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

Exactly.

@Mademetoxic This is just my experience, I have friends and family members who are very OCD about germs and their DC have picked up on this which is now becoming an issue. Of course there are those who did not

The world took a few steps backwards before COVID.... around 2016.

Nhs workers did die, but not “many,many”. If you take a look at the ONS figures for specific occupations you will see that more supermarket cashiers died than nurses.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/datasets/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwales/current/reftablesfinal.xlsx
So much rubbish was printed and broadcast, the actual figures make interesting reading in view of the perceived risks people had.
Hospital workers face less risk that care workers because they had greater access to PPE but also because their infection control training was far better. It had nothing to do with masks but so much more to do with basic handwashing.
In hospitals there are handwashing sinks galore, care homes and peoples homes not so many. Washing your hand when you enter a room and washing them before you leave ensures you don’t take bugs in and you don’t take them out. People relied too heavily on the “magic” masks. You are far more likely to contract Covid by touch transfer. Although the virus can be airborne the droplets containing it quickly fall on to surfaces, any surface. Our hands are by far the quickest way to transfer infection both to others and ourselves.

The figures in the table are for 2020 because by December the vaccine was introduced and healthcare workers were prioritised.

It’s easy to believe the media, but I think those that stayed at home were totally unaware just how many people were still working so that the could stay/work from home.

@GoodVibesHere This is so true. While it is important to recognise that some people faced a difficult job by being on the frontline, this does not mean that everyone else was at home making banana bread.

There are millions of others who had to pick up a laptop and learn how to WFH while educating their kids. Without them vital services and companies would not have kept running and the country and economy would have collapsed.

This thread really does me remind me of the good old Pandemic days on MN. Everyone at each other's throats. Seething resentment towards key workers. People going on about sheep.

I am not sure. I think lockdown might have been the lesser of two evils.

At the start COVID was killing people. Young, fit and healthy people. ICU was looking after all ages. Fit healthy people I know got long covid from the first wave and have never recovered.

Lockdown meant that vast swathes of us avoided catching it before the vaccine. It meant that hospitals were never completely overwhelmed and ambulances were still available if we needed them.

At the start there were kids that lost both parents to it, or a grandparent and a parent. All of that grief and trauma would have been far more common.

Death and long term debilitating illness are impossible or harder to fix, whereas the effects of lockdown are easier to fix.

I think both options led to or would have led to trauma and loss.

We could have locked down earlier like NZ and closed the borders I think.

There definitely isn't about hand washing. The amount of people who still don't wash their hands when they go to the toilet says it all.

It's gone but not forgotten, the legacy still lives on especially in some kids and young people who missed a vital part of their education and life experiences. I find that some people are more anxious and that lockdowns certainly exacerbated many mental health problems which the NHS has struggled to cope with. There is more anxiety and OCD about hand washing and cleaning than they would have had pre Covid. Older people in my family are generally more fearful about the world and latch onto things in the news which of course is so sensationalist that it just makes everything seem awful. It has taken my ILs until this year to travel abroad, something they did regularly pre Covid.

I work in an adminstrative role (not NHS) and wasn't furloughed, I worked from home throughout the lockdowns, making the massive adjustment to online ways of working and trying to give a 100% service whilst simultaneously trying to ensure my kids had some sort of education. Not everyone was 'sat on their arses' as you put it. How bloody rude. I worked really, really hard and was proud to maintain high standards of work despite being trapped at home on my laptop meeting with colleagues online, all with two kids whose lives had also been turned upside down.

Nobody clapped for me on a Thursday, or gave me a special badge allowing me to jump queues in supermarkets or get a discount! I just had to get on with it.

I know someone who works for the NHS, in an administrative role. She went to work everyday, but being a 'key worker' meant that her kids were permitted to go to school, she got a discount and early entry to supermarkets etc. and told me she had barely any work to do anyway because there were no routine patients around.

I just checked my NHS app and the first Covid vaccine I had was in March 2021. So not 18 months before the first vaccine?

The pandemic accelerated some good things and brought some bad things. I think those making the decisions did their best based on the information available to them.

The lockdowns were in my view a huge mistake, the impact on young people and children will be felt for decades. The impact of the lockdowns varied as I have heard that some people enjoyed the family time etc. However the mental health of many and the abuse that some people suffered as well as the disproportionate impact on the education of different groups of children will have a life long impact. I held this view during the pandemic and feel more strongly than ever now it was the wrong course of action. I do acknowledge though that the virus was an unknown and therefore the government were struggling.

