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

Yes I agree, not sure if it was caused by COVID, but people seem super weird in incidental ways. Nobody used to play their phone on speaker on the train. You could hire nannies easily. Work was much more social, not just trekking in on my 90 minute commute to sit at a row of empty desks on zoom to the rest of the world and the people who can't get childcare or can't be arsed. The days that really bug me are Japan calls in the morning and US calls in the evening.
The other day I had a meeting I'd arranged with a guy who had flown over to London from the US, a range of other people from the London office, and one guy from Brackley who was on Zoom due to no childcare...

I think society has been changing faster than usual since the 90s and what you're noticing about COVID is that the change just continues to accelerate. When I think back to times when there was more community, people spent more time with others and less time using tech/rushing around everywhere all the time. It feels generally worse now, like people might have everything they want but don't have the time/energy to enjoy it. Even people who don't work and have more free time can't enjoy it as life is generally more stressful and people are more hostile. I think it's a combination of factors including bad economy, fractured communities due to both huge levels of immigration and people having to move away from their families to find work, and the increased use of technology every day.

O don’t think people are as genuinely happy but I’m not sure Covid is the problem

I think I feel happier than I was before Covid. I was very stressed and actually appreciated the enforced rest. Things seem to be back to normal now as far as I can see.

People are less social now which I struggle with. I miss after work drinks. WFH isn’t good for everyone. My partner has depression and really struggles with the lack of interaction all day.

I have worked in n a university mental health team for years and post Covid young people have little resilience which isn’t their fault. I will worry about their ability to be in the workplace

We’ve moved towards a more cashless society and more reliant on phones to do basic tasks such as paying for parking tickets etc. My children lost the ability to use physical money as they lost that phase where they would have started by things like ice creams with loose change. Everyone wanted card only.

Having to pre book days out mean it’s harder to be spontaneous. Prices have shot up everywhere meaning we can do less things (unless you save or are well off). Even having to pre book dump runs is a pain as sometimes you just want to get stuff sorted.

There has definitely been a shift. I think people being able to take time out of work and school have made them realise that work is tedious and boring too unless they are in a career they love. It’s changed our collective attitude about it.

I think this is very true

For many people lockdown would have been a very lonely experience, others were probably surprised by how little they missed other people.

To the extent that there has been a change since lockdown, it's probably that the people who were happy with their own company have stopped bothering to go out and socialise.

I agree. I can’t seem to find my happy any more, and it’s definitely since covid.

That’s been going on since I was younger though. I was always asking for a pen! And trust me kids have always been naughty. Yes parents do leave kids to their own devices these days though. No pun intended. The amount of screen time younger kids get is disgusting and why are kids as young as 5 on social media?

There was less than a week, between Covid restrictions being lifted, and most people heaving a sigh of relief, and the war with Russia starting. I remember it being like some sort of weird stress dream. So we ricocheted from lockdown, to the fuel shortage and COL crisis without a breather in between (not to mention how emotionally upsetting it all was / is). Such a wild (and bad) period, historically.

This for me too. I feel much more vulnerable to factors outside my control and I act accordingly, especially around things like savings and job security.

I honestly don’t think people seem as genuinely happy?

I think you are projecting. COVID affected everyone differently not everyone suffered, I know I didn’t. I started saving properly because I couldn’t go anywhere and I was forced to slow down and readdress my work life balance. The lock downs gave me the kick up the backside that I probably wouldn’t have taken otherwise and COVID made me realise that life is short and that I was extremely fortunate.

I’m far happier with the “new normal” 🤷‍♀️

Teaching has become more difficult. Parents are astonishingly aggressive, rude and unsupportive. Their kids have no social skills or manners, and think every interaction is the start of a conversation (‘Actually, Bert, I just want you to sit down so I can teach my lesson, not commence a debate about the affront to your human rights that is me asking you to sit down in the first place.’). Attendance is terrible - I have one class in particular that never seems to have the same kids in at the same time on any one day. It makes progress very difficult, as half the class are always missing the work we did earlier in the week. Behaviour is truly appalling - I think that some kids, for whatever reason, were completely left to their own devices during lockdowns and now simply can’t handle any sort of restriction or even the basic requirements of normal social interaction and school life. Many of them also think it’s my job to provide them with basic equipment. I can’t imagine being in Year 11 and not even bothering to slip a 10p biro into my blazer pocket so I have something to write with, yet it’s now commonplace and speaks volumes about lack of interest in learning. It’s really hard - a constant battle.

I feel we went from a post covid world to a pre war world, and as a result everyone is just unhappy and anxious.

Yeah I feel the same. Everybody is miserable, the costs of living is through the roof, everybody’s on social media I don’t like it.

I had a great time during COVID and many of the things that I discovered then have continued. I live 300 miles away from my family and we now do regular virtual activities which I would never have thought of without COVID.

