Stop touching your damn face! And other lockdown observations

Heya Internet! So where are things with me since we last chatted? I have been working non-stop, racing around inside and going through so much paperwork, my head and eyes have been swimming for days. What has the world been up to? The coronavirus continues to sweep across the globe and back home in South Africa, our President has extended our 3-week lockdown for another 2 weeks, meaning a guaranteed 5-week lockdown with some of the most stringent regulations on the planet. How is this affecting someone living under these conditions? Let’s talk about this…

I have not seen new people, been outside my own fence or been anywhere at all since the day before lockdown (so basically four weeks). Am I doing this right? I suppose so. I will be fully honest and clear here; I am not feeling excessive cabin fever or any boredom. Like I said before, I am incredibly busy with work thus not a lot of time to feel overwhelmed by tedium. As for the lack of others, well as has been elaborated elsewhere on the blog, I was absolutely overjoyed travelling thousands of kilometres all by myself, a few weeks away from friends, family and colleagues is manageable. The fact that I am legally not allowed to go anywhere else, do what I like or have the usual freedoms that anyone in a democracy is afforded, does grate and quite a lot, on an ideological level.  But then my incredibly pragmatic streak kicks in and I would anyway choose self-isolation as the right thing to do, especially for those I love. So basically, I am not finding the practicalities as demanding as the philosophical contradictions. That might not be other peoples’ experience but it is mine.

Okay onto the real issues, what am I going to be eating by the end of lockdown? Horrors! Just joking, it will be some terrifying combination of tinned tuna, canned beans, the leftover dried legumes, Futurelife cereal and any remaining rice or pasta. Haha, of course I wouldn’t eat sweet flavoured cereals with canned fish together! What kind of culinary monster do you think I am? But all jokes aside (oh, that is so, so hard to do), those are the few kinds of foods that I will have left and I will eat them accordingly, in a reasonable manner. How do I even still have any food left? As we have talked about before, I am a bargain hunter in my travels and I am no different in my day to day life and grocery shopping. If I see a special on an item, I don’t just buy enough for a week or two, I buy enough for a few months, which is why there is still some dry food left. But shopping will need to happen in the near future.

What is another concern that I have? Obviously, I am concerned about my finances during this extraordinary and turbulent time, I can’t imagine that anyone is feeling really secure unless they are in fabulously lush circumstances. So far, I am managing, hopefully I will continue in this vein and things will remain tolerable. I can’t think of anyone who isn’t worried about surviving financially at this time, the threat or loss of their jobs is real for many people and even if your job isn’t going anywhere, the money you usually rely on is likely to still be in jeopardy. I don’t know if and how long I will be financially stable, but there is nothing I can do to change the situation, so I have to keep positive and carry on. To paraphrase the famous British World War II propaganda poster, Keep Calm and Carry On Washing Your Hands.

Speaking of things we can, and should, be doing during the pandemic, the great debate over mask or no mask still seems to be raging. Or rather lightly simmering, nobody is choosing this as their last coronavirus stand, there is not enough evidence either way. However, the latest consensus is that one should wear the mask to shield others, you protect someone else, their mask guards you and if we all do this, then we are all protected. Well, that’s the theory anyway… In practice? One just has to watch the news and see the government officials, man on the street, politicians and journalists all wearing masks with varying levels of correctness. From the reporters with properly secured masks, gloved hands and at least two metres from their interview subjects, all the way to the politicians fussing with bare hands all over their face trying to fix a poorly tied mask, the compliance and effectiveness of the masks varies across the board. But the prize for sheer comic lunacy must go to our dear Police Commissioner Bheki Cele. Whatever you may think of his performance in his job, his zeal for enforcing lockdown regulations, agree or disagree, no can argue that he is failing at wearing a face mask. We all know that having a mask tied over your nose and mouth makes breathing uncomfortable, but if you wear it below your nose you are literally losing half the point of the mask! Commissioner Cele is almost always seen with the mask sitting under his nose. Yeah, that’s not what the rest of us are looking for. However, he is by far not the only one, so many people, many of them officials, all wearing their masks under their noses. Hey, if you are going to be out in public, the least you can do is wear the mask correctly – mouth AND nose covered!

But my personal pet peeve is the incessant face touching people are still engaged in. You turn any screen on, TV or otherwise, and there, projected large or small, are people unceasingly touching their faces. For many reasons, that I will elaborate on below shortly, I have been very aware of face touching for many years and not just because I watched the Contagion movie long before it become the prophetic pandemic film. I mean let’s be realistic, OCD levels of handwashing and sanitising is only half of what’s needed to keep one safe from the virus, one has to keep ones’ potentially virus laden paws off ones’ face. The fact that people have not changed their habits regarding never-ending face touching means that when lockdown ends, we are in more trouble than ever before. People need to start being conscious of these almost involuntary movements because the truth is, they are not involuntary, most people have just never needed or wanted to pay attention to them before, but they better start now. Stop touching your damn faces!

Okay, okay, why am I on my sanctimonious high horse about this? Am I not a massive hypocrite with never-ending face touching? Well actually no, I am aware of every time I touch my face and only touch my eyes, nose or mouth directly after I have washed my hands. This has really not been such a monumental change for me. Why? Primarily it comes down to the fact that I have worn contact lenses for about twenty years now. My first ophthalmic surgeon flatly refused to prescribe contact lenses to a barely adolescent girl, my second optometrist did give me contact lenses but only after telling me all the horror stories for my eyes if I engaged in inadequate hygiene and hand washing. The bottom line was I would not be able to wear contacts for long if I was careless with my hygiene and could have very serious infections or complications. So, I have always been meticulous with my contact lenses and eye care and when I went for a check-up last year, my newest optometrist was flabbergasted by the excellent state of eyes after almost twenty years of continuous contact lens use. Also you learn pretty quickly that if you keep fussing with your eyes or worse yet, rub your eyes while wearing a lens…let’s just say, good luck finding that thing again in your eye or more likely off the floor where you probably popped it out with your stupid eye rubbing. I learned that lesson a few months after I started wearing lenses. You do not touch your eyes!

Another reason I stopped touching the rest of my face years and years ago, was my own vanity. I started wearing a full face of make-up shortly after finishing school and even the hardiest, long-wear, super-stay, waterproof, etc. make-up does hold up well or at least perfectly to unending face touching or rubbing. You beautifully apply your foundation and give a grinding scrub to your itchy, hay fever riddled nose and end up with foundation on your uncontrolled fist and a neon red nose. No, not happening. I had to preserve the pretty. Even in Thailand where I wore almost no make-up whatsoever in the heat, I kept my paws away from the precious sunscreen on my face. It’s not rocket science, I am not special, it just takes conscious effort to change an unthinking habit like face touching. And we all have to do it. We have to do better. Even as you read this, stop touching your damn face!

What does next week look like, what does next month look like, the rest of 2020? I have no idea and frankly, neither do the experts, their predictions just might be a smidgeon more accurate, but we have to get through this. The full lockdown will end on 1 May, but what will be allowed after that, what will we be able to do in Cape Town? We don’t know yet. We just have to stay positive. So, take care out there Internet, keep safe, wear your mask over your mouth AND your nose and stop touching your damn face!