Reflections Under the Pandemic — Tearing Down the Walls
In early February 2020, COVID-19 began to break out in Hong Kong. Hospitals banned visits, residential care homes barred visitors, and even family members grew distant from one another; while the chain of transmission was being broken on one side, walls were being built up on the other.
“Mum, I won't come to visit you — I'm afraid I may be carrying the virus and would make you ill.” “Dad, please don't go out! There's a virus outside!” “Uncle Chan, our outreach service has to be suspended for now; we'll come and see you when it reopens.” “Grandma Wong, the day hospital has closed for the time being; we'll let you know when it reopens.”
And so the older people had no choice but to sit facing the four walls of their “safe house” every day; as the days went by they became dull, listless, frail and weak.
You must understand that mental health drives physical health; only by overcoming the virus can older people live healthily and happily. Health is sunshine, air, breeze and rain: ordinarily we pay them little attention, yet without them we feel utterly out of sorts.
Tearing down the walls, tearing down the walls ... letting older people walk safely out of doors, to embrace the sunshine, to breathe deeply, to feel the breeze and the rain.
“How can this be done?”
“There is only one answer in my heart — the vaccine.”