Day 7–Monday 30 March 2020
This morning I was greeted by the news that a breathing aid that can help keep Covid-19 patients out of intensive care, had been adapted by mechanical engineers at UCL and clinicians at UCLH working with Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains (Mercedes-AMG HPP) and has been approved for use in the NHS. This was truly amazing news indeed, this will likely save a lot of lives I believe. Great engineering by probably the best engineers in the world. The image above shows what has been created.
Today is my sister-in-law’s 60th birthday. Last week it was my Aunt’s birthday, the week before that my brother’s birthday and a few weeks ago my uncle’s birthday, who lives in France and is on total lock down. They have much tougher restrictions compared to us here in the UK, we have it quite easy compared with them.
Below is the image I created, which I sent as a digital card to my sister-in-law. I’ve been using either sending physical cards through an app called ‘Thortful’ or usually creating my own digital postcards and emailing them.
This was the email I received from my aunt, who lives in France with my uncle.
We are coping well and very fortunately there is one supermarket which will deliver food to Beaulieu so we are taking advantage of that and have had food etc delivered for the last three weeks. I am not going out at all for fear of bringing the virus back into the house and passing it on to Ian who is, of course, terribly vulnerable. It would be a disaster were he to catch it with all the health problems that he is coping with already. The pharmacy delivers his medication to the door and our neighbours and friends have been wonderful.
The restrictions here are strictly enforced by the Gendarmes. You have to have your official piece of paper with you whenever you step out of the door for any reason. You must state on that bit of paper what time you left the house because you are only allowed to be out of the house for one hour and only for certain reasons, shopping, to get medication etc. You are allowed to take exercise, alone, no cycling, but only within one kilometre from your home. Any breaking of these rules or will be fined — starting with a fine of €135 for the first offence. Hardly anybody on the Boulevard, very few cars.
I signed up for a week worth of webinars, titled ‘Resilience — a week of sanity’. Webinars with health tips, suggestions and practices. Today’s one was doing ‘Yoga Nidra’ together. We were just listening to audio and either sitting comfortably or lying down, following the instructions by the practitioner. I decided to lie down and promptly fell asleep through most of it. I am familiar with Yoga Nidra and because it is so relaxing it is quite difficult to stay awake. Anyway, let’s see what’s on tomorrow.
Stay safe and well.
Ps. The U.K. government charts started today, as far as I can figure out,