Scottish blogger reveals her self-isolation nightmare
A Scottish woman has written a blog detailing her 10 days spent in isolation with suspected coronavirus.
Josie Balfour told of her struggle as her condition deteriorated over the course of 10 days, having being told to self-isolate “immediately” after receiving a call from her local GP surgery telling her not to attend her appointment.
Josie, who has a young daughter and is asthmatic, fell ill with a chest infection and describes how family life was turned on its head during her period of isolation.
She provided her own brief biography to accompany the blog.
It reads: “Josie Balfour is an Edinburgh-based freelance journalist and copy writer with a stockpile of chocolate. Her husband has hidden the kitchen knives until the Covid-19 crisis is over.”
A sample of her blog reads as follows: “I’m concerned I’m going to kill my husband. Not by giving him Covid-19 but because he won’t give up the running commentary on my chocolate consumption he’s kept up for the past 10 days.
“We’ve been in isolation on and off for a fortnight so far, my husband with a bad cold and me with a chest infection. Because he hasn’t had to seek medical help, he hasn’t been advised to self isolate. I, on the other hand, have.
“It’s a blessing that he’s not properly self-isolated because otherwise I wouldn’t have had anyone to pick up prescriptions, do the school run or go to the supermarket.
“And therein lies the problem with self-isolation – who does the errands? How do you avoid contamination? Should we as a family have all self-isolated at the same time? Would it be fair to ask friends and family to help out and risk contamination themselves?
“We have elderly neighbours, two friends who are seriously immunocompromised and family that are all too far away to lend a hand, none of these people deserve to get a virus that is almost 20 times more deadly than seasonal flu (death rates because of flu are on average 0.07 per cent and Covid-19 is anywhere between 1 and 5 per cent depending on the country).
“It doesn’t seem like the government have given any proper guidelines on this at all. It was only on Friday 13th of March, 11 days after I was first advised to self- isolate, that the UK government released proper guidelines.
“We’re very lucky because, in an effort to reduce plastic waste and food miles, we get regular deliveries to our door of milk, bread, a veg box and eggs. We never see the milkman or the veg box delivery person but we do have a fresh supply of local food. Its been an absolute godsend this week and seems sustainable enough to keep going even if supermarket suppliers have issues as the Covid-19 situation gets worse.
“Our biggest concern is how our local community is going to cope over the next few months. We’re doing our best to stay home because we don’t want to spread our germs at school, at the doctor’s surgery, in the local cafe or to neighbours. At the same time, however, we’re better prepared to weather this storm than some of our more vulnerable neighbours and to isolate completely from them for longer than necessary means we won’t be able to help them out or support local businesses.”