Chronicles of COVID-19

Title

TOS,24,Cork

Contributor

TOS,24,Cork

Subject

COVID-19 (Disease)

Coverage

Ireland; Cork; 2020s:

Date

15 August 2020

Language

English

Creator

Cork Folklore Project

Rights

Cork Folklore Project

Description

GENERAL PHYSICAL LOCATION RIGHT NOW

Grenagh, Co. Cork, in the village

USUAL LOCATION

Boherbue, Co. Cork

Q. 1 STAGES

Well we first heard about in in January really. I think in December we weren't concerned and didn't take much notice. At times it seemed like a really far off thing that probably wouldn't reach Ireland but that definitely wasn't the case! In January/February my parents and I were planning to visit my brother, his wife, and their daughter in Switzerland but I held off on booking it. We were originally supposed to go for February mid-term, but it didn't happen, thankfully, for whatever reason we never organised it. By then there were already reports of the virus after arriving in Ireland from people or schools going on skiing trips to Italy. I remember a conversation with my mum on Viber on the 1st of March. She asked me if I had looked at flights for Switzerland. I said no because we "probably wouldn't be able to travel anywhere anyway". She actually replied with "It's petering out now". That did not age well!
I knew it was serious when the rumours about schools closing started. There were all sorts of rumours on Reddit, especially the SubReddit threads Ireland and Coronavirus_Ireland, also on Twitter, and WhatsApp. They said schools closures were coming for at least two weeks. All sorts of dates were mentioned. Some were really badly thought out rumours, as they cited the Easter Holidays when schools were already closed but that didn't stop people from jumping on the bandwagons. There were others about a "total lockdown" (that hasn't happened, yet!), with a voice message from someone who was in the Defence Forces or a fella who's friend was in it, or a fella who's friend worked with the car rental companies who had supplied the Gardaí with extra cars etc. There were so many different rumours it's hard to keep track. I remember the "letter" sent to the Defence Forces asking them to return and pack x, y, and z. There were pictures of the rental cars with Garda decals, so it seemed a little more believable, even with the possibility of it being Photoshop.
The amount of misinformation, fake news, and gullible people really came to light then. I remember one old friend of mine shared a post on Facebook from a girl in Wexford who "spoke to a Wexford scientist" that she didn't get the name of that she served in a shop. Supposedly this scientist told her about how the Coronavirus lives in your nose, you have to use a nasal rinse or saline spray to stop it, sanitize the tip of your nose even, "the virus cannot survive in your gut as the acid kills it so drink water every 10 minutes to flush it into your gut from your mouth". Absolutely ridiculous stuff that anyone with common sense should question. It wasn't even a troll, this was a genuine account. I got lambasted in her comments for providing links from early studies, links about fake news, and links from more verifiable sources like the WHO or HSE. Her whole friend and family circle believed her without a second thought, including my own old friend who shared it. It had a huge amount of likes and shares. With all the technology and information at our fingertips people still couldn't be critical thinkers and believe everything they see or hear.
The rumours ran riot around Cork. I work in a school in Mallow and the rumour was that the first case in Cork was a parent of some of our students. It was the first week of Seachtain na Gaeilge so myself and another 5th year Irish teacher brought our classes together to practice for a song competition that was on-going. In class that morning (Friday 6th of March) she had gotten texts from people asking if we were shut down because the virus was potentially in the school because of the children of the alleged first case. The other rumours were that it was the girl's secondary school St. Mary's. It was so bad that that Friday, the week before schools closed, the school management - the principal and vices called a staff meeting at break to reassure us that they were doing everything they could to get to the bottom of it and see if it was true and would follow HSE guidelines. We were convinced it was true; students were being collected by parents who were obviously frightened. Turns out it wasn't! That week I never saw as much hand sanitizer in my life. One bottle in every classroom. Wipes as well in computer rooms. The keyboards and mice had never been as clean!
