhere else, there was little she could do till she got home. 

My son took a test, and it was negative, so he phoned his work where he was told he needed to take another test.  The second test required him to send the result away and wait for an answer that has still not been received.  He worked from home and was told to take yet another test.  He phoned his manager who said that he needed to call the personnel manager to get permission to return, but that manager had been pinged and was self-isolating.   So, this is the second week that he has not had to commute, and he tells me that he is secretly quite happy working from home.

Then it occurred to me that both were self-isolating with their families. Their children still were going to school and their spouses still went to work where they could have passed the virus on if either of my offspring had caught it; and I am only talking about the ‘pingdemic’s’ effect on two people.

I am only a pensioner on the outside looking in but thinking about it, I could pick a tin of baked beans off a shelf at the supermarket, which was put there by a shelf stacker whose wife or husband has been pinged next time I leave the house. 

All I can say is, I hope that the jab really works because I am not sure that the ping does… 

 HB, Blackheath.

Just in case your phone has the ability to ‘ping,’ LPG looked up what you need to do if it does…

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