Sad that the pandemic didn't make us better

I think it’s because everything is a bit rubbish for so many people at the moment. People are working hard and scraping by. Employers are squeezing the life out of staff. The 9 to 5 with an hour for lunch has morphed into 8.30 to 6 with 10 minutes to shovel in a sandwich if you’re lucky.

Customer service has nose dived. It’s very difficult to get health appointments and when you do, so many services treat you like an inconvenience.

I do my best to go above and beyond for customers because I know how rubbish it is to go into a shop and get grunted at. I offered to help an old lady with her shopping bags yesterday on the way home. It’s not hard. It can be done but there are a lot of selfish idiots out there.

I have noticed this too. Post-COVID19 era SUCKS. Everyone is even more out for themselves, absolutely no sense of community, patience or compassion for others. It is rather bleak. On top of that, I still feel a lot of businesses even are blaming COVID (still) for shoddy or limited service.

No.

The Conservative Party was our government. It was their job to manage the pandemic in accordance with their information and their emergency planning. They made the rules. They gave the police authority to enforce the rules.

But instead of leading us through this, they fleeced us, lined the pockets of their friends and families and repeatedly broke the laws they made. Ultimately, they broke the social contract.😟

This lockdowns were the result of public demand nonsense is yet another attempt to shift the blame and gaslight the country. Again!🤨

The Tory government ballsed up the UKs Covid response because they were lazy, ineffectual liars and shysters. Not because of anything the public demanded🙄 or needed.

We weren’t “a bit duped” by lockdown.
We were TOTALLY FUCKING CONNED, and they laughed at us for good measure.

I think even without Partygate, people had had enough by the second and third lockdowns, as they kept moving the goalposts and screaming about “variants”, and bullying people into taking the vaccine, by strongly hinting that those who refused would be societal outcasts. And yes, I do think it was bullying.

I sometimes wonder how different things might have been if they had stopped at one lockdown, and if Partygate hadn’t happened. peopWe might still be having seasonal mask mandates.

As for who was in government: if it had been someone who looked and sounded “sensible” than the clown Boris, such as Theresa May, it might have been different. (Yes I know, her decisions were questionable, but she didn’t clown around.) However, if it had been Sir Tony Bliar telling us what to do, grinning like a snake and making himself even richer than he did under the Blair Rich project, I think I would have disobeyed him on principle from the very start.

Also, people become weary of the “nanny state” if it is overdone. Tony Blair’s government brought in vast reams of health and safety legislation, and was always preaching and moralising about something or other, such as using cars less (while he was chauffeured everywhere, and two Jags Prescott), so Boris’s briefings reminded some of us about this.

There's a lot of me me me these days, but there are plenty of good people still here. Love is often quiet little acts of kindness in the every day but hate is loud so we hear more about it.

People seemed to lse their ability to think for themselves.
And other people wearing masks was hell for those of us who can't hear properly and need to lipread a bit.

@LlynTegid but he didn't soley order that did he.

But I'd love to know who did

For being shit and expensive.

A lot of people suffered trauma, loss and ill-health. Young people missed out on education and formative experiences. The economic consequences - combined with Brexit, etc - have made life a lot worse for large sections of the population. Crime has increased as a result.

It was overall a very negative event and expecting a very negative event to have a positive impact on our society as a whole is a bit naive. I know there were some people who enjoyed the lockdowns and love to witter on about birdsong and so on, which tends to obscure the reality - which is that there was a huge amount of suffering, loss, expense and social damage, and we will pay the price for generations.

A cultural expectation of mask wearing, which is what would happen if it caught on sufficiently, fucks over people who struggle to wear them. This is neither smart nor considerate. It's not morally better to prioritise people who benefit from more mask wearing than it is to prioritise those who are fucked over by it, or vice versa. It's simply a personal preference.

Also not a great idea to make it public business what other people wear on their faces. That's one reason people now think they're entitled to comment on someone else's personal choice to wear a mask. That sort of attitude, once switched on, doesn't necessarily switch off when we want it to. Naturally, the sort of people who think it's their business what other people wear on their faces are more likely to focus on the easier targets.

An excuse for what?

Same.

I was annoyed the moment the distancing rule was dropped and people went back to being so unnecessarily close in shops. Groups still went back to taking up the pavements and pretending they’re the only people walking about. People still coughing and sneezing into their hands as if a pandemic didn’t happen.

I never for a second thought any of this was going to happen, so don't feel particularly sad about it no. I do feel sad about some of the entirely foreseeable downstream effects of a pandemic and lockdown, which is not the same thing.