The following week was a bit of a shock. Those closure rumours were still running rampant even though the Department of Education said they weren't true. Nonetheless all the student teachers on placement got their inspections within two days in our school. Looking back it seems obvious they knew something we didn't. Apparently there was an email sent out to principals mentioning the closures, again Twitter and Facebook was rife with teachers being told to start compiling packs of work. I don't know how true that was either, probably just common sense to be prepared.
It was Thursday the 12th of February. We were on break at 11am and everyone was nervous as an announcement was coming from the government, the acting Taoiseach Leo Varadkar (who was only re-elected on the 5th count in the recent general election, but no government had been formed) was to address the nation around 11. We waited as long as possible but by 11.10 I had to go to my 4th year Irish class. It was week two of Seachtain na Gaeilge so I did an in class quiz with Easter eggs as prizes. It completely distracted them and me so I never saw the announcement live. We were in a classroom that was split in two, a small 4th year Gaelcholáiste class was in the other half of the room but they were passing in and out as we had the main door, doing something else with their teacher. After 20 minutes or so she passed and mouthed to me from the back of the room that we were gone, schools closed. The TYs took no notice‚ as they were debating the answer to the question I just asked them. I mouthed back "When?". She replied "Today"! I remember replying with "What! What about the Irish orals?" (As she was an oral examiner). She shrugged and went back into her class. It was mental. I remembered then I had a class of 15 teenagers who had no idea what was after happening and we were momentarily in our own little bubble. One of them said "what was that about... Miss you look stressed". I fobbed them off with my concerns about this high stakes Easter quiz. At the end of the 40 minutes they still had no idea and were asking me about normal things like how they forgot to bring in the €2 for the comedian Bernard Casey's workshop on Friday or their poster for the seanfhocal poster competition. I told them not to worry because I don't think we're in school tomorrow.
When I walked into the corridor it was the strangest feeling. Most of the 1st and 2nd years were celebrating and couldn't believe it, the older ones were more uncertain. I went to my first year Digital Media Literacy class. They had so many questions I didn't have the answer to. I almost didn't know what to do with them or myself so I turned on RTÉ News Now to see what the official announcement said. Some of them genuinely lept out of their chairs with joy. They had no concept of how serious this meant the virus was. It gave them the opportunity to make sure they all had joined the relevant Google Classrooms that had been set up in recent days and give them some time to process the news. Naturally there were conflicting statements coming from the government and the Dept. Of Education. One said 6pm that day, the other said tomorrow. The rest of that day was very, very strange. As a class teacher for 3rd year Gaelcholáiste students I had to have more answers than before. They're a studious bunch and weren't thrilled with the news as they worried about completing CBAs, practical projects, and getting courses finished for the Junior Cycle exams. Thankfully the year head did the rounds and kept us all calm. My last class of the day was 6th year ordinary and foundation level Irish. They were as laid back as ever and not particularly concerned about Irish at all and more so about who was going to be the second winner of the Seachtain na Gaeilge competition. We continued on with our revision for the oral and our Gaeilgeoir na Seachtaine comp while some of them got their emails sorted to join the Google Classrooms they hadn't yet joined since September. The staffroom was busier than ever that evening. We had Croke Park hours after school to complete anyway, though half the agenda was abandoned to give us a run through Google Classroom, Gmail and other useful tips and tricks for the distance learning that was to come. Nobody knew how long it would go on for, how much of our stuff to bring home. It was really strange. No one wanted to leave really. I remember that was the first day people went nuts panic buying in supermarkets too.
Now we're in a lockdown of sorts. I'm slightly losing count of the weeks we've been living in it (3, 4?) and instead, just dealing with it. "

