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How lockdown left me afraid of life Ten weeks of isolation have left me risk-obsessed and angry

Credit: Andy Buchanan / AFP / Getty

Credit: Andy Buchanan / AFP / Getty


June 2, 2020   5 mins

I will always remember where I was when I heard the news that the government had changed the lockdown rules for shielding.

Warning: this is almost certainly the most predictable “Where were you when you heard the news about…?” you will ever come across.

I can tell you exactly where I was — in my room. Of course I was in my room. Because, save for occasional visits to the garden, loo breaks and some time in the kitchen when it’s empty — and one trip to the hospital — that is where I have been for every moment of every day for the past ten weeks.

Along with two million others, I have been shielding. In my case, because I have a “serious underlying health issue” — leukaemia, which was diagnosed over five years ago (but which I have probably had for much longer) and for which I have been treated since January.

Which is why, when I left the house yesterday morning after the guidelines changed to allow me outside, it was not just the first time I had gone for a walk in 10 weeks. It was also one of the most weirdly emotional few minutes of my life.

When I received my NHS letter advising me to shield, on 24 March, I wrote for UnHerd about how it brought home to me what the cancer diagnosis, perhaps strangely, had not done: that this could be it for me. Were I to get Covid-19 I would tick almost every ‘he’s a goner’ box going because, in addition to my suppressed immune system — worsened by the treatment — I am clinically obese. So my mortality suddenly became a very, as it were, live issue for me.

I am by nature a stoic. Like all of us, throughout my life I have had a number of good and bad things happen to me. I tend to take the rough with the smooth, so even a cancer diagnosis did not floor me. It was something to deal with. And so in anticipation of at least 12 weeks in my room — the original NHS letter said shielding would be no less than that — I went on to various blood cancer support sites.

Most were focused on alleviating the expected boredom. This has never been, and has not been during lockdown, a problem for me. Too much to read, too much to watch, too much to listen to. But 10 weeks in my room has led to something new which has, sometimes, floored me. Not the fear of death, which I expected to be the worry and which I wrote about in March; my family have been brilliant at helping me shield, so I have had very little fear of the virus.

No, what has got to me has been a kind of low-level desolation which comes down to a combination of frustration and fear. I make no special claims here; much has been said elsewhere of the impact on, for example, grandparents unable to see their grandchildren or, even worse, the bereaved unable to say goodbye. And I have been in relative comfort. I still have a wonderful job. My family have all been free of the virus. My desk looks out on a large garden and we have had no problem getting food (if only we had, I might actually have lost some weight).

But for me, it’s the knowledge that I can’t even walk up the street and back, let alone potter to the corner shop. The most excitement I have been allowed is a trip to the loo.

It doesn’t sound so bad but it is soul-destroying in its sheer relentless nothingness. And it changes your character. Until now, not much has phased me in my life; all my displays of nerves have been of the useful variety. But in April, I had an appointment to see my consultant. I hadn’t had a blood test since January, so he said that this time a phone consultation wasn’t enough. I would have to drive in — don’t take a cab, he told me, the risk of infection is too great. I can barely convey to you the sheer terror I felt as I walked out the door. I have never felt such fear. I was sweating pools within seconds.

I told myself it was irrational; my face and hands were covered up, I was in my car and I was effectively as safe as in my room. But – as I know now, six weeks after that morning — that was all irrelevant. My reaction was the result of a character change. It is no longer death I fear; I fear life.

More specifically, I am now unsure about everything. What will happen when others are back out and about, attempting to create a new normality? How will I fit in? How can I fit in? Is this my new life — always on the outside, looking in, fearful?

But this isn’t the me I am used to. I have never been the nervous, querulous, timid person I have seen myself turn into these past 10 weeks. Which is why, when news leaked out on Saturday night that the shielding guidelines were being eased, I really did not know what to think or how to react. On the one hand, sheer joy. The excitement of being allowed out was genuine and deep.

But also a deep-seated angst. Not about the walk — I knew I would be safe, I wouldn’t touch anything, I was near no one — but a worry about what it represented. Because — this is where the new me kicked in — what if that’s it? What if the most I am allowed is a walk up and down the street? Or, even worse perhaps, what if I am allowed to do more? How do I react? Because while the prevalence of infection has reduced in London, I am no less vulnerable than I was. And that’s not something any decision by SAGE or anyone else can change.

I hear my mind racing with these thoughts now and I hate it.

I know, rationally, that every time I left the house pre-coronavirus there was a risk I might not come back. Life is full of risks. But this thing has turned me into the person I have always ridiculed – not so much risk-averse as risk obsessed. Questioning everything, worried about all of it — but, almost as strongly, angry about it.

I would like to report that, when I did finally leave the house yesterday morning, it was a joyous release. It wasn’t. It just felt very weird. Weird to be outside, of course. But also weird to be so unsure of what I was doing.

Everyone has had their own reaction to the lockdown. Our experiences have all been different. I have spent the past few weeks sneering at a genre of pieces that have appeared — that we must keep the good things about the lockdown and not return to the way we lived our lives before. Every time I read this drivel I swear inside with words that cannot be repeated. There is no upside to a global pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands and wreaked unparalleled destruction on the economy.

