If you think the world has gone bonkers, how will this period be judged?

[Daffodil101]

To be clear, this is a thread for people who think the works has gone bonkers.

How will we look back on this? How will history judge it?

My feeling is something about the lack of consideration for children. I think we will look back and think that children’s needs were overlooked, their education and mental health was affected by adult hysteria.

They couldn’t meet their peers, schools were so worried about having them back that they treated them like dirty, walking viruses, talked about them in bubbles and wanted them to play inside hoops.

Also something about utterly bonkers behaviour with no scientific basis, however willing to argue on social media that we were right ‘just because’ and reflection on the government’s own goal in use of the word ‘safe.’

Is it true that NI are allowed to meet outdoors in groups of six now?

A sentence I never thought I’d write!

in the words of Charles Dickens "It was the best of times and the worst of times"

@bookworm14 the right to meet friends is actually one of the articles of the United Nations Rights of the Child.

As is the right to go to school.

Mine is an only too and very lonely despite lots of chat over games. It's very damaging.

I'n going to resort to my history degrees & basically say "Yes everyone will think we meant a bit mad"

EdwinaMay

“People are tough and resilient.”

Not sure about that.

Ah but ‘they are being educated’ you know!

I also think we are quite fortunate that we are easing lockdown measures at a time of the year when it is generally easier to meet outdoors, where the risk of transmission is reduced I believe. Can you imagine if we had to do this at a time of year where going to visit relatives would mean standing in their garden in horizontal sleet !

Agree with what many others have said about the dismissive attitude to children and young people. I think the response to Coronavirus will be seen as part of a pattern of generational injustice that also includes Brexit and the intransigence around climate change. I hope one positive consequence of this might be some kind of political awakening in the young people whose futures have been blighted by the constant need to pacify older voters. The historical norm of each generation handing over the reins of power to the next has effectively ground to a halt, and the pandemic has highlighted this.

I also think it will provide an interesting study in how a population in even the most liberal of democracies can be made compliant through fear. And how close to the surface authoritarian tendencies can lurk.

People are so ignorant. They look at their own situation, their own kids and think it's fine for everyone else too.

My mental health is being affected so much day after day that I am neglecting myself and my children. I am so exhausted that my brain isn't functioning and I am dizzy every day. I force myself to eat then have gut wrenching stomach cramps. Do you want to swap? Cry myself to sleep. My kids have behavioural problems and they hit me and bite me and scream at me. How long do you put up with that before you snap? Their dad won't see them until after lockdown, he lives with a nurse. I can't get any headspace. I'm not doing home learning anymore - I did two months where I did every little thing set, walks, craft, great routine, games,nature trails... I did the lot, then I had a breakdown one morning because it is not healthy to go that long without a break or some adult time. I have felt incredibly ill ever since.

I considered going upstairs and hanging myself with a skipping rope last week. I feel like I struggle to breathe. The kids follow me to the toilet and bang and scream outside, when they don't they are screaming at each other and throwing things.

My kitchen is piled high with dirty pots and pans. I don't have a dishwasher, a tiny sink and I am SICK of scrubbing them and trying to get them all clean. The shower/bath is leaking through the ceiling sow we're not using it, landlord doesn't want to know - I can't afford to get that fixed. We're now all filthy.

Believe me my kids are being affected mentally and physically and so are many other peoples. It's going to take a long time to recover from this.

Re attitudes to children, I think the fact they’ve reopened garden centres and golf courses but not children’s playgrounds speaks volumes.

Interesting, Mascotte - thank you.

It’s extraordinary and depressing. Pre-Covid everyone was very concerned about poor child/teenage mental health, but now in this brave new world children are suddenly expected to ‘be resilient’ and go for months on end without education, friendship, stimulation, proper exercise, hugs with anyone outside their immediate family, or most of the other stuff that makes life enjoyable. And when parents express concern about this we are told we’re raising entitled snowflakes.

And come on, how many 5-year-olds or 3-year-olds really don't go running over to their mates as soon as they sense them?

How many parents with more than one child have managed to spend the entire day without invading each others space at that age? But yeah sure, lets' send 10 in with an adult or two to isolate them.

Oh and that is, of course, assuming your child is one of the select chosen 10. If not, oh well good luck in the next batch of 10.

Secondary school, eh? What was that? Year 7 well, need to get them back in quickly so we can set up for the new arrivals in September. Then at some point, the current year 10 and 11's go back. The rest? Loading, please wait.

Year 9's don't exist. They never even really got through the whole choosing your subjects for the next 2 years bit.

But secondary was forgotten about beyond oh shit, exams. Did anyone have a look at the work on Government endorsed learning BBC bollocks?
Work aimed at 5-year-olds given to teens, local teens here have been ribbing this piss out of this. Been digging out any stuff parents might have saved from primary school, you know just in case anyone bothers to check. When they can all meet up, they are going to just share it all between them and hand it in lol.