Q. 2 EVERYDAY ROUTINE

So right now it's the second week of the Easter holidays. Schools won't be back until May the 4th according to the government but that's always subject to change in accordance to public health guidelines. So far we've had 2.5 weeks of distance learning.
It started out fine. I kept to my normal school timetable. I learned to schedule work in Google Classroom for the students' normal class times, only giving them 40 minutes of work, if that, to do. I kept to my normal working hours where possible. The students, not so much. I had first years emailing me at all hours of the night, asking questions and submitting work. That got work email notifications turned off on my phone as there was no break from work. I got dressed into comfy clothes every morning, had my breakfast as I waited for work to come in or as I corrected work submitted the day before. It was more stressful than actually teaching in a classroom. You felt like you had to give more individual attention to each student's work as you had the opportunity you wouldn't get in class normally to take a longer look at their work. It was arguably more work than normal and too much stress. I couldn't keep up with it. Normally you wouldn't correct each student's copy every day; you do it as a class because you wouldn't have the time. So I tried to mimic my normal style as much as possible. It became much more manageable after that. It still lacked the real essence of teaching though. That face to face time where you can see whether they're really following or not, the spark of ideas when working with classmates. It's a lonely version of teaching, especially for things like poetry etc. It was good for corrections of Leaving Cert exam papers though. They did a reading or listening comprehension, submit it in a Google Doc or as a picture, I correct it marks wise and in the comments box, I give them the marking scheme and they submit their corrections the following day as classwork. Still not ideal, but useful and quicker than working off of sheets or books. The problem is, in the long term, what happens to the students that can't connect with us online? What about the ones who can, but aren't, and the parents aren't following up on the school phone calls from the year heads? It makes continuing on with the curriculum feel unfair and counterproductive when you don't have your full class online.
After work I stayed in the office and started making PowerPoint notes for higher level LC Irish as it was my first full year teaching that curriculum that I hadn't experienced since my own LC in 2013 and we're ironically not taught about in college. The book companies released their eBooks for free to help out students and teachers so I made the most of it.
I played my PS4 a lot. Mostly this was my normal routine and I felt really guilty for loving it, as well as being able to sink more time into genealogy and tracing my family tree, checking out my DNA matches. For once, gaming was going to be a "normal, healthy" hobby to have so I finished Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Final Fantasy VII Remake also released on April 10th so I have been playing that non-stop since then. It's a remake of the 1997 classic PS1 game I grew up watching my brothers play. I spent most of the release week waiting for the delivery of the special edition that had apparently been shipped on March 26th according to my email. It hadn't, and was actually sitting in a warehouse in France, delayed because of the virus. I'm still waiting after the bank holiday weekend and it's Wednesday the 15th! So my boyfriend bought the digital edition on his account and activated my PS4 as his primary console so I could play on release date.
I have more time for watching content too, and Disney+ released a week or two ago already so I can finally see how Hannah Montana ends, as I was a little too old and too cool to be watching it by then (and I didn't have Sky or the Disney Channel, just plain old RTÉ at home). Not to mention the 30+ seasons of The Simpsons.
I live in a large apartment with my boyfriend and two rescue cats. He's an IT engineer and can work from home. His work helps keep me in routine during the holidays. We can't go outside of a 2km radius, except for essentials so there's not much to do even though the weather is fabulous. The village is small and the roads aren't safe for walking. The most you can walk is 300m down the road to the GAA pitch to puck a ball around as I'm lucky to have his hurleys. Even though I'm a PE teacher as well I played Kerbs for the first time. You find two footpaths opposite each other and throw the ball at the kerb; if it bounces back you win points and so on. There are lots of different rules and it's not as easy as it seems. I almost won my first game but I lost my lead as we neared 20 points. There's plenty of exercise I could do around the house or at the pitch, Katie Taylor has posted boxing circuits, the Body Coach guy does PE every Monday morning at 9am on social media, I have tonnes of resources but no motivation! I did buy Just Dance for the Nintendo Switch, that's been great, and I built a PC for myself. I mostly use it downstairs to play Beatsaber on HTC Vive's VR headset.
We don't venture out much either. I did three or four weeks’ worth of shopping in Lidl last Monday, then we get bread and milk every so often from Costcutter in the village. I dropped food outside the door to my 89 year old grandmother. It was really strange to just talk to her 2m away and through a window. I Facetimed my family in Boherbue, did a Zoom call with my college friends/teachers on Saturday. We're trying to make it a weekly thing for now and maybe a monthly catch up when we're back to normal. The family Viber is going with voice notes, pictures and videos of my niece and nephew.

Q. 3 GROUPS

I noticed my parents who are in their 50s are appreciating their time at home a little more. Mum is working from home, kind of, and dad works in a cheese processing factory so they're business as usual. I think it's making them realise they want to spend less time stressing about work and more time doing the things they like or love, like my mum is really into photography and has more time to go out and appreciate nature in her own back garden or put together a photo album to print or frame.
At times I wish I was at home. I could take a big long walk inside the 2km radius; sit out in the sunshine in our garden. My boyfriend said the same; he would be able to take his German Shepard out for a walk every day. I'm a little jealous of my friend in town who can wander around the city, though her apartment is tiny, and expensive. Or my friends in the countryside who can cycle or walk through their fields or close to the coast. The trade-off is all of our technology and comfortable life here with excellent internet, I do have to say. At least the cats are good company and entertaining too.
I feel bad for the elderly or vulnerable. Particularly the elderly who don't use technology like video calling. It must be more lonely. At least Gran said she's getting more phone calls than ever before but for her she's been properly isolating for longer than all of us. At least she has a Kindle so I can call up outside the house and download some more books for her that my brother in Switzerland manages for her using my data.
I think most people are taking the lockdown we have seriously. Though there are always more reports of those who don't. For example my friend lives in a house share, one of them is a nurse. One of the other housemates has brought her boyfriend around twice during lockdown which is crazy and defeats the whole purpose of social distancing and the 2km rule. It's driving my friend nuts. It's her birthday today and she misses her family, her little sister, but she's not going anywhere, not doing anything special like normal.
Thankfully I've not had to experience any funerals. Hopefully not ever during the pandemic. It's an awful comparison to make but a week and a half after the schools closed, before lockdown over Easter was announced and we were only asked to social distance, my dog became more ill than before. Mia was 15 on December 1st 2019 so she'd had a good long life. She seemed like she had arthritis after a run in with a car in her younger days and a broken pelvis but was diagnosed with pancreatitis the year before at Christmas when we thought she was a gonner. The time had come and mum booked her in with a vet in Newmarket. I couldn't even see her at home for the last time. She was a real part of the family. My boyfriend drove me to the vets. They weren't letting anyone inside like normal to stop the virus spreading. When mum and dad arrived I got to cuddle her and she gave me a wag of her tail and some face licks, something she hadn't done in a while apparently. The vet only allowed two of us in. Dad wouldn't go in and I couldn't not go in with mum to say goodbye to my old pup. The vet said it was okay because it was exceptional circumstances; which was really kind of him (he was covered head to toe in protective gear and wore a surgical mask and gloves). It was such a hard goodbye for all of us! I felt guilty for breaking the social distancing rules as I was close to my mother in the room with Mia as we rubbed her and kissed her goodbye. So we caved and I got one hug from mum outside. I can't even begin to imagine the pain of a funeral of a human family member now during lockdown.

