I'm really sick of all this tonight.
Really sick of it. I feel at breaking point (I will feel much better for getting some stuff off my chest though)
It seems to me that people who aren't experiencing much hardship because of the virus are wanting lockdown to continue forever and are full of 'if you want it to end you WANT PEOPLE TO DIE'. There's only so much I can take of this from friends and people whose opinion I normally respect. It hurts. I am a kind person who is left wing generally. I have always wanted to live in a kind society where we look after the weaker members of society. That is a core part of who I am.
I just can't cope with lockdown. It's had a seriously negative impact on my life and I was already experiencing severe difficulties before all this kicked off with several things that had gone badly wrong for me.
I am very scared of the economic damage being worse the longer this goes on. But I've been told tonight that's a right wing view and doesn't stack up and I've got it all wrong because ending lockdown sooner is the thing that will do economic damage. A much longer lockdown will lead to less economic damage because it reduces the chances of a larger second wave, apparently. But we just don't know that. If a vaccine is anything other than very effective, I highly doubt the countries pursuing contact tracing will continue to pour resources into tracking cases and stamping them out when this virus mainly kills the very old and very frail for one.
I feel like as a society we've made this huge sacrifice - the biggest society has been asked to make since WW2 and there was always going to come a point where that was too big an ask. And probably for all of us on this thread that point has come. And it's not because we don't care about vulnerable people, it's because the balance has tipped and ultimately few people will continue to makes sacrifices for nameless strangers when they are experiencing tangible harm. And old people die and you can't stop the whole of life to prevent that. It's like standing in the sea with a piece of cardboard and holding back the waves. I want to matter too and I can't sustain this much longer.
I don't know what to think. Am I a terrible person? I'm wondering if I've got this wrong and if we just locked down for a few more weeks we could start up contact tracing and defeat the virus that way. But I don't trust the government to get that right (South Korea got it sorted so quickly compared to us) and even if more lockdown would work, it's already now doing massive harm and people won't comply. They aren't already. So what do you do? Force people to by getting the army on the streets? Fine and imprison them? Tell children and young people with mental health issues that they don't matter and they have to accept long term harm because the only thing that matters is the virus?
As I said, I'm so very tired of this. I want my life back.
I know everything I'm saying has been expressed already on this thread. I'm just needing to mull it over again because I am being told I'm murdering people indirectly by wanting lockdown to end.