To miss the first lockdown?

And? Legitimately one can dispute the rose tinted sentimentality that op is reminiscing
is it her experience,yes? Is tone deaf? Yes
It's a bit like in a recession observing how marvellous it is as you are solvent and unaffected

I guess that it depends on the disability.

DH wore hearing aids and his eyes were deteriorating. He needed a cataract op which - of course - he couldn't get during lockdown. He couldn't use tablets, etc to communicate with his family.

He developed a couple of additional health problems on top of his stroke-caused hemiparesis and I kept being asked to send in pictures electronically. The surgery would tell me to get the district nurse to examine one of the problems. The DN would say that the doctor needed to see.

The Doctor would look at the picture and tell the DN to look. In the end, we managed to book a GP visit for a week ahead. By the time the GP arrived,
my husband was on the floor waiting for an ambulance which took about 8 hrs to get here.

He survived hospital, but had to be taken off some of his heart meds because of his kidneys.

He died of a heart attack at home. I'll not go through all that - it genuinely is too traumatic - but when 'help' eventually got here, I had a house swarming with people in white suits and masks and didn't realise that some of them were police officers here to investigate the "unexpected death" of an elderly man with multiple health conditions because he'd had the temerity to die of a heart attack during the night at home instead of in a hospital.

Only when they were able to speak to our GP in the morning, would they believe that he was "under the care of a doctor".

I wasn't the only widow who experienced that. Very similar happened to another woman in nearby village. Her husband had terminal cancer and she had the same debacle, in spite of the fact that their GP had come in and certified the death.

The undertaker had already removed the body. The police entered her house and told her that she had no right to do that. (Nonsense, of course.)

The police seemed to think that they'd had an outbreak of carers murdering their patients.

We had about four months of the first main set of restrictions, then the four weeks in November 2020.

I am convinced that prompt action from a vaguely competent and not lazy Prime Minister and government, and nothing as stupid as eat inside to help spread the virus, it could have been no more than three months to start with, then two or at most three weeks in late September 2020. Schools could have resumed at least part-time in the summer term as well.

We would have had the good things, such as embedding wfh/hybrid working for more people and a period of quiet traffic, and still reduced the impact on hospitals as was the purpose of the restrictions. With much less impact on people's well being and mental health.

If a scandal breaks that the “crying nurses” on the news were actors (and there was no shortage of actors), I will not be surprised AT ALL..

It's weird isnt it how everyone had different experiences of the same thing. I know plenty people who broke the rules in some way or plenty people who werent deeply affected by the rules or found ways to make things better. For some the rules made things a misery.

At the time, it's what my world was reduced to. All my external routines were removed. There was no escapism- TV and radio were so maudlin. Even reading something normally light like Harry Potter was depressingly realistic when Umbridge bans all the clubs and societies!

I wasn't free to fill the gaping void with new commitments because of the DCs.

What I needed was people and they were put out of reach. Friends were going through their own tough times, often the very opposite of mine; several working their guts out for the NHS. I couldn't travel across counties to see family, and they'd been terrified into submission anyway. After a couple of months there was nothing to connect over: nice weather, been for a walk, children sobbing over "home learning" yet again. And repeat.

MN was my cry out into the void that all was not OK, sometimes about my world but often about others struggling in a vast range of circumstances far more damaging than my own, and while my thoughts went down like a bucket of sick at the time, it was better than risking being pilloried in my own community for resisting.

I have got back out into the real world and picked up my life, but so much of that was not permitted until at least July 2021 when most restrictions eased. Some aspects of life took even longer as social confidence of organisations was so fragile. Things didn't really look normal until into 2022, then I was hit by a string of bereavements through the year.

Life has evolved on, but like certain dates trigger old griefs, there are some things that stir up old emotions of dark times. It doesn't rule my life, but I think it would still be very dangerous to forget the range of costs to those political decisions and what happens when people are propagandaed into obedient submission.

They moved the oncology dept to a different hospital but didn't tell the patients and it seems "some" patients were forgotten about. Typical NHS admin incompetence. Nothing to do with Govt directives as there was never a directive to stop chemotherapy - it was the oncology management/admins who were probably too busy WFH making bread to do their jobs properly!

I'm 50/50 on it, I did enjoy the fact that non-essential stuff stopped; I didn't have to try and find polite excuses to get out of stuff that meant nothing to me.

However, I have always exercised outside and liked my own space. The first lockdown meant outside spaces were very busy, and there was always someone at home, and I got little or no time to myself, and I found it stifling, especially since I was still working in a job which also revolved around people. So strangely, whilst some felt isolated, it had the polar opposite effect on me.

Yes there are some very sick horrible people in this world who jump on an 'opportunity' to do terrible things.

you are missing the point.

You can't challenge what someone experienced or felt. You don't get to disagree and say "no, you didn't have a good time, your memories are not correct".

You can present your feelings, but it would be like me telling posters that they are making things up, it wasn't as bad as they pretended, and they are being dramatic for no reason. You CANNOT tell people how they felt or what their experience was. It has nothing to do with you.

Some people used it to beat and kill children
Arthur was killed in.lockdown.
They took advantage of the fact he wasn't in school.
There were a couple of other children too.

it’s about reading the room
but when you START a thread, you are literally creating the room. Audience comes in when they wish.

