SIL still isolating due to covid risk

It is a mental health disorder when there is no underlying physical health reason to live like this -

if she was willing to explore this perspective and start to work on her disorder she would need to speak to her GP and / or self refer to her local NHS talking therapies provider

if she is unwilling to engage with this,
I would be supporting your DB to see how he may be accommodating/ colluding with this inadvertently by supporting her to live in this disordered manner

if he starts to untangle himself from this as an unacceptable way to live with someone that can start to prompt change / shifts

that is a tricky dynamic to unravel and he would probably benefit from his own counselling to manage that

So by your own admission the best way to get rid of Long Covid is to ignore it and crack on with life?

Actually, catching it, feeling rough for a few days and a bit wobbly for a few days more, before making a complete recovery might be helpful, as her worst fears would be realised and yet she would have lived to tell the tale. However, I expect that her anxiety would just transfer to something else instead.

I'd find her terribly frustrating. Two of my family members suffer from MS and one of them is so seriously debilitated by it that they now can't make any independent movement at all for themselves.

However, they've now had Covid three or four times - they live in a house with children who were at primary age when Covid was really raging. Fortunately, they suffered no long-term ill-effects and although classed as very vulnerable, just live their lives as normally as the MS permits, without requesting any special accommodations for themselves or from others. I think this is because their life is so terribly restricted anyway that any further restrictions would quite literally make it intolerable.

It's very hard to hear of a healthy young woman cloistering herself away just in case she catches Covid or develops long Covid. I think I'd be tempted to tell her that if she ever becomes really ill with a terminal or life-limiting illness, she'll regret every precious minute that she's so stupidly and selfishly wasted. And I doubt that I would be able to do it very nicely either!

This is an excellent suggestion. I started doing this due to my risk of getting gum disease, and it definitely helps to stave off other types of infections from getting established. My mum was an opera singer, they all use steam and mouthwash to avoid getting infections.

I recommend going to Savers to get the non-brand "corsodyl" with chlorhexidine (the exact same active ingredient for a fraction of the price).

Do you think covid was just a common cold

While I have every sympathy for your illness, I’m not sure never leaving the house is an alternative I’d choose, given long COVID is statistically unlikely.

Would you honestly prefer to live like a recluse, never seeing friends and family outside your immediate family?

Gov triggered mental issues in many people- insane to think about how much brain wash, fear p*rn and propaganda was pushed around for a common cold virus strain.

This is very sad, you can only really support your brother.

No way to live though.

@Calliopespa

It's the idea of people who don't know someone would be decreeing they can't be happy or their life is not worthwhile that I object to.
It wouldn't be a lifestyle that would satisfy me, but I'm not smug enough to think my choices should apply to everyone.

It doesn't matter what I think and its not about "my choices". Living with this amount of isolation is widely acknowledged to be disastrous for people's mental health: there's tons of studies that show this. Leaving aside the question of what it does to their friends and families, which you're putting to one side, so I will too.

Look, to be clear, I'm not talking about forcing her to do anything she doesn't want to do or judging her to her face. But I think spinning this as a morally neutral lifestyle choice which people should tolerate is just denial. It's a highly self-destructive way to behave. And it matters because so many more people are choosing to live this way than they were historically.

Sad to read that your DC have to all intents and purposes lost their aunt.

Wearing a mask when out, reasonable and I see that from time to time. Avoiding crowded places such as the theatre maybe.

I think help is needed and your DB needs to be facing up to this issue as well.

I can emphasise with her, the government and the world lied to us about covid,it was underplayed, led to thousands of deaths, its still rampant and causing serious illness, I don't trust anyone but myself to take proper precautions now and I try to look after myself as best i can even if that's restricting, I avoid people as much as I can and feel very uncomfortable in crowded places and around coughs and sneezes.

DB had to stop enabling this behaviour. No more masks and sleeping in spare room. He shouldn’t curtail his and the children’s activities. How does she cope with them going to school etc?

he has to either take her to the GP or inform her Gp of how unwell she is.

this is not normal - this is severe anxiety that is off the scale and can be treated.

it is impacting on her, his and the children’s lives.

he has to do something urgently to get her to accept that she needs help.

mentally ill people often can’t see for themselves the issue and so even though she doesn’t appreciate it now - she needs him to find a way to get help to her.

CMHT have home treatment teams for exactly this sort of situation and he needs to contact gp / CMHT to get help for her.

As someone with long COVID since 2022, a chronic illness and a DC in long term recovery from a condition who is relying on me solely for her care I salute SIL. Despite us also being extremely careful my DH brought a “minor cold” home 3 weeks ago was ill for 2 days. His cold was actually Covid Dd2 was violently ill for a few days but Dd1 and I who are more vulnerable are still really ill I can’t breathe properly and I’m so exhausted I can hardly move for hours after looking after Dd1 who can barely swallow. We are both still curled up on the sofa on our pjs after 3 weeks.

