Hey Kids,
This post won’t be as positive and light-hearted as usual, and is not destined for you to read anytime soon, but it looks like I am getting old, and instead of blogging of your everyday little niggles, milestones and fun, I keep coming with these ‘I have something important to say’ posts. Mothers are annyoing, I know, but they know a thing or two, so please read this carefully – and spruce up your French (which I hope you will have learnt by the time you get to read this…)! Love, your Mother.
Year by year, ever since I was born – and that was a looooong time ago – our World kept growing and growing, and we never stopped, not even for a second, to consider at what cost we achieved the economic and technological improvements in our everyday lives. Don’t judge us, I, for example was born in a communist Hungary, where we had very little exposure to openness, freedom, and were left longing for prosperity and liberal values. Needless to say, that when the system changed and we finally had democracy and growth, we enjoyed its benefits so much that it was virtually impossible for us to say NO. This is the mentality I grew up with: swim faster (I was a competitive swimmer until I moved to London), learn more (I was quite talented in natural sciences stuff), be ambitious, never rest and most importantly; never give up!
So obviously, even after making it to London to do a PhD, I could not stop to marvel in the success that I’ve achieved.
Oli, you were born in the middle of my PhD, and from then on, I belonged to a slim minority of PhD scientists who managed to start a family while being all consumed by their research. It came at a dear price, I only had 16 weeks off and had to constantly overdo things in the lab, just to prove that I wasn’t just a fake, that I was worth as much as anyone else, with or without kids. I also wanted to do everything to make sure I was ‘Mother enough’ for you. It was hard, but we got through it, together as a family unit, we got a Science paper, a PhD degree and so our life kept growing, along with the rest of the World.
Milan, you were born in the middle of my Postdoc and I (as I learned the cost of forever growing from the missed time with Oli) tried to stop, but it came with repercussions that later to bit me in the back.
On the day you, Domi, were born, I submitted a research grant to the Wellcome Trust, I felt so passionately that autistic people should be included in research, in fact all people should be included in research, that I didn’t want to miss the opportunity, despite that actual day being one of the three most important days of my life. The midwife was stunned, couldn’t believe that I had my laptop out to type things in, between contractions…
I worked hard, and worked towards my beliefs with the best intentions.
But. I. Never. Stopped.
And neither did the rest of the World.
Our little family moved from a shared house to a 1 bed flat, from here to a 2 bed flat above TESCO, from this to another 2 bed close to a park, before eventually buying our own little house.
Then in November, 2019, something terrible, albeit predicted (was published in Nature a couple of years back) happened: a virus that uses bats as a host was transmitted to man. It was far, far away from us and we didn’t realise just how big a threat it posed… so we kept on doing the things we do, consumed extensively (Christmas, then New Years’ craziness), joined in large gatherings and TRAVELLED loads – especially during the February half term – who could resist the opportunity to see the Alpes, soak in the sunshine and experience the freedom skiing brings? We didn’t go because your ‘grumpy; father doubted the level of enjoyment we would get out of a week up on the mountains with a 7,4 and 1.5 year old – how thankful I am now for his ‘grumpiness’! In the meanwhile we heard news of scary numbers of infected people in China, saw pictures of crowds on public transport wearing masks, a hospital being built in 3 days and…and…largely ignored it all, apart from thinking, wow, surely they are overdoing it?
Then the virus turned up on our doorsteps; people started to fall ill, and the government reassured us, that they are keeping a strong grip on this by contact tracing… and in any case, this virus is only dangerous for the elderly and those with serious underlying medical conditions, and it just rushes through all middle aged working people, as the ‘normal flu’ would, while kids largely get over it without any symptoms. Ah, the kids will be fine, then we will be fine and surely we can just pay more attention and shiled the elderly and vulnerable? The NHS, our dear NHS will be there to take care of anyone who needs medical attention, making sure they receive the best care in the World. We can do that, right? Well, we later found out, we can’t. And that broke our hearts.
By late February, things started to get really bad in Italy. By “bad” I mean so bad, that we struggled to comprehend the numbers we were presented with. Then came the pictures, videos from hospitals, health professionals crying behind their plastic visor PPE, sharing what they have witnessed that day. What, how can this happen? How can a developed country, with age-old solid healthcare that is available to all, end up in a situation where they have to choose who gets medical treatment, and who is left to ‘deal with’ the virus alone. How can people pass away on hospital beds, with their families trying to comfort them via video link, surrounded by health care professionals dressed up in PPE that is nothing short of a spacesuit? How can many die at home, with nobody there to help them? How can they then be buried without anybody coming to mourn them?