If people find it triggering, then they don't go in?

It's ridiculous to complain it's insensitive and everybody should have a horrible memory. A forum is literally designed so you can gather and chat with similar people.

Coming to say you had awful memories? Absolutely fine. You know you will be surrounded by posters who didn't.

Coming to say you shouldn't start a thread? Not acceptable or reasonable.
It's just moaning for the sake of moaning.

@taxguru blimey that is so bad I’m so sorry - I did know that certain procedures were totally cancelled but thinking about it I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be chemo -

It was mismanagement/admin failures at the hospital. When OH finally started chemotherapy, the nurses couldn't understand why there had been such a delay and said they'd been giving chemotherapy to cancer patients throughout the lockdown.

Not a doctor, but I imagine an "important medical procedure" takes quite a lot longer to perform than making a Tik Tok video.

A certain percentage lost loved ones or a business - a percentage didnt but still had a very difficult time, a percentage didnt particularly enjoy it but just got on with it, and a certain percentage enjoyed their life during lockdown. It's a very varied thing. OP can look back and miss her life during that specific period. It's not that she wants other people to suffer.

This is simply a me me fuck the rest of you sentiment Tone deaf & insensitive
The lockdown was to manage a pandemic and protect public

Some of you seem to have had a jolly time. Your needs met by retail workers and delivery apps ,whilst remaining on full pay at home. Outgoings significantly reduced. No travel,no work related expenses,no nursery fees. Apparently having a great ole time and now fondly reminiscing about lockdown.

tone deaf and insensitive

What about the members of the silent generation (and before) who spoke fondly of their experiences of World War 2? Maybe someone should have reminded them about all those people who were dying while they rubbed Bisto on their legs, knitted fair isle cardigans and went to dances. Oh, hold on a minute - I think they probably knew. They somehow managed to cling on to small pleasures while the world fell apart. They spoke of community and camaraderie and pulling together. They certainly didn’t want another war or for more people to suffer. And their memories were just as valid as anyone else’s. Maybe it’s too soon for some people to accept that lockdown wasn’t awful for everyone. Maybe it’s still too raw. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be discussed. Anyone who is adversely affected by such a discussion might be better not taking part, instead of invalidating other people’s experiences and making them out to be either naive fools or uncaring psychopaths. Plenty of people have managed to come on here and say lockdown was terrible for them without resorting to criticising others.

@Berlinlover - I understand completely what you’re saying. It was wrong that preference was given to treating Covid patients over all others. The reality is it wasn’t oncologists or radiologists or GP’s or gastroenterologists in the critical care wards or ER’s. It was wrong that people are still dying because their medical care was sidelined during Covid without a valid reason. It actually made me angry seeing all the NHS nurses dancing on tik tok because in Australia we knew that patients (without Covid) were being sidelined.

In my country I was aware that my State government actually had a protocol for triaging Covid patients and it was actually scary. Without going too far into the protocol - if the ER’s got overwhelmed not everyone was going to be treated - meaning they were going to let certain people die. It never came to that and medical services (including cancer services) weren’t interrupted. I even had two surgeries during this time.

It was the most stressful time of my now 21 years in retail.

• Working 8 hour shifts with barely any break when the panic buying started
• Given lots of abuse as we was then out of stock
• When we had to put the screens up round the tills, stickers on the floor and have one in one out, customers treating us like we had personally made the rules
• Customers being nasty over NHS staff getting discounts (I’m not saying they didn’t deserve it, but that was nothing to do with us)

Er yes that’s how a debate works?

One person makes their case, another challenges it.

Peoples “experiences and feelings” are just that and mine are as valid or invalid as the OPs. The OP doesn’t have primacy around her views.

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/02/covid-19-increased-use-of-ai-here-s-why-its-here-to-stay/

Quite a few articles that come up in Google searches have been retracted for some reason. I suspect because it would disturb people to know that social policy was being shaped in part by AI.

Are you talking about the likes of the fake news that did the rounds on social media?

Difficult to find direct evidence of AI generated misinformation etc because it wasn't identifying itself as such.

But if you (ironically) ask Google about the subject, the AI bit at the top is quite illuminating.

There were things I liked about lock down. I had a little baby and I liked that we weren’t obligated to have relatives hold him all the time. He got his first flu at the start of lockdown because of his sick cousin and his Aunt hiding her kid was sick and exposing my baby and later saying “he’s going to get sick later anyway”. I was so so angry. He was only weeks old!

I didn’t like not being able to buy him clothes due to supply chain issues.

My State locked down completely. Overseas visitors had to quarantine for two weeks and people weren’t allowed to even travel in from other States.

Because of this our lockdown wasn’t as long as a lot of other places. We had zero community transmission so we were allowed to go out to pubs and restaurants. We weren’t allowed to travel overseas for no reason. Or travel around our own State.

People didn’t like being forced to stay home so they would go out to ovals and public parks and just play! Apparently crime went down and the Police occupied their time by driving around parks and ovals to ensure people were social distancing.

What I didn’t appreciate was being forced to vaccinate. I’ve developed a severe illness which I attribute to the vaccine where my body randomly attacks itself. It’s not an autoimmune disease. It’s not a histamine response. My body decides it’s randomly allergic and reacts accordingly.