This is no way to live. Yet also as a society the way we completely ignore the risks of Covid and have moved to ‘it’s over’, when in fact it continues to be a highly dangerous and contagious illness that has caused many thousands of people to become disabled is astounding. I think that the massive increase in disability bill is likely related to the huge incidence of long covid (the fact the increase in disability benefits has been towards the same group of ppl - reproductive age women - as most likely to be impacted by LC is also an indication this is true).

Your friend is taking the precautions she feels are necessary. I know a few similar people and while I don’t agree with their approach, I keep my opinions to myself because they do have a point.

Based on everything you have shared so far, I would be supporting my DB and asking him to consider how he sees his future. Does he want to have DC, visit other countries, get a pet….because SIL is not interested in changing her situation and it will no doubt impact their marriage. Id be focussed on helping him open his eyes and confronting this.

I'm pretty sure I had Covid (again) late July to early August. Lasted about 2 weeks for the worst of it, but 3 weeks to feel completely well. Started as very sore throat, almost instant sinus infection, no taste/smell for three weeks, would start to feel better then be exhausted and barely able to function. I'm trying not to get anxious about the kids going back to school as it seems we all get sick almost monthly. I totally understand how one can get into a loop of isolation.

But I already added a proviso about her DH and said I think that sets this case aside somewhat. And she doesn't have children so that's a whole different set of facts.

It's the idea of people who don't know someone would be decreeing they can't be happy or their life is not worthwhile that I object to.

It wouldn't be a lifestyle that would satisfy me, but I'm not smug enough to think my choices should apply to everyone.

I think the evidence actually shows that it is most likely in women aged 20-50, so if reproductive age. I have two female relatives (25 and 42) with long covid.

How awful that she’s wasting her life like this. I developed an autoimmune disease after contracting Epstein-Barr as a child. My life has been severely impacted as a result and I have lived this way for 30 years now. I function due to a large amount of medication. I will never be ‘well’ but I live the absolute best I can because you get one go at life.
It was just one of those things. People catch what I had and don’t develop problems. Same with covid. Life is for living, you never know what might happen so you’ve just got to enjoy it while you can.

I'm sorry you're going through that, but the risk of that happening isn't proportionate to the OP's SIL's behaviour. Most people who catch Covid don't get long Covid. Most people who leave their house to meet with friends etc don't catch Covid at all.

OP, it sounds like your SIL has developed an extreme OCD/anxiety issue around catching Covid. She needs mental health support.

@Calliopespa

But why do we have to dictate what others do if they are genuinely happy with what they are doing? In this instance to me the problematic issue is that her DH seems affected by it. But were that not the case, so what, why not?

Because it impacts on other people. The DH is clearly impacted by it (and seems to have the patience of a saint but may not do indefinitely). If there were children involved it would be extremely damaging to them. I think people who have children have an obligation not to allow this sort of neurosis to impact on them. (I can't tell if that's the case here or not - it would be really shocking if she was doing this and she did have children). This sort of social neurosis doesn't happen in a vacuum: it has a huge negative impact on all the people close to the person.

There's a separate but related question about whether one can be "genuinely happy" living with this level of paranoia and isolation. Of course this woman should be free to live like this if she chooses to: I would never force her to put herself into contact she didn't want. But the answer to the "why shouldn't she live like this?" is that we don't want people to think this is normal. It's not.

I don't take as hardline a position on Long COVID as @Everanewbie as I know people who are affected by it and I know it can be debilitating. But I think at its most extreme level, that kind of obsessive health anxiety becomes a kind of self-indulgence.

At some point people like this need to be faced with a choice: you can carry on living like this and risk losing your family and friends or you can make hard choices and try to deal with your fears. It's not possible or fair to expect other people to endlessly indulge this stuff.

Close us down you mean?

Our experiences are entirely typical but you, like everyone else in the world including health people like to pretend it doesn’t exist.

3m on PIP due to LC. Is their experience not typical either? What makes you such an expert?

I don't have long covid, but I have sufficient respect for those who do to find the words "indulge", "sob stories" and "claim" unkind and condescending.

And I'm not really sure why it's an irrelevant consideration because the lady doesn't currently have it. On one view that would make the precaution all a bit late?

Long Covid is real. And like concussion and brain injury, probably an invisible illness that those people who have had the fortune not to suffer won't truly understand.

Having said this, it is hard to keep going but it's imperative to live life as full as possible. I was going through hell at times after my head injury, and to be honest, if I had the misfortune of having Long Covid too and it had been just ad debilitating, I know its impact on my life would have been dreadful.

But it's been a "good" thing in some ways being injured as it's definitely made me feel a lot more appreciative of the good health and well days I have.