Advice if possible please - Covid-19 related.

[shell123x]

Hello,

I am Type 1 Diabetic along with suffering from M.E/CFS. I am not in the shielded category but in the vulnerable group under Covid-19 Gov guidelines. I have luckily been looked after work wise and have been working from home since lockdown started and work have advised me that I will not be allowed back into the office until September 2020 at the earliest. I have been following all guidelines since day one and have only been out for walks and recently spending time with family in a park or a garden. I don't go to the shops as I get my food delivered and only live with my partner who is also working from home.

My partner has 2 children from 2 different Mum's and we took the difficult decision to not be able to look after his children whilst lockdown was in place due to my medical needs and the fact both children were from 2 different households and his 2 year old being higher risk due to being at his Childminder still. He has an 8 year old daughter and a 2 year old son. His daughter isn't at school and won't be back until September 2020 and has been in lockdown with her Mum (who is working from home) and Step Dad (who works outside alone) and has only been seeing family from a distance in the garden or park. His 2 year old son has still been attending the Childminder as his Mum is a key worker and so has had to go into the office daily, with a minimum number of staff. Recently we have been able to take his daughter for walks and spend some time with her in the garden, however we still haven't seen his son as it would be very difficult to social distance and explain to him what is going on. My partner regularly Facetimes his son albeit it is not the same as actually having him in our company.

As restrictions are slowly lifting more and more I would like some advice on what might be the best option for me to do. His daughter's Mum is due to go back into her office full time from 6th July and would obviously like help with childcare. We normally have his daughter 3 times a week and I trust that his daughter and her Mum have been following guidelines but worried that if I spend time with her in a closer proximity and inside this may put me at risk. If we end up looking after his daughter we feel that we should offer to have his son again every other weekend (which is what was in place before Covid-19) but again I would be putting myself at risk as he is still at the Childminder daily and I know recently he has been seeing his Mum's family, which has been in a garden but social distancing wasn't in place as he doesn't understand.

I keep thinking that I am just panicking and anxious about things because I struggle to even go into a shop at the moment without overthinking about it or going into a panic.

Would it be silly to look after both children indoors and overnight every so often or am I just overthinking and need to start thinking about getting back into some normality? I have felt awful from day one that both children's Mum have had to have the children 24/7 especially his son's Mum who is by herself but I also know that it was the right decision for my health.

Apologies for being an essay but it's a complicated situation and any advice would be appreciated 🙂

 

[Thebearcametoo]

It’s a tricky situation to be in but I think parenting trumps concerns generally so I would be doing the usual custody arrangements but looking at ways to minimise the risks for you. Time spent outside is generally thought to be safer so spending as much time as possible outside as a family (or just your partner & the kids). Could the 2 year old go to his mum to sleep but spend days with you? There are ways to make it less likely that you would catch covid (hand washing before eating is still crucial). But shared parenting matters too.

 

[PhoebeC]

This whole thing is down to how you feel personally.
If your partner is allowing you to be this much involved in the decision to see his children hats off to him.

The way I have been thinking is at which point will this the situation change. They are not going to find a cure for it anytime soon.
But I also think this whole lockdown isn’t healthy for us either so I have been looking at what I do carefully and basing it off that.

With no cure or end date in site, either the children cannot stay with you intil much more time has passed, for eve longer, or you start to get back to a new normal.

I know a few people are waiting for a cure or for some other change to go back out into the world and see people again, myself personally I am going to access each risk as they come up and then make my own decision.

I can’t wait to be working in the office again, but I won’t be getting on public transport anytime soon. So I will not go back into the office until I am told I must.

But seeing my relatives and friends who I know wouldn’t see me if they had a risk of having it I will do. And we have been on a walk with my aunt and her children and honestly it’s the happiest I have felt in months and my daughter too.

It depends on what the children have been doing before they come and stay with you, how many people they have been seeing and I would say the R in your local area.

our town has been low in rates since the start so I feel confident here but if it had been in my home town I don’t think I would have been leaving the house

 

[Bruce Stephens]

It depends on what the children have been doing before they come and stay with you, how many people they have been seeing and I would say the R in your local area.

As a very minor disagreement (which makes little practical difference): personally I don't care about the local R rate (which we don't know anyway), I think prevalence is much more important (since it more directly says how likely I am to bump into someone infected). (So, the number of new cases per 100,000 would be a reasonable proxy.)

Admittedly we don't know the local prevalence either, but of the unknown things, prevalence seems vastly more helpful if only we could know it.
(Looks like we might get new cases per 100,000 at a local authority level (that is including both Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 results), which is likely to be useful for some people. Not for my mum since she's living in a small coastal village which is unlikely to be typical of Kent. But useful for me, since Kingston upon Thames and Richmond upon Thames are probably a bit more uniform (they appear about the same fairly low number of cases) so likely that's true of between them which is where I am.)

 

[Robin]

Admittedly we don't know the local prevalence either, but of the unknown things, prevalence seems vastly more helpful if only we could know it.

BBC website local news page publishes the daily confirmed cases for each district council in our county. I don’t know if other counties release theirs, but Oxfordshire seems to have been doing it all along, so I know that there haven’t been any new recorded cases for over a week in West Oxon, and before that, we suddenly had seven, (a week or so after all the BLM protests in London and Oxford, funnily enough) having had a couple of weeks with zero before that.
I don’t know whether the info is available at a local level for other counties.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

I don’t know whether the info is available at a local level for other counties.

