The COVID-19 Experience

Personally: well life has definitely changed for me but not as drastically as one would think, I am still engaging with family and friends but via technology rather than in person (other than my younger son who is back from university and socially isolating with me). I still take my dog for a long walk twice a day and so getting plenty of outdoor exercise but I am definitely missing social contact, very much missing my older son and missing other family and friends. I also worry about the long-term impact this will have on children, on the elderly and on the mental health of many individuals. I am also concerned that there will be an ever widening of the gap between and wealthy and the poor.

Work: from a work perspective, well work is still incredibly busy but with the key difference that one is attached to a laptop at least 12 hours a day. Meeting technology has been incredibly impressive but there is a much stronger feeling of being ‘tied to the desk’ literally every day and all day. Researchers have been very inventive in their pursuit of maintaining the research work they are conducting which is incredibly useful for the field of dementia research. It is very noticeable that clinical researchers have been pulled back to the ‘front line’ but they still persevere to meet their research objectives which is admirable. I miss working in the office but home working has been relatively straight forward, just very socially isolating. I worry about the impact Covid-19 will have on dementia research funding, particularly for charities that receive an income through donations, but mostly I worry about the medical impact Covid-19 is having on people living with neurodegenerative diseases. I appreciate many researchers have rapidly incorporated evaluation of Covid-19 impact into their research, often utilising digital technology and remote monitoring to do this, but for families, carers and front-line clinicians this impact must be devastating.

Carol Routledge, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Officer, Small Pharma; Former Research Director, Alzheimer's Research UK and Managing Director, Early Detection of Neurodegenerative Diseases (EDoN) global initiative