When we were in the intense planning phase of this journey — booking flights and hotels, deciding which credit cards had the best travel benefits, purchasing travel health insurance — the two events we reasonably thought might disrupt our trip were (1) one of us getting sick or injured, or (2) a loved one falling gravely ill and requiring a hasty return to the States.
Neither a pandemic or a global financial collapse were high on the list.
When we left the U.S. at the end of January, the epidemic in Wuhan was in the news, and enough of a concern that we purchased face masks and hand sanitizer, mostly because airplanes are essentially airborne petri dishes and we thought they might be prudent for all the flights we had planned. But the idea that the epidemic in China would, in 5-6 weeks, become a major source of concern to us in Ireland was remote.
Now, we wash our hands before we leave the apartment, more vigorously and attentively than usual. We take the stairs and don’t touch the banister, or if we take the elevator, use a key to press the button. But we still need to pull on a door handle to get out of the building. We arrive at our destination, and out comes the small and rapidly depleting bottle of hand sanitizer. But then, a bartender passes us a pint after having taken cash and an empty glass from another patron. We are mindful about not touching our faces until after we’ve washed our hands yet again.
I had a brief bout of exacerbated asthma during the windier days during storms Ciara and Dennis, so I purchased a peak flow meter (the thing on the left of the photo) so that I could determine if my discomfort was an annoyance or something I actually needed to worry about. I’ve encouraged Barry to use it (with cleaning before and after, of course) to determine his baseline levels. Today, we purchased a thermometer. Just in case. It could be useful to objectively measure what’s going on should we feel poorly.
We stopped in about a dozen drug stores today. No hand sanitizer to be found. I did not look to stock up for the DIY alcohol-and-aloe-vera-gel solution, but that may be next if Boots does not get a new order in this week, as they said they would. Lloyds said it could be 2-3 weeks.
We may end up sanitizing with vodka and marmalade.
Things are not actually too bad in Ireland, at least not yet. It is one of the less affected countries in Europe. To date there are 21 COVID-19 cases, almost all of them related to people traveling to Italy for ski vacations (including a couple of school groups). But the first community-acquired infection (i.e., not traced to China, Iran, Italy or other hotspots) was here in Cork. Oddly enough, the patient was already in the hospital for something unrelated, and when he did not improve, they ran a battery of tests, including for COVID-19, which came back positive.
The situation in Italy is the worst in Europe. The concern about a bunch of people flying into Ireland from Italy was enough that they cancelled the Ireland-Italy 6 Nations rugby match, which a European friend tells me is on par with cancelling the Super Bowl (today, France v. Ireland was also cancelled).
And today, the St. Patrick’s Day parades in Dublin and Cork — the two largest cities in Ireland — were cancelled. St. Patrick’s Day is not a big deal for either of us (even though I spent 8 years in a school named for the old snake killer) — but we were truly looking forward to being here for such an essentially Irish celebration.
And yet, I was a bit relieved when it was cancelled.
France is our biggest worry. After Italy, it is the hardest hit country in Europe, and Paris is one of the cities most affected. We have a package trip to Paris booked for the weekend of Barry’s birthday, the weekend after next. France is already encouraging people to take their temperature twice a day, and avoid restaurants. It’s pretty much assumed they will reach Stage 3 epidemic precautions this week, which would include cancelling most transit.
At this point, we are hoping that the trip is cancelled on us, so that we can actually get a refund. If not? We are two 60+ individuals, both with asthma, one with hypertension, the other with a lung scarred by radiation for cancer treatment. It would be ill-advised for us to risk going to a city where people like us who fall ill may not recover.
But it’s not only the concern for our health. What if we were to go, and other countries ban flights from France as they’ve banned flights from China? What if we could return here to Ireland, but would need to stay in isolation for 14 days after — and our AirBnB lease runs out before then? Our concerns are not just medical, and financial, but logistical.
After we check out of our apartment in Cork on the morning of April 1, we have a couple of days on the road in Ireland, then a trip (planned, at least) to Portugal and Spain. Portugal, like Ireland, is one of the least-affected countries in Europe. However, the cases that they have are all in places we’re going. And we have a few days in Seville, in the Andalusia province of Spain, which is also a hotspot for the virus. It’s easy enough to cancel the Seville part of the trip and stay in Portugal.
TAP, the Portugal airline, cancelled a number of flights, but not ours. The cancelled flights were to Italy, France, and Spain.
So, we could pull our punches and cancel Portugal…there’s time to cancel the hotels but we would likely eat the cost of the airfare, or a large portion of it. Then we would need to change our flights to the U.S., which would also cost us. It’s not that we are not willing to eat the cost if it saves our lives or prevents a logistical nightmare. It’s that we don’t want to eat that cost if waiting a week means it will be cancelled for us and we’ll get a full refund.
But, seeing what the official response has been by the U.S. government, it has also occurred to us that NOT returning to the U.S. may be a better plan! On the other hand, we could “self-isolate” in our North Carolina house with the gourmet kitchen, bar, pool table, two TVs with Criterion subscriptions, an art studio, science fiction library, and pile of games… damn, as long as someone will deliver food to us, we’d pretty much be sitting pretty.
But damn, I’ll miss Cork.
Cork Spring 