To think that life just hasn’t been the same ever since covid

Driving has certainly got worse! The number of people that I see who don't indicate or ignore the rules for roundabouts is extraordinary. I don't remember it being that bad before.

Same. I did get long covid but it’s not just that. I feel like something in society has shifted in a negative way, just can’t put my finger on it…

Late to the party as ever…. to all intents and purposes we are “back to normal’ but to me there’s something missing, I can’t put my finger on it, but it feels like we are living a false ‘normal’. It’s just not quite right, hard to put into words. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who feels that way though.

I noticed that everything is massively more expensive than pre covid.
Brexit and covid were given as reasons for increasing costs and that has only got worst

We came DANGEROUSLY close to it. The infra structure was there. The big red button for this was almost pressed. Doormats were sold which said “welc - wait, are you vaccinated?”

I feel like we're back to normal, but for me and a lot of my friends we stopped trying to people please and accept invitations to things we don't want to go to. I also started a lot more activities and have a better social life doing what I want to do. I hope we never have it again though. I'm more concerned for my DD, she was only small when it happened and it gave her paranoias about the outside and birds (we would have flocks of birds lining up on the fence, staring, looking for food). I wish we could back to just turning up to things, rather than having to book for absolutely everything

Definitely this

Yes I agree it’s not the same.
Crap service everywhere but double the price.

The cost of living has screwed up so many lives. We are now paying more than double for everything compared to pre covid.
But nobody goes mad about this, just immigration. They're here, get over it.
The country is definitely more ignorant and screwed up since brexit and covid.

Nope. Life still happens, the good, the bad and the ugly.

I've been incredibly happy since but also very miserable . It just depends on what's going on. Same with most of my friends /acquaintances.

WFH and the cost of living have definitely changed things hugely.

In 2019 I had just started a new job, the office had tons of new business and everyone was getting bonuses. We would go out every Friday, go out for lunch, have parties. I remember when lockdown was just starting but it wasn't everywhere yet, we were out at a club laughing and saying 'this is probably it then!'

Now everything is WFH and drinks now cost a tenner each. We laughed about how ridiculous it was then, but that WAS the last time we did it.

The UK dodged divisive legislation, but many other countries had laws dividing what you could do depending on being vaccinated or not.

We went to visit extended family in 2021 in a country doing a brilliant impression of 2020. The borders had only re-opened a week earlier. There were different laws on who you could have in your house depending if they'd been vaccinated or not.

Our DCs were young and never offered the vaccine on the NHS (I never saw the risk/ benefit of side effects useful for their age anyway, but moot point). We visited family for the first time in nearly 2 years and had to do a lot of sitting outside in the rain because our children hadn't even had a chance to be vaccinated.

It sticks in your craw a bit to be treated as second class by family. In this case it wasn't even about choice, but by opportinities from poliical priority.

Thank goodness the UK didn't go down that route, but there was a lot of talk about it, and it feels like we came close to it.

I really could not care less about what medical treatment people opt in or out of. I do care about political coercion to accept a new treatment and stiffling about side effects, and that undercurrent did aggravate the social divisions on the matter at a time when it was already very difficult to connect in person.

A young person in our family spent lockdown living in a flat that was being renovated and was covered in scaffolding. This meant no natural light and it really did a number on their mental health. What's frustrating is that they had just clawed their way out of a period of mental illness when this happened.

They're young and we hope that they can do it again but on some level I think it's changed them permanently.

I think you're right. I live alone so it was a very solirary time indeed, but the main differnce was to work. We would never have worked from home but that is now the new norm, 40% in office and 60% time at home. It's also made me permanently wary of crowds, people coughing, and touching things like door handles and hand rails. In society it created a new division between mask wearers and non mask wearers, and between anti-vaxxers and the vaccinated. This still persists now. So i agree with you.

Totally agree with you OP. I’ve thought about this a lot. I think we’re all in some kind of post-traumatic shock state, basically we were all told if we didn’t stay in and be extremely cautious we were gonna die plus food shortage worries and jobs etc
easy to underestimate the effects ,kind of feels like a post war kind of feeling . I think the teenagers are particularly affected. It’s a tough one. It will take time to pass.

I can only speak personally but it was really bad timing for me. I was very lucky in my Covid experience of lockdown.

Before Covid I had had a ASD diagnosis and was doing my best to try to form social groups. Then everything stopped. I normally live alone and wfh two days a week and I’m lonely. Opportunities are not there. Evening classes stopped - not just Covid CoL but it’s incredibly hard to break in and make friends when a lot of people are content with their own little family. I don’t have a partner or children which is another way for friends. Use meet-up but less groups now.

The work place is vastly different. Lots of people wfh, their work ethic has gone out of the window and there's no accountability or pride in doing a good job. Not everyone of course but I've noticed people becoming de-skilled massively. You learn so much from sitting with colleagues. There's no social life going on.

I think people have become insular and entitled. There may be other contributing factors but it is easy to mark life as pre and post covid. As pp have said, some businesses have used it as an excuse for poor service for ever more. There is, in general, a lack of willingness to live in the physical present rather than online, and many seem to have an inbuilt distrust of others, like they’re vying for the last toilet roll at all times.

This was something I noticed with my kids. They were all involved seriously in one thing or another at the time, and many were never picked back up, or only much later. I have never believe in highly scheduling kids but I do feel they were impoverished in some ways.

Another thing that has affected me is that since COVID, my extended family no longer gets together. I haven't seen them all as a group now in years, and it's something I miss very deeply. Mainly this is my maternal side, aunts uncles, and such. They are starting to get older now too and I suspect that we won't ever have another get together like we used to.

Completely agree. I will never have the same faith in things muddling along that I did before, and I seem to have lost the ability to look forward to anything, as if I can't believe that it will definitely happen.

Maybe some of this is age? I wonder how many of us who feel that Covid did permanent damage were late 30s/early 40sish then and are now fully, properly middle-aged? And how many of us had very young children who lost some part of their childhood?

Yep. Because as soon as covid seemed to be easing, it was Ukraine, monkeypox, extreme heat. There has been something on the go ever since, produced like a rabbit out of a hat. It's hard not to believe that somebody is making sure that there is a constant narrative of fear.

I don't agree about harshness, more about the length and the behaviour of those in Downing Street.

This exactly. I am constantly on edge wondering what else we are going to have thrown at us.

It seems like a lifetime ago and a dystopian nightmare
However the world has changed immensely
I feel people have become more insular and do less are less sociable etc in general
in the course of my job I meet and speak to people every day whose mental health has deteriorated in last 5 years
The economic climate has changed
I have long covid/post viral fatigue syndrome or vaccine damage - who knows? But my life has changed beyond belief - I’ve gone from a healthy active 50 something to a shadow of my former shelf

I don’t think it’s just the pandemic, it’s various events and issues and specifically in the U.K. from Brexit onwards.