My daughter did this, on ICU. I think since then the whole staff group has left due to the trauma of it.

It sounded fucking horrific, she’s a very experienced and very resilient HCP and it broke her. She would sit with the dying patients so they weren’t alone and hold their hands and look after them afterwards. But one night there were so many that died so close together that she couldn’t do it for everyone, she was so upset. She felt she’d let everyone down because she couldn’t be there for them.

I’m embarrassed to be associated with that behaviour. I think the support of frontline staff was amazing and really did make a difference to those who were still working in direct contact with the public. It helped some to feel cared about and valued.

But asking for free food isn’t on.

I genuinely think I’m still pretty traumatised by Covid. I had it right at the beginning, as we went into lockdown. I’ve never fully recovered, I had to change job, car, lifestyle, mindset to get where I am now, but I’m better off than many people. I was very healthy and not particularly old (although I suppose that’s relative).

But the job I had couldn’t stop, I was the only person doing it and hundreds of people relied on me doing it, if I wasn’t working at that time there would have been huge, long term repercussions, so I carried on working whilst not being able to speak or breathe properly. Whilst home schooling.

My family are nurses, in ICU (which is probably how I got it) and older people’s care. They were fucked over by the government and their lack of planning / poor decision making.

Experiencing that end of it and having people (I haven’t read the thread but they’re probably already on here), talking about sheep etc was so divisive. I had old friends who got sucked into conspiracy theories, saying it was to do with the new world order, or saying it’s just a cold or just let the vulnerable people die. It was fucking awful, I felt like we were all working our arses off, making ourselves so vulnerable, and people were happy to just throw us under the bus so their life didn’t change.

The flip side (I was thinking about this the other day), there was no litter, there were so many butterflies and being outside felt like a real blessing.

If anything, it taught me that some people are selfish and have a negative impact on the world whereas there are those who make it better, I try and focus on the second group more now.

I didn’t read it as derogatory. I read it as reflecting on how hard it was and that it connected us (me certainly) to how important schools and teachers are in society. I certainly found an even deeper respect for whatever voodoo teachers do to get 30 kids to listen when I couldn’t even get one to!

I read it as a reflection on hard it was and how easy it is to forget that what was hard was not being with people. That we need each other.

In these divided times I think it’s a useful reflection.

That's one of the things that didn't really last, I think.

Also that the immunity provided by all those vaccinations is now wearing off.

I had not caught covid before, then finally succumbed in September this year. It floored me.

A week of a high fever, don't really remember much, off food, lost 6lb.
Two weeks of being so tired I did the school run then went back to sleep.
Then two weeks of a hacking cough and generally feeling cold and down.

I'm generally fit & healthy, a runner, eat well etc. I'm almost back to normal now but it has taken NINE weeks.

I don't think Covid has finished with us yet.

Sadly many happily said where to deliver so yes, they were actually NHS staff.
Yes, pretty sure few were chancers lying.
It calmed down after few months

The frontline thing was very overdone, all the freebies and discounts when they were amongst the few still on a full salary. Not very HCP was in covid wards, plenty doing bugger all in empty departments..

How's about you take a hike?? Or better still just fuck right off???

I was working as a nurse on a 'non covid' ward with vulnerable sick patients. And it was incredibly stressful because if you are able to recall - there was a period of at least 18 months before the first vaccines came in.

Yep - you know what - maybe it is good all those people who didn't furlough and sit around on their asses for months on end were recognised. I include supermarket workers/ambulance drivers/NHS cleaners and everyone else in that too.

Because it wasn't lies. Thousands of fucking people died and the country's economy was fucked
Covid deniers need lining up against a wall and made to watch videos of people dyiing from and living with the effects of covid.
Then force-fed mould sandwiches

The empty roads were just for a couple of days round my way. I was out and about too, for work and caring responsibilities. Lack of rush hour traffic queues was nice but within the week there was a steady traffic flow.

@Safariquery

If that was the intention of OPs post, perhaps they should rethink the highly divisiveness and derogatory comment about parents in the opening. Because it reads like the exact opposite.

I’m NHS staff I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking and in fact didn’t take up discounts because it felt wrong.

I reckon what you had were people pretending to be NHS workers.