Have people forgotten about covid and what's really important?

Really wasn't but you can't argue with stupid

Well. They were going out risking their lives when other people were at home.

Granted, not getting trenchfoot and being shot at, but a bit of hero status probably made more people willing to stick it out.

Not sure what you’re asking, OP?

Many people were complete dicks during the pandemic. The curtain twitchers policing others, the selfish hoarders stockpiling loo rolls…I think some relished the restrictions.

I'm definitely glad to have consigned it to a mostly bad memory.

It still annoys me, as this post clearly shows, that there was an overwhelming narrative that if you weren't working for the NHS or in a supermarket you were sat at home on furlough making banana bread. Only 25% of the workforce was furloughed at some point, the majority were trying to do their jobs from home including supporting vulnerable people.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/anoverviewofworkerswhowerefurloughedintheuk/october2021

I think things have changed a lot since covid. Some of that is due to advancing technology, economic issues and Brexit so it's hard to judge exactly what are the actual effects caused by covid. But it definitely impacted mental health and child development. I think people have in general become more inward looking and more belligerent in their defence of their own - there has been a huge rise in parental complaints in schools, for example. On the plus side, for me anyway, the introduction of zoom meetings over always having to travel, has been a success in terms of time saved. And I like that so much more can be booked and arranged online.

As for hand washing - it did change my habits! I used to not care much as I never got stomach bugs and hated having my skin dry out - now I wash my hands a lot.

Wow, your friend obviously earned their degree. Who would have ever thought that the potential social skills of reception aged children might have suffered during the lockdowns?
Sorry 🎄

Some people should really have been told to fuck off a bit more at the time.

Yes, I was going to say this. A medic friend of a friend got home after a difficult hospital shift the day she lost her first Covid patient, went out again for a run to try to calm down, and got home after an hour and ten minutes to a note from her previously civil neighbours saying they’d reported her for being longer than the allowed exercise time. I’d left the UK village I’d been living in in Jan 2020 but friends said the parish council was patrolling the streets in hi-vis with whistles!

😂 I had Covid in September (this year!) and had post Covid blood clot and post Covid pneumonia. I’m still fucked.

No need for shit stirry threads is there 🙈

Added to say: it’s the first time I had it (knowingly!) and yes Covid was a horrible time. The front line sticker brigade post up thread made me laugh so much - I still see those out and about. 😂

I hear you and started reading the responses which really weren’t very kind.
There was less focus on celebrity. More focus on community and more appreciate of teachers, retail and healthcare workers.
im also sad it was short lived. Im all for social media regulation. As I think it’s facilitating a breakdown in community and what is important. Hopefully the government will implement the social media ban for under 16s so they can move the focus away from how you look and celebrity.

Whoops - the quote didn't work - I was agreeing with this post from ILikeItWhatIsIt
Thing that annoys me the most is people calling themselves 'frontline' workers. Calm down love, you're not exactly in the trenches, about to go over the top.

Agree. You were doing the job you get paid to do OP.

A lot of people went bonkers during Covid, didn't they? It was when I realised properly that the media was just hysterical children who can't read books or do statistics and stopped paying attention to it. You might think that was my bonkers moment, but, eh, they were just so silly.

In real life, though, we just got on with it. Homeschooling was obviously terrible - I accidentally taught one too much maths and now they are a bit weird. We had some really nice family times. Our local pubs went to the wall and we couldn't save them and it's hurt our town. We did our best to help our neighbours. We all thought lockdown was a bit stupid after a while but we endured it. And then we all went to the pub on pub day and laughed too loud and talked too much, until we felt normal again.

I guess I got more local-oriented from Covid. The mass culture, the media etc, seems increasingly strange to us here - very hyped up and a bit crazy. A lot of us have quietly dropped out of that stuff, I've noticed, round here anyway. I don't know what people are doing in general.

Unsurprisingly, OP has dropped this thread like a grenade and not returned to it. Just like so many divisive discussion threads

Yep. Forgotten about it. It was bad enough at the time I don’t want to keep thinking about it.

I think it is interesting how everything collapsing was blamed on Brexit until Covid, and then since 2020 Brexit has barely been mentioned again and it is Covid that has had all the blame for everything.