👏
also it exposed how utterly un prepared we were, if LA public health departments hadn’t been decimated we would have had a much more effective test&trace local systems in place, we also had I believe one of the lowest numbers of intensive care beds in Europe which was another fallout of from the austerity implemented purely for ideological reasons by the conservative government combined with having a Prime Minister who was lazy incompetent grifting shyster fuckwit along with a lot of the cabinet, so many people suffered such immeasurable harm so many of those in supposed charge should be in fucking prison & held responsible for the billions of public money wasted.
im sad that the country seems so fragmented & support for Reform really does frighten me not helped by being aided & abetted by what appears to be a lot of the media & the hatred of the Labour government, so little of the good things they have done appears to be ignored although I’m disappointed in the handling of the proposed benefit cuts.
Am also shocked at times at the sheer bile & viciousness of the threads on MN bashing benefit claimants/social housing etc etc.

The economic consequences have made life a lot worse for a lot of people. Tax rises, inflation, cost of living crisis, crap customer service everywhere. Also having to pre-book everything, later check in and earlier check out times remaining in hotels/holiday lets, etc., So much of the crap stuff arising from Covid lockdowns has remained with us.

After a fuckwit on here told me that my child, who was in an absolute mental health mess, had a "good chance to learn resilience" from this - my tolerance for being "good" and doing the "right thing" broke. It's not come back because I've seen how quickly people will throw my kids' futures under the bus and I don't like it one bit.

Oh yeah and the hate directed against those who struggled massively wearing masks - people would have tied those up to burn them at the stake quite willingly, removed provision for healthcare from them, banned them from ever leaving their houses and quite probably taken their houses away as well.

So yeah - the pandemic showed me exactly how fucking evil the performative good guys really were and how rotten at the core the pan banging, rainbows and "thank you NHS" shite was.

I don't know why you would expect any different. Hardship, isolation and fear generally do not make people behave better. Material comfort, security and physical connection, that's what your population needs if you want them to be nice to each other. Locking them in their houses and taking all their money off them when they do finally come out isn't going to cut it.

I don’t understand why you would think that people would become better.

The people in power did what they wanted (partied etc) and did terrible things like give away billions to their mates who didn’t have to deliver because pandemics are emergency circumstances and us muggins taxpayers will be paying for it for decades while the people who made those decisions will never be held accountable.

People only care about themselves and their loved ones. Some will extend that care to people outside their circle and that’s the best that we can hope for.

Hmm... maybe but the lockdowns were a result of them responding to public demand surely? They didn't sincerely believe they were needed so of course they didn't think twice about flauting them. I think it's a double standard to the public to them complain

Absolutely agree with this.

That in my view is manslaughter or even murder, hence my comment about Boris Johnson and why if I accepted the death penalty (I don't and never have) I would be happy to see him hang.

I think it exposed a lot of lies and made us question those in authority - the video of those actors (people) falling down dead in the streets from a deadly virus, told crap about masks and stupid rules like 'you can swim in the sea as long as you're at least two metres away from the next person', the Conservatives holding parties, when no one else could, etc.

The doubt is always there now. We don't know who to trust, so we've gone into a kind of survival mode.

So much time was spent on line. People went down conspiracy rabbit holes and didnt come back.

The government broke the law and their actions were excused and minimised by their supporters. They really didnt get why the "ambushed by a cake" and "eye tests 100s of miles away" shite was so insulting and painful to a public suffering illness and bereavement alone.

The Tories lied, lied, and lied again and bankrupted the country. They broke the social contract.

Tbh it’s not that unexpected. It was a time when individualism and othering was highly encouraged and promoted. Spying and reporting on neighbours, calls of “bring in the army”, “save granny you murderous cunt!” and the flip side of “I don’t wanna… stay home/wear a mask/deal with my kids “. With millions caught in the middle , stuck in poverty, misery, mental health crisis , abuse etc. Those millions also being shut down by either side , “I’m alright Jack”.

The performative clapping and pot banging was just circus for the masses . Extra added entertainment for performative clapping, judging her next door for not clapping, and him three doors down thinking he’s so righteous and not clapping on principle, while the kid across the street died in the night.

What exactly about the pandemic was supposed to bring us together or make us better people?

I didn’t clap for the NHS during the pandemic. I did my bit by observing the rules so as not to burden the hospitals any further.

The clapping seemed like a twee attempt by Bojo to get a photo opportunity.