@Calliopespa The reaction to COVID and the hysteria affected me badly. Given my health condition, the messaging scared me to the point where in March/April 2020 I would have near panic attacks going into shops. I genuinely believed we were entering a bubonic plague scenario and therefore the government was not being extreme enough. To me, riding your bike was stupid, if you fell off you'd be taking the bed o someone who had COVID.
Things slowly changed for me as the months went by. I had written off the older members of my family and assumed that they wouldn't be strong enough to survive. Then my husbands 88 year old Alzheimer's suffering grandmother in a care home contracted COVID, and she suffered a cough and a stuffy nose. Then I started reading and interpreting data that didn't seem to match the doom press conferences we watched. Then I saw cases fall to the hundreds, and deaths to single numbers. And yet, here we were, economy stopped, shops and pubs closed, making banana bread still with no normality in sight. To add to this I saw that deaths "of COVID" were actually deaths "with" COVID, and that at times of high prevalence, deaths figures were massively overstated. I started to see that COVID was nasty, but no where near nasty enough to warrant what we had done, and I felt lied to and gaslit by the government. I knew no one that had had COVID any worse than a bad case of flu. Bed for a week was the worst. My extended networks are large, work, partners work, family, friends, acquaintances through hobbies. Plus the reality in clinical settings according to my husband just weren't equating to what we were hearing on the news.
Lockdown 2 and 3 were particularly difficult for me. Despite the arrival of vaccines we were still in this loop, and it felt like we'd never see light again. I wasn't allowed to practice my outdoor hobby, although dog walkers and bike riders were free to enjoy the land I was paying for through my memberships.
The goal posts kept shifting. Normality by Christmas. Until the elderly are jabbed. Until everyone is jabbed. Christmas freed. No, Christmas lockdown! Freedom by the daffodils, no tulips, no after everyone is jabbed. Brief freedom, then masks are back, another Christmas Lockdown averted mainly down to Rishi Sunak, but it was close. Scotland shut hospitality for the Omicron cold, legislation renewed.
I suffered with insomnia and a kind of malaise that almost saw me lose my job. I saw no light at the end of the tunnel for a normal, purposeful life, and I felt like there was nothing I could do about it. I wanted to attend the protest marches, break stuff, and show my anger, but my husband has a very high up job in the NHS and I didn't want to draw attention to him with my actions. I contemplated suicide, but thankfully I had good people I could talk to.
Perhaps the most senseless part was the illness and passing of my husbands other grandmother. 98 years old and we only saw her through the window on her 98th birthday. The only time in 18 months. For her safety. Who were we protecting? She died in May 2021 I deeply regret our stupidity for listening to that rubbish rather than keep an aging dying woman company in her last few months.
It was an awful period where scare tactics were used to enforce compliance. I am confident that long-COVID paranoia is a far greater disease the the post-viral syndrome often deemed "Long-COVID". People are free to choose their paths, but they will be subjected to scruitny. And yes, I find it hard to keep quiet when I see examples of peoples unwarranted paranoia affecting and influencing the quality of life of others.