I think I've come to the decision that I am going to finish up work at the end of the week and self isolate for the month of April.
As an asthmatic rated as "moderate to severe" and watching a few selfie-videos posted by young, healthy people laid up in hospital with cannulas and catheters, struggling to speak because they can't breathe due to this thing, I think it's made my mind up.
The incubation and asymptomatic period of this means that the current quarantine measures for people who have the virus are inadequate.
"The virus shedding period for this thing isn't just 3 days + 2 weeks. It has an upper infective time period of 4 weeks AFTER you develop symptoms. That means the quarantine period should have been 45 days..."
Meaning that people coming out of two weeks of quarantine could still be infective, meaning this thing is just going to continue to spread because we're not stopping it.
After watching those videos - call it selfish - but I sure as hell don't want to go through that, and I -might- survive it because I'm otherwise fit and healthy other than my asthma - but my mum and dad quite frankly wouldn't.
I'm not stopping the other practitioners from working if they want to. Margaret and Cassandra however have decided to also self isolate, meaning clinic hours have reduced. The clinic might close altogether at some point - based on New Zealand and Canada, I think that's likely at some point.
As I'm am choosing to go into voluntarily isolation, as opposed to compulsory isolation, I can still be around. I can go to work to sort out issues, do orders and some basic shopping etc, and I'm racking my brain on the best way (if it even exists) to help patients remotely via phone or Telehealth. Stay tuned.
We must be kind to each other. None of us have been through anything like this - we're all winging it and no one has all the (right) answers. This has not been an easy decision as it affects more than just me. But from what I've seen/read over the last 24hrs, I'm just not convinced that the risk is worth it any longer.
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