The numbers were low in the UK, steadily growing, but not threatening to anyone who didn’t think of the virus’ doubling potential every few days, and not even talking of the government quietly stopping contact tracing and testing and moving to the ‘mitigation phase’. Me, being a scientist and understanding what exponentiality means, started to panic and could barely do anything else apart from trying to come to terms with what was to come and thinking of solutions that were going to help us through the next weeks.
On the 16th of March, a model, developed by Imperial College London was published and in it was information that made my stomach churn and filled my eyes with tears; without social distancing measures, we were looking at a potential half a million lives lost in the UK. This cannot be, this cannot happen! Life as we knew it was over, and we all dealt with it differently, but ultimately each and every one of us went through a grieving process – “can’t believe it”, “then angry”, then just “sad sad sad”, finally followed by, “ok: what can we do” to mitigate it? The World as we knew it, our forever growing, primarily peaceful World, as we viewed it from the glass palaces of prosperous, democratic countries, was coming to an end.
As the French say: “On est en guerre, aux armes, citoyens!” – right? Not right. This is special war, one that is fought from home. The government started to release unimaginable amounts of money to mitigate the brewing economical disaster, which would have been followed by civil unrest, rather than obedience. They were late to the game – let’s not go into this bit, what happened, happened and we cannot go back in time and there is absolutely no gain in shaming at this point.
And then it happened. Our World stood still.
Once the Tories got to it, they did it in a “smart way”; announcing protective measures, then making people work from home, then announcing further protective measures and closing schools, then more protective measures and rolling out a three-week lockdown on the 27th of March. As they went on, they always kept in mind the cultural attitude of the people of this country and I found myself wanting to believe that they knew what they were doing and I did everything they asked from us, including encouraging others to OBEY. To obey the government that did not represent any of my political values, the one that pushed Brexit through and never once said a single word I would have normally believed. How did I change this quickly and who did I become?
I always had a liberal attitude and I value freedom dearly. This crisis made me face up to this fundamental value – what IS the true value of freedom? When freedom comes at the price of a life, what do we choose? Where do we stand? Is there a way, that we could temporarily give up some of our freedom to fight this war, then take it back once the ‘biological solution’, a vaccine is found? How? Who will make sure that during the course of so-called contact tracing, when the government takes away our right to privacy, they don’t store data, we normally wouldn’t agree to share and then build a ‘Brave New World’ on the back of all of this? This entire paragraph is made up of questions. I simply don’t know what to say.
Here I am, an EU citizen in post-Brexit UK, a pacifist, a ‘Libdem’, who now tells everyone she knows to do ANYTHING the right-wing, pro-Brexit, capitalist Tory government asks us to do. And I don’t do this lightly. The stark reality of not being able to get medical/firefighter/police help when we need it, due to the 999 line struggling to cope due to the large number of the people who call in with COVID-19 symptoms, is terrifying. The decision to erect a 4000-bed hospital inside a big conference centre, and Dyson chipping in to produce thousands of ventilators means this is well and truly out of hand, we are running after a runaway train, with ALL of our futures on board. Our values, our World is coming to an end and it hurts, it hurts like hell. The only thing we can do is STAY AT HOME to prevent more people being swept away by the disease and keep calm and carry on. And we are doing just that. I just fear, it is too little, too late.
I hope that when you read this, the horrors of 2020 will be long gone. Even more, I hope that we will have learned our lesson, stopped seeking constant growth everywhere at any price and got our act together to protect the Earth from collapsing under our societies. Amen to that – and no, I am still not religious – and this is the one value I have not considered changing during the course of all of this, maybe no wonder why.
Finally, if the link still works, and just to throw in another curveball from an atheist (I still greatly appreciate culture!). Listen to this, Andrea Bocelli, on his own, in front of Duomo di Milano, singing ‘Music for Hope’. 2 million households listened to it live on Easter Sunday, the 12th of April and today, as I am writing this, it had 37 million views – not quite as much as Baby Shark did, but still, remarkable.
Love you all, always and forever, we will get through this together by staying away from our family and friends, but WE WILL MEET AGAIN.
#StayHome #Savelives
Oli,Milán és Domi 