The Caroline Flack 'be kind' mantra should reign supreme | Verity Lush

The majority will be fine – they are, after all, with their parents or carers. But others simply do not have the support systems at home that we like to imagine.

There is research (and MRIs a plenty) to show that babies and children who do not receive meaningful interactions with their parents or carers actually have smaller prefrontal cortex in their brains.

Our brains grow with appropriate social interactions when we are babies. If you have never seen the Still Face Experiment then have a Google – it is truly fascinating.

We thrive as humans on interaction, so to have a sustained period with very little is both unusual and possibly harmful. This is of course, relatively speaking, for a very short period of time in our lives.

And it is for the greater good (a little something that the minority appear less able to get their heads around). We can rebuild a country but we can’t rebuild life.

For some of us, this may actually be a time that is gentler, with opportunity to think and organise aspects of our life that have been given perspective thanks to being at home, or being away from particular situations.

For others, this time is one of true trauma, of extreme financial worry and life-changing stress. And, of course, it is also a time of bereavement. The likes of which and scale of which this generation has, in the main, never known.

When Caroline Flack died this year (something that was eclipsed in the headlines by the current situation), ‘be kind’ became the buzz-phrase.

It seems to have been forgotten as quickly as the headlines were.

Now, more than ever, empathy is required, and a little kindness. But now, more than ever, the judgmental are out online in their thousands, and cruel comments reign supreme.

How about thinking before you type, and empathising a little more?

We must not forget this is real and thousands have died

When we speak about empathising, all too often we believe it is simply imagining that we are in someone else’s shoes, imagining their situation.

However, true empathy is far more uncomfortable than that. True empathy requires you taking on a little of what that person is feeling, and that is emotionally painful.

Brené Brown has an excellent take on empathy and this will prove especially useful as the country gets back to eventual work and we return to colleagues and friends who have suffered true trauma during this time.

People seem to have forgotten that this is real. Thousands have died and thousands more will once we are back outside. We must support one another.

Will religion be the answer for some in a post-Covid world?

What a difference the weather makes to mood when one is locked inside one’s home.

Just the sunshine through the window is a glimmer of hope.

The rainbow of course has widely symbolised hope for hundreds of years, since the first publication of the Bible in the 1600s, but via oral tradition and other Jewish holy texts that predated the Christian Bible as we know it, for millennia.

It is interesting that a society that has become increasingly secular as time goes by has, albeit subconsciously, turned to a symbol with religious connotations in a time of needful crisis.

After the Second World War, Paganism saw an increase of followers due to people feeling that mainstream religion had failed them. I wonder what a post-Covid society will hold for us?