I think as someone who was an adult before COVID I've at least got a reference point for the time before. I know what sort of life to try and recreate even if that's hard to do.

The people who spent their more formative years in lockdown are the ones I feel really sorry for. I don't think you get a do-over of this time and if they go badly then it can leave you with a lot to unravel later in life.

What I do think has changed are the age group in early twenties. As a line manager I have never had as many issues with staff who can't handle workload and go off sick as they say they "need space". This rarely happened pre Covid.

It's te cost of living that's changed.
I think most people are over covid but people are struggling with paying their bills and funding work.

I think it is a type of depressed disillusionment as we see just how rubbish and self-serving politicians are. Regardless of the outcome of Brexit, it left us aware of how politicians were able to waste tax payers money, lie and divide the public. Then the enriching of government contacts through PPE and the appalling response to managing COVID, where people were shamed and forced into taking an underprepared vaccine whether they wanted it or not, and we knew putting so many on furlough would create a massive economic hole and also create division between those that could stay at home comfortably and those who had to work.
Then politicians with big egos and dangerous toys created yet another war, creating even more financial hardship for the everyday person.
We see COL price rises, yet all of these large energy and utility companies making huge profits.
That’s before the focus on how uncontrolled immigration is wrecking our national identity and increasing all sorts of crime, because politicians are not listening to the people.
It all sticks in the craw, doesn’t it.

Exactly this. The government cried wolf on a massive scale, which dwarfed Tony Blair's legacy of "please believe in my weapons of mass destruction". I will never believe, respect or trust any government again, and I certainly won't believe in any "emergency" or "crisis" that the government tells us about for a long, long time, especially if they use it to impose restrictions. Remember the "emergency alerts" which were a novelty? I am opposed to them as a matter of principle, that they might be misused to impose a future state of fear. If it hadn't been for 2020, I might now be thinking they are a good idea.

The government crossed so many lines which we believed were uncrossable. In one day, they destroyed everything, and then used gaslighting, fearmongering and moving the goalposts to prolong lockdowns way beyond anything we could have imagined, throwing in increasingly absurd measures like taping up park benches (all that plastic waste). Nobody in government had the guts to say "actually, things are not as bad as we thought, lockdowns are doing more harm than good, and we don't want a second wave to happen in winter." They felt they had to maintain the myth "you will kill Granny if you enjoy yourselves at all". It seemed that between England, Scotland and Wales, there was a kind of competition to impose as much misery as they could.

And while we might be back to a "kind of normal" now, with a few remnants of "social distancing" signs still in place, there is still the Sword of Damocles hanging over us: all this could happen again. NONE of lockdown's cheerleaders have admitted to the multiple harms it caused, they're all saying "because of the pandemic". Although people are saying they probably wouldn't obey another lockdown because of Partygate (which was a useful deflection: the real scandal was not the parties, but the absurd rules, which the government knew were absurd; they were not worried about killing their grannies), I don't think it would take much fearmongering, possibly about a totally different threat, for the public to be pleading for lockdowns and state handouts again. The precedent of the government "saving them" has been set.

Yes, there was a virus. Yes, it probably killed people. But lockdown killed people as well. The "cure" was much, much worse than the virus, and I am now far more terrified of what future governments might do than any virus. I have not forgotten that the party which is now in power had NOT A SINGLE WORD to say about the harms of lockdowns: all they had to say was that lockdowns didn't go far enough, and they opposed easing of restrictions at every turn. They are having to deal with a huge financial mess, and they are keeping very quiet about how some of that was due to the lockdowns which they cheered on.

And I think that one massive change is that some people, including myself, are much more sceptical than before. It was obvious that the government was choosing carefully which scientists they allowed to speak and back up the cause of lockdown; any who dared to speak against lockdowns were silenced. You could watch BBC interviewers cutting people off if there was any hint of them deviating from the official narrative. I now do not believe anything I hear on the news; indeed, I avoid news at all, because now, I am much more aware that only one side of the argument is always presented. The people often referred to as "conspiracy theorists" are now feeling more justified than ever before. I myself attended several of the anti-lockdown marches. The BBC (the government's telescreen) either did not report on these at all, or said "a couple of hundred conspiracy theorists on Speaker's Corner". One march was about forty people wide, and literally miles long. I know, because I saw it with my own eyes. Easily hundreds of thousands of people, and not "conspiracy theorists", but ordinary people concerned for the future of their children, and what future governments might do to them.

I don’t see any difference but I didn’t notice much dusting Covid. I’m still bitter I was forced to work while my colleagues sat at home getting paid for nothing.

I don’t find that Al all! Can you give examples?

I totally agree with this.

I actually agree with the OP. It changed my work life for the worse.
Ive also went through some personal grief stuff, not directly related to lockdowns etc but it does muddy the waters and then I get in a whole “well if lockdown didn’t happen, then this other shitty thing would never have happened”