Gone back to superficiality? So the whole clapping for the NHS wasn't superficial? Celebrities singing about how we were all in this together from their luxury mansions wasn't superficial? Spying on your neighbour so you could report them for going for two walks in a day wasn't just pure spite?

Well some teachers taught on line and had to teach their own but others didn't, not their fault of course but the head followed the unions.

I think the most surprising thing people have forgotten is to simply catch a sneeze and cover a cough? Have some ventilation open in a room with lots of sick people in it.

On a Sunday morning I was able to get an Easter egg after my nightshift as they opened up tesco just for NHS staff an hour early - lol, definitely more than just NHS staff there. Bunched up in a crowd waiting at the door for it to open ( I stood off it). Occured to me, the worst idea ever from a spreading covid pov. Risking wiping out the local NHS workforce. Who'd look after the sick if it spread around from that visit?
Disappointed, but not surprised that society appears to have got more selfish, more entitled, far less altruistic since then. The rise of nationalism, anti-imigration ( and integration). Wars popping up here and there.
The experience has taught people nothing. I just learnt that I have residual PTSD around it, though park it in order to carry on with my job. If it were to happen again, I know I would not have it in me for a repeat. Would have to retire early.

What I found the most interesting about Partygate was the lack of fear by those in charge.

Why were they confident enough to break the rules and get together when their whole MO was to terrify the population into complying? I thought Boris was in intensive care due to Covid. Why didn’t he fear it?

Some people are still obviously feeling the effects of covid - either long covid themselves or grieving the loss of someone who died. Those who think it was "just a cold" are determined to ignore all the evidence about long term impacts. Stroke rates are now rising in the middle aged and it's all being blamed on lack of exercise and bad diet, covid increases your risk of blood clots but is conveniently ignored.

What covid taught me was that teaching in this country is pretty crap. Critical thinking is certainly not learnt at school, science teaching clearly left many people ill informed. And that people dont want to think about anything bad even when they might be able to do something to mitigate the effect.

There was, or is, a project asking people what covid was like for them - I submitted something that was balanced - remembered all those people who sewed scrubs for the NHS and shopped for neighbours as well as the bad.

I’m so sorry to hear this. I had meant to include more people engaging with conspiracy theories in my post. I work in mental health and this comes up fairly frequently; it must be so hard seeing your DH immersed in these theories and feel powerless. I hope things improve for you. I would encourage you both to seek therapy if your DH was on board with this, although I can imagine he may not be. A good therapist would be a great support for you and could also unpack what is going on for him. I wish you all the best.

Most of us were trying to work whilst looking after our kids-not just teachers the first lock down was navigated with almost no help from schools.

My DS was left with v bad anxiety, my dear dad was shoved out of a hospital onto a care home. Hardly saw him fot 2 years, by which time dementia had made him forget who I was. DH hates crowds now - has panic attacks.

People took their own lives, lost jobs and businesses.

The world is fucked, there’s a spiralling pandemic of stupidity and gullibility.

People don’t need a pandemic to grasp what’s important in life. They just need some honesty with themselves and exercise some critical thinking. They need to stop trying to keep up with the joneses worry what others think.

Our relationship with DGS will be forever affected by the fact that we were not allowed within 2m of him for the first 6 months of his life, or to touch him at all for the first 12 months. Four years on, he has never spoken to or engaged with either of us, so we all lose out. His DPs were just too frightened of COVID.

One of our neighbours is still shielding, even though she was never in a category that was advised to shield in the first place. She has seen no-one face to face except her DH and occasionally her DD in over 4 years and no longer has any medical or dental care because she feels it is just too risky.

DH spent hours on YouTube during lockdown and is now completely immersed in conspiracy theories of one sort or another to the extent that he has lost almost all of his friends, and his social life, and a lot of freelance work. Our marriage is now hanging by a thread.

There are all sorts of long term effects and I am sure there are others yet to be revealed.

The last two sentences are dead on.

The lesson I took from the pandemic is that the state will, and sometimes has to, designate some people as the can carriers and others as the beneficiaries. There was no way round that during covid, the only question was which groups we wanted to prioritise. As it turns out, the state cared a lot less about my children's welfare and my family's jobs and care than we do.