Coughing up a little secret

S IT just me or does everyone think we have a pandemic personality?

Some people are secretly loving this home isolation caper.

IS IT just me or does everyone think we have a pandemic personality?

New research out of the UK suggests we fall into three categories: accepting, suffering or resisting.

The Kings College poll found 48 per cent of the UK population belong to The Accepting group, who support the lockdown measures, love a bit of Netflix and probably still have a job or adequate income.

Then 44 per cent are The Sufferers, who are struggling to make ends meet, absolutely hate homeschooling their kids and are constantly checking their phones for coronavirus updates.

The rest of you are The Resisters: usually young people who think that too much fuss is being made, have probably lost all income and are largely flouting the laws.

I think there are a few subcategories out there.

I am the Secret Thriver — the person who feels bad for the turmoil in the world but has no problem bunkering down. I can easily kill a day on a TV binge, am stoked to live in a slower world and have done a bit of potting with my spare time. I don’t miss going out and tracksuit pants have always been my favoured attire.

My friend Mark is happy at home, too, but not because he’s lazy like me.

Mark likes it at home because that’s where the disinfectant is. He made his own face masks and uses hand sanitiser about 35 times a day.

While health experts have some guidelines to follow about cleanliness and hygiene, Mark considers them wholly inadequate.

My little brother Harry is happy at home, but fidgety.

He cooks, cleans and exercises but he can’t stand the fact every day looks the same. He’s fixed everything in the house, made his own sour dough starter and runs a weekly Zoom cooking show for kids which about 15 families tune into every Saturday night.

My friend Camille is a very good sleeper. She’s not really into exercise and her mum does all the cooking and cleaning.

Sleep has always been her superpower and she’s not mad about it.

Then there’s the project crew.

My husband has dug up the backyard and built new ag drains using YouTube.

The bloke behind us is building a fence; on one side our neighbours got in an industrial mulcher for a little deforestation; and on the other side, they’ve been doing something with a backhoe for three weekends in a row.

Finally, there are The Scrollers. They spend their day posting memes about day drinking, sharing conspiracy theory videos and nominating people for challenges (you know who you are).

It will all be over soon and we’ll go back to full-time work, sport and leaving the house.

I’m not going to lie: I will miss my tracksuit pants a lot.

And Mark will never touch a door handle again.

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