I wonder if those are the full figures, though? The controversy with Leicester is that the figures the local authority had weren't showing any problem, because all they had were those from Pillar 1 (the tests done in hospitals and care homes by PHE) and not Pillar 2 (home tests, drive-through tests, etc., done by Deloitte). Though now there's apparently a deal allowing local authorities to get at this data. (Inexplicably, the contract with Deloitte didn't require this. It's like the government is deliberately trying to be incompetent.)

Anyway, I read somewhere that the per local authority numbers should be available now. (Previously, only Pillar 1 numbers were available, and those are what were being shown in most places, even though they're not very meaningful any more.)

Coronavirus: Areas with highest number of weekly COVID-19 cases revealed

Sources have told Sky News they are "working collaboratively", focusing on the dozens of areas in England where cases are rising.

news.sky.com

 

[Becka]

I agree with PhoebeC, it is a personal decision about how you feel.

As you are not in the shielding group you are now allowed to form "bubbles," though the rules have always included allowing children to stay with both parents anyway. So allowing either child to stay with you is not something that is advised against now even with you being clinically vulnerable.

And it sounds from your descriptions like both of the other families have been following the advice. The mother who is a key working did not come across as being in a public facing job but one where social distancing can be followed, so she and her son should not be a higher risk.

There will always be some risk, no matter how small, until the virus is eliminated. But that is the same about most activities in life. So ultimately it rests on how comfortable you feel about it, as there is no specific reason why they could not stay over if you keep following the guidelines on hand washing etc.

 

[shell123x]

Thank you for your replies.

The reason my partner chose to be in lockdown with myself rather than have his children is because he suffers with mental health issues and wouldn't cope by himself on the days and nights he wouldn't have his children which would be at least 4 days a week as he only has his children a small amount of time.

It turns out that his daughter is now able to go back to school as her Mum is classed as a key worker and as she now has to go back to work in the office his daughter's school has allowed her to go back to school full time.

I'm now though even more worried as she will be around 7/8 children each day, I know there are procedures in place but am I at higher risk?

 

[Becka]

The current guidance on education is that, where a school is open, only children who live with someone who is shielding, and where they cannot follow strict distancing at school, who should remain at home. Obviously as well as those children who have medical conditions of their own.

So unfortunately the advice is the same, that you have to use decide what risk you are willing to take. But the official guidance, at least in England, is that the risk is considered low enough to allow a clinically vulnerable person and a child attending school to live together.

 

[Thebearcametoo]

You’re not at any more risk of getting it because of your diagnosed illnesses but obviously you might have complications if you got it - the ME would be what concerned me more than the diabetes in terms of how you would feel if you got it given how I know I react to viral illnesses and how slow my recovery is (fibro with CFS aspects). But there’s going to be long time before there’s an effective vaccine available so it’s unfair to him, the kids, and the other parents for him to not be involved in their care for the next year or two.

I can understand your concerns and fears though. It’s a difficult position to be in.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Sorry to hear about the complicated situation you find yourself in, it must be very difficult for you to know what to do for the best.

I’m not sure what data they have based the decision on, but I believe that the Government have (or are just about to) lift social distancing rules for children under 12, so that they are able to play ‘normally’ together and can hug grandparents. Though I think not for anyone in the shielding category. However the lifting of restrictions seems another nod towards the seemingly low levels of covid-risk (including transmission I think) from children.

As it stands, as you are on the ‘increased risk’ list rather than the ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ (shielding) list it would be perfectly fine for you to share the childcare of your partner’s kids if you choose to do that.

As people with T1 diabetes, we are at no more risk of contracting coronavirus than anyone else, and from the appearance of your avatar you look well under 40, so there does not seem to be much if any increased risk of mortality if you did get it, and also if you happened to get it badly. Sometimes amid all the stats of death and all the horror stories, I have to remind myself that most people who have caught coronavirus have only had what ended up being effectively ‘a really nasty cold’. And some hardly noticed they had it at all. Perhaps you’ve had it already?!

Your situation is very complex, and there are lots of overlapping demands and intricacies, so I can hardly imagine how tricky it is for you to navigate through all that, particularly the potential difficulty of catching a draining and exhausting bug alongside CFS.

So do be careful, and take suitable precautions whatever you decide to do, but try not to be overly anxious too.

 

[Robin]

I wonder if those are the full figures, though? The controversy with Leicester is that the figures the local authority had weren't showing any problem, because all they had were those from Pillar 1 (the tests done in hospitals and care homes by PHE) and not Pillar 2 (home tests, drive-through tests, etc., done by Deloitte). Though now there's apparently a deal allowing local authorities to get at this data. (Inexplicably, the contract with Deloitte didn't require this. It's like the government is deliberately trying to be incompetent.)

Anyway, I read somewhere that the per local authority numbers should be available now. (Previously, only Pillar 1 numbers were available, and those are what were being shown in most places, even though they're not very meaningful any more.)

Coronavirus: Areas with highest number of weekly COVID-19 cases revealed

Sources have told Sky News they are "working collaboratively", focusing on the dozens of areas in England where cases are rising.

news.sky.com

Yes, you’re right, today our local authority figures reported on BBC local news showed a huge surge due to 'change in reporting methods' so presume they now include Pillar 2. (Our district council is still the lowest in Oxfordshire, though!)

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Yes, you’re right, today our local authority figures reported on BBC local news showed a huge surge due to 'change in reporting methods' so presume they now include Pillar 2. (Our district council is still the lowest in Oxfordshire, though!)

Just to add to the "what were they thinking" column,

Deloitte: Coronavirus

Department of Health and Social Care written question – answered at 11 June 2020

www.theyworkforyou.com