Even teens are taking the piss out of the clowns.

But yea will have forgotten all about it by Christmas.

Here are the relevant articles:

@Straycatstrut do you have anyone else who could give you a break? Parents/family/friends who could take the children? Even if their dad can't or won't you clearly need a break so if anyone else is in a position to do that take it.

Do you have any other support? Your post broke my heart, the pain is so clear. Please reach out and get help.

@Straycatstrut I'm so sorry, that sounds horrendously difficult. Please do ask for help if you possibly can. I know if one of my friends was feeling like this, I'd want them to tell me, and I'd come round to help in any way I could, lockdown be damned

@justanotherneighinparadise - I totally agree. What they went through was so much worse than what is happening now. The world eventually recovered though and life went on, just as it will after this.

@@Straycatstrut - you definitely need help. Is there anyone you can call to help you deal with the children? Please reach out, your situation sounds awful.

Badly. It’ll be a story of how dithering and delays and politics cost lives and led to an economic downturn that might have been avoided or lessened if early warnings from scientists hadn’t been ignored. With some comparisons of the long term economic effects of locking down hard and early vs dither and delay in order to ‘protect the economy’.

Might be some interesting long term stuff on the psychology of Sweden’s approach vs other countries.
And maybe som stuff on Dunning-Krueger and social media.

Whether lessons will be learnt for the next pandemic is anyone’s guess.

I’m so relieved to have found this thread and people who think like me! I feel worried about the impact of school closures on kids who don’t have the means at home to continue their education or even to have enough food to eat. The food banks that are on the brink of collapse because they were over subscribed before the lockdown even began.

What concerns me is people keep talking about schools reopening in September but isn’t it likely that there will be another wave with the start of the flu season and the need to protect the NHS and we’ll have to lockdown again? And then what will the schools do? Children will have been out of education for months and months on end.

I don’t think the effects on the economy will become clear for a long time and how will all these businesses survive with constant closure? I don’t think anyone understands risk any more, no one is willing to contemplate that there are risks in every part of life but we live with them daily and don’t let them disrupt everything because if we did ... life wouldn’t be worth living would it? The idea that quality of life is more important than quantity is disappearing and I believe is at the heart of all this.

Personally I think what happening at the moment is an indication of how risk averse we have become as a society and that is not a good thing.

I see it here all the time. One example.

People who won't leave their kids in the car while they pay for petrol because the car might explode or someone might steal the kids. This almost never happens. Ever. But people won't do it just in case.

It seems we expect life to be without risk nowadays and cannot handle the fact that being alive contains risk. Maybe we have been too sheltered in the last 60 years.

I have found my people. I feel like I can’t say in real life but I am so angry about this whole situation, and the way we are suffering through this to protect a very small percentage of the elderly population. I am fed up with being told that I want to kill teachers because I am planning to send my YR child into school ASAP. I am fed up with the scaremongering, people sharing sensationalist news stories the have little basis in scientific fact, but justify their own position to never leave the house. I absolute despair at the lack of critical thought in the general population. I am fed up with other parents saying the 1st June is too early to go back to school and theirs will not be going back until September - what the fuck will be different by September?!

I am fed up trying to wfh in a busy job and “home educate” 2 children. Even though both DH and I are wfh it’s still impossible. We have a large garden, trampoline, sandpit, bikes and are out walking/cycling every day and my kids are absolutely fed up. All they want is to go back to school and see their friends and I am so angry that they are being denied this, and that people are trying to make me feel guilty for wanting that for them.

And I could weep for those poor children living in fear/with abuse/neglect etc.

I feel like I can’t say in real life but I am so angry about this whole situation, and the way we are suffering through this to protect a very small percentage of the elderly population

This is exactly what my 20 year old student son has said. I was horrified at first but I kind of get him now. He's missed out on a term at university, studying and seeing his peers and suffers anxiety at the best of times. I haven't been able to visit, hug or touch my 4 week old grandson since he was born and our youngest is sitting upstairs doing GCSE work to which I feel like saying - don't bother.
I also feel incredibly selfish thinking this as if my mother was alive I would be terrified for her.

It's a really difficult way to be feeling

I’m not even convinced about it protecting a group of elderly or vulnerable people. The whole thing has been about “protecting the NHS” - but this is from a govt that has run it into the ground, deliberately. The fucking gall to then restrict our lives like this because they ended up creating a health service that (supposedly) couldn’t cope with this crisis. I have had to give birth and care for a newborn under conditions that few women would have deemed acceptable in this country in recent years - it would, until people started seeing no risks other than those that come from covid19, have been considered too risky to the health of women and children. And they then also have the gall to treat it like a whole-class detention where we get treats like being able to see our own families and introduce our newborns to their own close relatives if we behave ourselves? How dare they

Betty I feel the same. It does feel as though we have no voice when we try to use reason and logic.