Hyde Park Anti Lockdown Protest

Day 52 in British lockdown, and the unrest has spilt over into protest.

Hyde Park Anti Lockdown Protest, with slogans such as ‘I Am A Free Man, I Am Not A Number’.

As a mother of 2 young children I understand their frustration at having our freedom limited, but at the same time I would sooner fight with my kids every day as to why then can’t go out, then risk them catching this virus.

The human race has survived, in some version of its current state for over 2 million years. But there have been many occasions where it has been touch and go. Ice ages, natural disasters, plaque and pestilence have sought to keep our populations down for millennia. With modern medicine and technologies, we have rising above such threats to the point that we have forgotten. Folk memory has forgotten how to survive in times of great hardship and natural disaster. Now many people see an attempt to survive as something bad and negative. They are unable to see past their everyday comfortably safe routines and look at the picture as a whole.

The Coronavirus is one of the biggest threats to humankind for many years. We overcame the Black Death, we have a vaccine to protect against every childhood disease, and we have resources to see us through most natural disasters. Although we have seen several SAR’s related viruses come and go, there is something different about this one. We don’t know anything about this one. Scientists and politicians still can’t agree on its source, they know it started with bats, but can’t quite pinpoint the crucial link to humans. Was it a pangolin in the wet markets, was it dogs, or was it the Wuhan Institute Of Virology. Every scientist in the world is working overtime to treat it, whilst our medical services are overwhelmed, and the virus still mutates.

Yet in Hyde Park, in London Town, a group of (and I quote from My London News) ‘Irresponsible Morons’ are putting lives at risk, because they are incapable of seeing the bigger picture. But what has made me laugh the most, is that some of them are wearing masks. The irony of that has also bypassed them it would seem.

So as this hits the news and goes viral on social media, I now must explain to my children, yet again, why we are following the lockdown rules. I have to try to make them understand why I am going against my instincts to be free, reducing my working hours at the risk of loosing money and doing the weekly food shop in what feels like a post-apocalyptic world. My children see this as nothing more than the flu, and everyday I, along with countless other parents across the country, must stand up and take everything our children know away from them to protect them.

As I write this it dawns on the similarities we are seeing here. My 7 & 12 years old children can’t understand why they have had everything taken away from them. School, friends, playing in the park, routine. They are lashing out at us as parents. Perhaps this rings true for the protesters. They don’t understand why their freedom has been removed as they are lashing out at those higher up the chain. But as adults they should understand, and if they do not, they should make the effort to. If not for themselves, but for those around them. They may not catch the virus, but the 20-year-old woman with underlying health issues in the supermarket, who they just walked past might. And that is what it boils down to. Its not about what you want, its about what we need, as a society.