Q. 4 WAYS WE TALK

Communication is so different now. Social distancing, distance learning, working from home, flatten the curve, PPE, hand sanitizing, wash your hands, coughing into your elbow, are all part of everyday life now. For the most part it feels like we're in a movie. It's surreal, out of body experience almost. And now, it's...normal. Lockdown, working from home, not leaving the 2km radius outside your home, is normal for the foreseeable. As for rumours I mentioned a lot about them earlier in the first question so I won't repeat myself. More international rumours are about the numbers of tests carried out being faked, numbers of deaths not properly recorded or attributed to the virus in Ireland, Italy, China etc. in an effort not to scaremonger.
Humour in Ireland is stronger than ever. Tik Tok, the video sharing all like Vine is extremely quick to pick up on latest developments and turn them into memes, be it Donald Trump and the ""China virus"" or Leo Varadkar and the school closures etc. The radio stations are doing their best to keep it light and breezy and look after the nation's mental health. The last few days has been people playfully complaining about their spouses, partners, housemates, family members driving them nuts with their habits now they're spending more time together than before.

Q. 5 COMMUNITY RESPONSE

There are a lot of heart-warming stories about Irish companies; school students even 3D printing or creating masks and other PPE for frontline staff after the shipments from China weren't entirety suitable for our stature in Europe.
In Boherbue I have seen posts from the GAA club online who have offered to visit the elderly and vulnerable around the area and get them their shopping, and leaving their phone numbers. It's nice to see the community support one another.
On the upside "low paid" or "unskilled workers" are more important than ever before, keeping our shops open and deliveries flowing. Nurses and doctors are being appreciated for their work. Interestingly Ireland's trolley crisis has been more or less solved. Only 8 patients in the country waiting for admission to a bed as opposed of the 500 or more it was before the virus. People are being more sensible and not going to A&E for little things they shouldn't be. Hopefully it won't have a negative affect and people will still go if they're genuinely ill instead of being afraid of catching the virus. Then we have the other side of society the low life scumbags who are spitting on workers, Gardaí even, and claiming to have the virus to scare them. They're actually being charged and dealt with which is good.

