It’s difficult to keep on top of all of these trendy new seasonal health disasters, but apparently we’re in the middle of a ‘quad-demic’. Apart from being just another layer of winter misery, what does this actually mean? Well, we all know that the colder and wetter seasons bring with them the usual coughs and colds that, at the very least, inconvenience many of us, and at worst cause a serious uptick in sickness and more pressure on the NHS.
But this year we’ve got a quadruple-whammy of nasty viruses; Influenza, Covid-19, RSV, and Norovirus. What a wonderful Christmas treat!
I know more than most just what impact the quad-demic is having; I’m a GP, partner to a hospital doctor, and mother to two young children, one in nursery and one in reception. It’s the perfect storm to take an entire family out of action, and that’s what we’re seeing being replicated all over the country. In a matter of three weeks, we’re on our second wave of sickness that has swept through our home, taking out everyone in its wake. But whilst we can cope with looking after two small sick people, what we forget to account for every year, is doing this when you feel pretty rotten yourself, you’ve got to juggle work commitments, and figure out childcare. And we are, very much, not alone, in this modern dilemma.
Like many, we rely on a combination of formal childcare services and family to enable both my partner and me to work. But also like many, we need to consider the fact that our parents are either elderly, or very far away. Like many professionals, we’ve moved around a lot, and had our children a bit later than some. Whilst this stage of life means we’re financially and emotionally well-equipped to be having children, it does mean that the family network that we rely on is also older. Despite this generation being fitter and more active than their predecessors were at the same age, we can’t ignore the fact that this could change if they were exposed to the viral illnesses our children are bringing home; there’s a reason why the flu vaccine is offered to those over 65. But when childcare services cost the same as your overpriced mortgage, many of us don’t have any choice but to recruit the help of our elderly relatives.
In the last month, I have had to call in sick during the busiest time of year for any GP surgery. When I was feeling better, I then had to use emergency annual leave because one of my kids was too unwell to go to their childcare setting. We’ve also had to ask Grandma to stay at home because the bugs that were circulating in our house were pretty nasty, and, well nobody wants to kill Grandma, especially at Christmas. Then as well as having already been off sick and taking time off for the kids, my partner had to try and work from home when I became sick again, because once mum is out of action, everything falls to pieces. He soon learned that working from home as a hospital consultant, with an 18 month old running loose in house is pretty much impossible. What this quad-demic has exposed is the fragility of our childcare networks and systems, and just how broken it all is.
You’ve heard the saying ‘It takes a village to raise a child’, right? I always felt this acutely when I was in my postnatal stage of parenting. But during the difficult winter months you begin to realise just how useful a little bit of communal living could be, when it comes to looking after children, and having any kind of life, professional, or otherwise. The nuclear family has never left us feeling so alone as when we’re trying to cope with sickness. I can’t even imagine how hard it must be for single parents; I take my hat off to you all. The combination of being pushed back into work whilst parenting young children, expensive childcare, and relying only on our ‘family units’ is proving that the modern family set-up doesn’t always work. Then add into that the complication that many parents, like myself, work in service provision. Even at the best of times, the surgery that I work in is under a lot of pressure. It’s the NHS! But you realise what a loop of lunacy we’re working in when the NHS is so broken that it’s continually understaffed, while patients that aren’t equipped to deal with minor viral illness are booked into GP appointments, so staff become unwell when they’re exposed to these infections and go off sick. The remaining staff are put under even more strain, become at even greater risk of getting unwell far more easily, then do end up going off sick, and the cycle just continues. All winter. It’s a story as old as time, well, as old as modern capitalism. And with more and more nasty strains of common illness doing the rounds every winter, the impact of these common illnesses seems greater, year upon year.
Winter bugs aren’t going anywhere, and are something that a ‘wealthy’ country should be able to cope with, even in the worst of situations. But it’s clear that this isn’t happening, so perhaps it’s time to help working parents look after our children, support one another when this gets difficult, and enable our NHS to care better for its patients and employees.