For me, its impact has been relatively simple. It’s stopped me being me. For all my many flaws, I’ve grown used to being me over the past 55 years. Now I have to get used to being someone else.


Stephen Pollard is Editor of the Jewish Chronicle.

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David Bell
David Bell
4 years ago

Unfortunately you are not the only person who thinks the same. A resent survey (published on the Spectator website) showed 41% of the people in the UK were afraid when they left the house. This is the crises that we will face over the next few years. The cure is going to be a lot worse than the disease with mental health being a leading issue followed very closely by deaths from untreated cancers, heart conditions, etc which will dwarf deaths from Covid 19!

Adults should be able to deal with this as they understand what has happened. They may need help but they will get through it. But what will happen to children who have been separated from friends and family and have been scared by the news and by parents actions. We really have to look past Covid 19 and look at the total picture.

Monica Mee
Monica Mee
4 years ago

Thank you for this very illuminating article. Until now I have been dismissive of all those people who are shielding or responsible for the safety of someone with compromised health and who have become paranoid about leaving home, touching anything that has not first been soaked in bleach for 5 days etc.or having contact with anybody else not in their household. You have explained the feelings that engulf people in that situation so well. I will be much more sympathetic.

I am in the healthy over 70 group, advised to avoid social situations, but able to go out and exercise each day and shop once a week and i will continue to get irritated by the worried well, who say they will not feel safe to leave home, return to work, send children to school until they can be 100% sure that no-one in their family will catch Covid, but then get into their cars, with their children and drive 2 hours to the seaside without realising the danger they put themselves in of being killed or seriously injured in a car accident.

mccaffc
mccaffc
4 years ago

I don’t have Stephen’s health problems and the major anxieties that go with them. He also fears that while not risk averse, he’s become risk obsessed. I don’t share that either. I do, however, have a vague, unspecific but strong feeling that I’ve allowed too much of me to change. Hey, I’ve just thought of a neat way of expressing it. It’s like those recovery routines in your computer which allow you to go back to the last time everything was working. That’s it: I need to find that date and condition and restart from there.

Adam Huntley
Adam Huntley
4 years ago

A hope I have is that people will become more “risk competent” i.e that they will have a better understanding of risk management. There is a tendency to be risk averse, the belief that it is just better to do nothing because “you can never be too careful”. Or alternatively to make decisions based on irrational chance like winning the lottery or becoming a film star. Health and safety is much derided. But what interests me about it is that it is really nothing more or less than rational risk management

Brian Dorsley
Brian Dorsley
4 years ago

There is nothing to fear except fear itself.

Nick Taylor
Nick Taylor
4 years ago

I relate to your fear as I have experienced similar feelings throughout. I first felt it in a supermarket when the hoarding and bulk buying was at its peak. I felt it again when entering highly controlled shops when retail caught up, but the security on the door, the markings on the floor and the plastic shielded and masked employees were alien to me. I feel it in my family, many of whom have very different views of lock down and distance and who are excitedly planning to go on holiday to Spain in August when the thought of even going near an airport, metal tube and another country is not something I wan to contemplate. I am not sure if my feelings are fear, rather uncertainty, weirdness and being fed up of our rudderless Government and scientists who have been woeful throughout. I agree that there is not a lot of good to come out of this except one thing. It has been a time for some of the world to stop and/or slow down and there has been contemplation and for many tragedy. John Lennon’s words come to mind and the ‘above us only sky’ is resonating today as all I can see is blue and white and no vapour trails from aircraft and so maybe the fear is not there just for a moment as I take in that benefit. I hope your treatment goes well and you will be okay and thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Janet Inglis
Janet Inglis
4 years ago

I can sympathise. Today is my first day outside after 14 days of state mandated quarantine in a hotel room, for crossing state lines, despite being healthy.
Just a room with a bed and ensuite. No chairs. No microwave. I was lucky enough to have a door that opened to the outside, so despite being extremely cold (Tasmania start of Winter) that door was open most days. I ate my meals on my bed. Read. Watched free to air TV – wi-fi internet on the island I am on is non existent. Knitted. Sat and sat and sat.
It was only 2 weeks but it was soul sapping. I remember lying in bed about 3am one night with my inner voice saying over and over “4 walls. That’s all. Just 4 walls.”
I thought I would get my creative on and write something profound. I had visions of walking out of there in my new just knitted jumper brandishing a best seller.
But today I just walked out and carried on.
Weird.
I wish you all the best and hope you recover well. x

Laurence Copeland
Laurence Copeland
4 years ago

I can relate to what I take to be the situation of the author’s family. Though I am 73, I am in good health, as far as I can tell. Every day I go out and run 5km+, keeping well away from people (they tend to keep away from runners anyway!). However, my wife is a survivor of cancer and several courses of chemotherapy, so i greet the end of lockdown with mixed feelings because I am effectively shielding-by-proxy. It looks as though I will be no more free than SP. There must be many of us vicarious-shielders, though presumably a young family will not allow itself to be restricted in order to shield grandma living with them. How that will work out remains to be seen

Sophi Robinson
Sophi Robinson
4 years ago

‘My family have all been free of the virus. My desk looks out on a large garden and we have had no problem getting food (if only we had, I might actually have lost some weight)’
Major risk factor is obesity. Reducing risk is within your grasp.