Why is being encouraged to hold a knife and fork more important than being able to hold a hand?

2020’s Covid restrictions and guidelines are the most inane and confusing way to combating the disease conceived. We can hold a knife and fork and indulge in a Wetherspoons’ breakfast whilst sitting at a table with five friends or associates that we do not live with. We can do this whilst we sit a metre or so away from complete strangers.

If we are inclined to do so, we can select 29 of our closest friends and shoot grouse, as this is included in the category of a ‘team sport’. This is particularly reassuring if you are one of Boris Johnsons’ friends. A friend who ‘paid for a luxury Christmas getaway to a Caribbean island and funded his leadership campaign, and just so happens to own two grouse moor estates’.

How has this been allowed to happen? The effects to business of being unable to operate and sustain trading, and ultimately profitability is the understandable reason why we can buy a plate a fry-up at any given time. Being a supporter and friend of the prime minister is likely to be more than a coincidence that you can shoot birds alongside five times as many people as you are allowed in your garden.

We are not however allowed to hold the hand of a partner or loved one during an ultrasound, in the main a joyous and wonderful experience that I have been fortunate enough to have been through. With the joyous feeling of any healthy ‘baby scan’ there is the worry pre-scan. There are the nerves of both parents, or whomever the birthing partner and said parent is. There is also the terror and immediate feeling of loss, desperation, hurt, and disbelief when you are faced with the words, “There is/are no heartbeat(s)”. Four small words that destroys the present and future that have been planned and celebrated for weeks and months beforehand.

Thankfully and selfishly I have never experienced this. I have seen the damage that it has caused to loved ones. Extremely close friends and family have been completely shattered having to go through this experience. For each of them, they have had a hand to hold. They have had support next to them, and someone to hold them. They have had that person to walk back to the car with them. They have never physically been alone through what has been one of the worst days of their life.

Nobody should go through one second of this alone, irrespective of a pandemic or not. The mental anguish of losing a child and then having to tell the first person you see afterwards would break most people. There must surely be a way to allow that hand, that crutch, and that person into the room.

The sensible side:

From a health and safety aspect, clearly there should be stipulations over anybody entering a hospital, and evaluations of the necessity of visits or accompanying someone seeking medical help. PPE is routinely worn by all medical practitioners or staff. Sanitizing themselves and equipment and furnishings is paramount and adhered to. I am not stating that known Covid19 sufferers or those who are suspected to have it should be permitted in. I am not suggesting that the flu-ridden or the extremely vulnerable be allowed in either. I am suggesting some common sense and compassion.

A robust temperature checking on arrival would probably suffice in comparison to our airport restrictions. It would also have a higher level of health and safety diligence than most GP’s waiting rooms.

A temperature check, a mask, sanitizing a chair before and afterwards. Disposable coverings where hands could be rested in the room. A metre distance from the medical practitioner, which is likely to be easy across an NHS bed width. A bit of compassion from our government. All of these would provide so much mental wellbeing and sense of assurance to everybody in the room. NHS staff surely cannot be affected telling an alone expectant parent that their planned future has been ripped into shreds.

The real side:

There is a wonderful blogger called Sophie McCartney who has accounts in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and has her own YouTube channel, called Tired ‘N Tested. Ms McCartney has shared her experience of loss in a video called ‘Miscourage’. that is in the video section of her Facebook homepage. Her distress in recounting her experience of being unaccompanied when hearing of her own ultrasound results makes tough viewing. She talks directly to the camera of the pain of the news prior to the scan which was potentially a miscarriage, and the sense of loneliness afterwards. The emotional trauma caused from knowing she would be alone during the scan, and the strain every day since is both an insight into the horror that she went through and admiration for anyone that has been through this.

If it were not for a close and lifelong friend talking to me last week, I would never have even thought of this as a subject to write about. Listening to her, reading her messages, and acknowledging how much she has been through of which I knew before, but not understanding the emotional trauma has made me feel even more angry at the way in which our government cannot govern. How little empathy they have for people unless they are spending for the economy or supplying them with Christmas breaks and financial luxuries.

As a father, a person, and like all of us as a human being, I can’t get my head around the immorality of this rule. I cannot understand how people are permitted to do this alone whilst socializing on massive scales in comparison are. Writing this has been difficult to put into words. If you cannot share this article, please share Ms McCarthy’s video. It may not change anything, but it may show one person that whilst they may feel it, they are not alone.