Q. 6 THOUGHTS AND PREOCCUPATIONS

I've been very nicely distracted by the FFVII Remake. But as for the real world I'm worried about work. I'm wondering how my job interview will be held so I can stay in my current school. If I get the job again I don't have to re-interview, just get CID in the coming years. I would be gutted not to get the job I'm doing again, to not be able to say goodbye to the staff, my colleagues, my friends, and my classes and start over again in a fourth school. But that's the nature of the job and contracts, and I've been lucky not to have to move around too much in my three years out of college.
I worry about my students too. Home isn't always the best place for some kids and school was a safer place for them to be. I worry about the Leaving Cert. It's small beans really when you see the daily deaths but it's still important to them and me. For some of them it'll influence how their life turns out, for others it won't. The LC orals and Music practical students received full marks as the closures meant they couldn't complete them, so all my students, deserving or not, have passed ordinary level and foundation level Irish without sitting the written paper. There's confusion how the whole thing will run or even when it will run. The DoE are determined to run the Leaving Cert. I can understand why, we don't have a continuous assessment system in place to provide grades as a basis for the CAO applications. There is a petition created by a cohort of students to implement predicted grades based on their mock exam results etc. Personally I don't agree with this. I know I have students that based on their work with me this year (I didn't teach them the year before) who would not receive a passing grade as they didn't put the effort in back at Christmas for mock orals or in January during the pre-exams and have improved since or can turn up and potentially pass the exam. Others didn't sit the papers and don't show up, or show up once in a blue moon, so how can I fairly grade them? The pressure I'd be under to justify the grades would be horrendous. I can imagine the complaints "You never liked my child and had it in for them"..."She plays favourites anyway"...."you've only taught them for 6 months what do you know, you're young anyway". Never mind the grinds schools and the parents with the money to back up complaints if the H1s and H2s they're paying for don't appear. It's a mess. There's no fair solution. The world's not fair. The best I can think of is run the exams later than planned (they're looking at July/August) and if students aren't happy they'll have to repeat the year unfortunately, but it should be at no extra cost and they should have some leeway with course elements that change yearly.
This brings about lots of new problems. Teacher bashing has begun online as the government has mentioned two in class contact weeks with exam classes before the LC during the summer. The ASTI union expressed concerns about the structure of all of this, and the lack of clarity and it immediately got translated into "teachers don't want to work during holidays" or "teachers are concerned about June, July, and August, not their students' mental health". Another new problem that arises is correctors. We're supposed to go back to work as normal in September (though this normally happens the last week of August or earlier) and who will correct the exams if we're back to full time work? The Junior Cycle exams are essentially cancelled though we're also supposed to run in school tests instead when they're in 4th or 5th year, depending on if TY is compulsory or not. Never mind then the poor 5th years at present who are losing course tuition time. At least the LCs would have had the majority of their courses covered, generally speaking. It's small on a global scale but important nonetheless as we look forward to normality it's normal to have these concerns, I hope.

Q. 7 SIMILARITY TO PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

No Response.

Q. 8 CHALLENGES AND COPING

No Response.

Q. 9 THE FUTURE

Society is both a mess, and have also banded together. World leaders like Trump come into question more than ever as the States have overtaken Italy and China in cases, and attempted to stop funding today from the WHO for bad advice when their leader just ignored the seriousness of the situation. In Ireland it's probably historic that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are officially entering coalition and ending the "Civil War politics" after the election on February 8th in which Sinn Féin actually won over the people by receiving the most first preference votes, but didn't run as many candidates as their opponents. I don't 100% understand Irish politics at times like this where it was a win in a sense for SF but they don't actually have to make a government because no one won a majority or something, though FF beat them by one seat as the Ceann Comhairle Seán O’ Fearghaíl returned to the Dáil and automatically gave them a seat. It's confusing. That's almost happening in the background while it would be more front page news. Meanwhile the SF leader Mary Lou McDonald actually got the virus and only received her test results recently despite being tested in the end of March, and other Irish celebrities like Ryan Tubridy got results much, much faster.
Hopefully society will remember the emphasis on hygiene, the importance of spending time with loved ones, and doing the things we can't and took for granted. There are definitely jobs where we've seen the flexibility of working from home actually be productive. Hopefully we'll think twice about complaining about the daily grind whenever we get back to normal. Again, not my area of expertise but we're probably well screwed with a global recession coming. Twice in one lifetime? Maybe I will be able to actually afford a nice house when the bottom falls out of the ridiculous housing market again. More likely though is a lay cut or higher tax to repay what we're spending now to keep the country going, especially as a "well off public servant". I imagine the pay inequality of teachers’ post 2011 will never be resolved now and only set to get worse.

Q. 10 IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT SPRINGS TO MIND?

Sorry I've totally just used this as a diary or a place to ramble and rant. I typed it on my phone as I didn't expect to get so involved so there's probably typos I haven't seen or it isn't picking up. Enjoy future readers!

Q. 11 IN A NUTSHELL

Surreal. It will be surreal for years to come. My message is a cliché, and everyone will probably have something similar. Don't take things for granted. Enjoy every moment you get in normality, be it good or bad. Enjoy work, talking to people in person, and not through a screen, a window, or a protective plastic shield. Hug your family; pet your dog (even the cats). Enjoy the sunshine, head to the beach. Also please stop killing the planet, if it's not already too late. Reduce, reuse and recycle! If there's one upside to the virus (dark to call it a positive, I know), it's been the reduction of carbon emissions, improved air quality due to the reduced human activity the world around. Ná bhíonn aon rud ach seal. Nothing lasts forever.

age

18-25

gender

Female