Hi 
This type of situation creates lots of opportunity for stress as there are so many unknowns, lack of control, financial and health implications not only for us personally but for people we care about.
My wife and I are relatively insulated financially with savings for a short period. My wife’s business has effectively stopped as most clients have cancelled and quarantined themselves. We are paying the staff full wages for the time being as long as finances allow. We have a small private rental portfolio for professionals. At this point all is continuing as usual but at some point the upheaval will feed down to our tenants. We have less room for movement here so will just have to take it as it comes. The UK Government is supposed to release details of help for renters later today. It was announced yesterday that people with mortgages will have access to a 3 month payment holiday if required. I have not ascertained if that relates to rental mortgages too. We have chosen to continue receiving/paying for services we receive from people too for as long as possible to help dampen the economic impact on them.
Health wise we are not in the age range for increased chances of complications from the virus. So the health implications I’m not worried about and there is nothing I can do anyway. My parents are within the increased risk age and have health issues and have self isolated.
I had a discussion about the situation with my father and discussed a thought experiment on the implications of the best time to get the virus. It is unlikely that it can be avoided completely so are you better getting it now in the UK while things are still relatively quiet and hospital beds/services/machines/staff/meds are available or getting it later when lessons have be learnt and/or a vaccine is available but the hospital service may be overrun by that point with lack of beds/services/machines/staff/meds. This reminds me of a quote I read that went something like this. I can’t remember who said it:
“By the time you have all the information required to make a decision, it’s too late.”
Luckily big issues and things not within my control I do not typically get stressed over and just roll with the punches and adapt/react/plan as things unfold. I enjoy the challenge and the focus it brings, although I would still rather these types of issues did not arrive. Although we have not had any extremely bad situations some people have, some of our greatest leaps forward have come from when things have gone most wrong for us, so that helps. But on the other hand I literally research endlessly for simple things like a £40 pair of trainers for months and even years for the perfect pair and the when I finally purchase I then suffer buyers remorse and anxiety with, was this really the best choice I bet the other pair was better…
The balance of health VS economies the Governments have to make is a hard one with best case being both have to take a proportion of the hit so one or the other does not collapse.
Hopefully we all come out the other side intact and society puts things in place for the such future events as this situation could have been much worse than it is this time around.
In the meantime my wife plans on using our down time for us to overhaul the garden. I explained I already had a plan to use the time to improve my Battlefield 1 gaming win ratio, she was not convinced. Saying this, as a geek, working from home and generally avoiding socializing I have been self isolating for the last decade anyway so nothing new for me and my wife has been avoiding all non essential physical contact with me for decades too so we are all good!
When the grandchildren visited at the weekend I dressed up in a white paper suit, respirator mask, full face shield, latex gloves and a backpack garden sprayer and IR thermometer and pretended to spray them down before they were allowed to enter the house
But as they already know my humour they were completely unfazed and just acted as if all was normal…
Hopefully we all get through it with as few issues as possible soon. 