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Dr Emma Watts 2020-04-13 Person 5 5 0

I am writing to express my gratitude to and support of Dr. Emma Watts. I have never met Dr. Watts, and my only knowledge of her is through a friend of mine who has a private teaching practice attended by Dr. Watts' child.  Similarly to many people in this country, I watched increasingly bewildered as events unfolded around Covid-19. The seeming lack of any kind of coherent strategy around government announcements in the early days of the impending pandemic I know led to the majority of people feeling something of a sense of "non-urgency". Indeed, for myself this was all too obvious. We had the news reports of what was happening in other countries, but it seemed not quite real to us……..yet.  We were consistently assured that the best way forward was to wash our hands thoroughly, and all was well.  Throughout this time, I was constantly in touch with my friend, who was very much categorised as "in a vulnerable group".  For myself, I have a daughter with chronic asthma and a mother who is eighty and who, five years ago, had a kidney transplant and therefore has low immunity due to anti-rejection medicine, but who is otherwise very healthy.  Very early in the government's "containment" phase, my friend very kindly and gently told me of the advice she had been given by Dr. Watts, about how she should truly be considering more stringent and careful (actually read as "caring") measures for her student/parent community, and for herself, for many clearly explained reasons. I was again slightly confused as to why we were not being advised in such a way generally, but my daughter is now in her second year studying medicine at Bristol, and she was constantly in touch, basically pleading with me to implement very careful measures around myself, working in an international boarding school, and especially with regards to my extended family and my mother, in line with what was being discussed in her community by her professors and doctors she came into contact with whilst on placement.  When her university closed due to the need for her professors to be available to handle the pandemic, I picked her up, already being more wary than many of my actions during the journey to and from Bristol (to Manchester). My mother was already in lockdown, partly because of my daughter's insistence that it was dangerous to behave in any other way, and in large part due to the advice from Dr. Watts, which convinced my extended family that this was a sensible and eminently possible way to protect our mum.  My own outlook, along with that of my family, was changed. I am aware that, already at the early stage, and through until now, the advice given by Dr. Watts and passed on by my friend could well have been instrumental and indeed vital in caring about (read "saving") at least one life, and who knows how many more, before we were instructed officially of the seriousness of what was to come.  I will always be grateful for this, to someone I never met, for care and advice to myself and my family which otherwise may not have been given…….in time.  Thank you so much Dr. Watts.