Looking ahead

"This too shall pass" is definitely my way of thinking too! I keep saying it to my eldest daughter as she is feeling very stressed by it all.

My stress was reduced somewhat when I had a conversation with my husband about how it was for the people who lived through WW11. First the years of wondering when or if it will happen. The husbands, sons, brothers being called up. The evacuation of the children. The blitz. The rationing. Fear of the invasion........Our parents or grandparents lived through all that - I can hardly imagine how awful it all was for them. It brought into perspective for me and what I am facing. Maybe not for others - everyone's story is different - but, definitely for me.

Sorry Jane10 my post was off thread but your 'this too shall pass' started up a chain of thought and I just 'went for it'. Only when I re-read your original post did I realise what I had done

Don't worry DanniRae I completely understand. I've been thinking that too. This inner feeling of dread that our parents and grandparents must have felt as they went about their desperately changed lives must have been hell to live with. But they managed. At least our loved ones are not away fighting. We're all fighting in own way. Onwards!

DanniRae, I don't think a comparison with the war is off topic.

I look forward to the time when the virus is defeated. It's our enemy at present. When enough people (maybe 70% of the population) have developed immunity, we will have won our 'war' with it.

Mothers, grandmothers, wives waited every day for that telegram in the two world wars, for many they waited for more than one of those telegrams

WW2
383,600 military deaths ,

However, that war did end. The cost was high and it took a long time for things to get back to normal. A new normal.
What will the first signs of that look like for us I wonder?

my hopes and aspirations for my retirement years have narrowed so much, I wanted to go on lots of trips and spend loads of timelooking after my grandchildren etc etc. Now to be honest I just want to stay alive and see my family again, those in the uk and those in Australia.

It's possible that the number of coronavirus deaths will be higher than the number of UK military deaths in WW2 (not so in China, Germany, Japan or the Soviet Union, who had millions of military deaths, or Poland, where civilian deaths (mainly Jews) were in millions).

The big difference between WW2 and this pandemic is that the population is more in control. We can all slow it down, if we follow the official guidelines. We don't have an external political enemy, but should all be working together globally to defeat it.

I don't think it will be over for at least 18 months and I suspect life will change in ways we can't quite imagine. For a start, I think people will have become used to working remotely and might embrace that way of working, which would incidentally, be better for the environment.

I suspect some jobs will have disappeared forever. People will question whether some of them are really needed and people will gradually drift towards other occupations.

All countries are going to be massively in debt. The flipside of that is private wealth (public debt = private wealth) and any future government will need to decide how to manage that. It could be the world's "Zero Hour", when we reset our priorities.

So there are likely to be some positives from all this. We can only hope so. What will be the first signs of better times ahead?

I would like the global world to look about and understand that the contraction in production has cleaned our air and seas, together with a massive drop in climate warming gases.

I would love for this to be a platform for the future.

I would also hope that we decide to carry forward with a no deal during this period of isolation, as we are all beginning to be used to difficulties in purchasing stuff, and our economy is going to take a massive hit during this period so it may as well take the Brexit hit as well and we just as well start from rock bottom rather than give ourselves another shock just as we are beginning to pick up.