🗞 Hello world! Coming out of lockdown

Let’s celebrate a win – and look forward to a better future

Lots of children are going back to school – or will be soon. Maybe you are too?  

It’s good news, of course, to be able to go out, to see friends. When we do, maybe we’ll talk about how life will be in future.

Coming out of “lockdown” is good, too, because it means we’ve slowed down the virus.

Well done us!

Three months ago, the COVID-19 virus was spreading fast around the world. It didn’t make many people very ill. But it was enough to quickly fill up our hospitals.

Scientists are working fast to find a cure. But until then, we humans have just had to pull together and use the simple solutions we had – stay home and keep washing our hands.

We’ve all made an amazing huge effort. And it’s worked. The number of people who are getting sick is falling.

So, go on! Give yourself a pat on the back!

Looking ahead

Did that feel good?

Now, do you think your life is going to be different from how it was before COVID? Will you talk about that with your school friends?

Some of those changes might last just a few months – until we make a vaccine to stop the virus completely. Before we have a vaccine, we’ll still have to avoid getting very close to many people.

And we might not go very far away during the summer holidays.

We might have to wear face masks – on the bus perhaps, or maybe in shops. Weird! And, of course, we’ll have to keep washing our hands!

As we start to go out again, a lot of people are also talking about how this strange time we’ve all been through could change the world for good.

Reasons to be cheerful

Here are three things that could be positive:

1. Feel closer

We’ve seen how much we need other people: our family, our doctors and nurses, yes, but also supermarket workers, cleaners, lorry drivers, people in other countries… If more of us remember that all human beings depend on one another, the world could a better place.

2. Live simpler

An international survey has found that most people around the world want to make less rubbish and waste less food now that they’ve had to spend weeks at home without going out to the shops.

3. Live cleaner

Many experts told us that the virus arrived because people are messing up Nature. And the lockdown showed how clean and quiet our towns are when we stop driving cars and so on. We could change habits to fight climate change and be kinder to the planet – for example by travelling less and working from home.

Can you think of one thing you’ve learned from staying indoors? We’d love to hear about it. You can drop us a line if you’d like to share!

And remember, if you’re worried about getting sick, that’s normal and you should talk to a parent or another grown-up about it. You can also check out all the news on WoW! about how we’re beating the virus!