Harehills ❤️ Love

First I want to say, don’t panic. There’s no reason to panic, there is reason to consider how we act, and think about what precautions we should take. Ignore the doomsayers, and those putting down our fair area of the city.

News is breaking that there are early signs pointing to a rise in cases. With the cases per 100,000 people rising from 4.1 to 13.3 across Leeds, with particular focus in Kirkstall, but parts of Harehills and other areas in the city are seeing rises too.

In fact, while that there is cases is not something to celebrate, its good we have visibility. Both the council, and we ourselves can be aware of the risks, and take good positive actions to protect our communities. This is something we lacked in the past, but have at our disposal now.

The council today has put out a call for communities to work together in effected areas. It is the right call to make, because only together can we defeat this virus. Which is why I’m covering it.

It’s worth the five minutes of your time to look it over, see what’s being done, and decide for yourselves what you can do to contribute to protecting our home, our city, our county from the spread of this pernicious virus.

https://news.leeds.gov.uk/news/call-for-communities-to-work-together-and-help-prevent-spread-of-covid-19

It’s not a time to panic. It is a time to take action. That action need not be drastic right now, the guidance to where a mask in shops, and on public transport, maintain social distancing wherever you can is still great advice when you need to be out and about.

If you think you might have some or all of the following symptoms, isolate yourself as much as you can, and go on the NHS cornovirus website to see about booking a test so you can be sure:

• a high temperature – this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature)
• a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual)
• a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste – this means you’ve noticed you cannot smell or taste anything, or things smell or taste different to normal

http://nhs.uk/coronavirus

Help your neighbours and members of your community, if you can do so safely. If the spread of infection does increase, the vulnerable could do with some assistance.

We are Harehills, we can stand together, work together, and beat this virus.

Don’t fall into the blame game, it’s not worth it and it doesn’t help. It’s also an easy way to build a web of deceit, which as it builds will capture in the web more and more people, until it includes the very people that started it. Instead, lets focus on what we can do to:

If you take anything at all away from this article, do remember there is no reason to panic, there is reason to be careful, to follow the guidelines from the Government and our council, and that by working together, we can succeed against this virus.

If there’s anything I can do to help people in this time of crisis, feel free to leave a comment here, tweet at, or DM me (https://twitter.com/HarehillsLove), or you can email me at jl@aspiring.org – I don’t know how I can help, it may be that I have to ask others, but if I can, I will.

Lastly, I’m no expert on the virus. I do not work in a medical field. I’m an analyst, plain and simple. My words are intended as encouragement, please do listen to the government, the council, community leaders, the NHS all people who will know far better than I what to do. The links in this article will take you to the best places to learn more.