Mum still in lockdown !!

[Kissingfrogs25]

I am getting so worried about my mum. She is in no way vulnerable, in good health and 72 years old, she lives with my dad, for context she smokes, but is a healthy weight no issues.

Mum has been in lockdown since early march 20 and has not been anywhere inside or outside since this date, she says she is too terrified she will die of covid. She has had all vaccines, its the only time she has been inside a building. She cuts her own hair, hasn't been to the dentist, doctor (will speak on phone if needed) in all that time.

She won't even eat a takeaway in case its contaminated

What on earth do I do? I managed to get her to call the dr, who put her on antidepressants and other medication, but this hasn't changed anything.

I have been meeting up with mum outside, but even then she looks nervous. My dad is not allowed to go anywhere either.

It is now getting colder, I didnt see her for eight months last winter because it was too cold to sit out. She won't even see her friends, the few she has left have to sit on a bench in the park.

Anyone else in this position? What can I do? The years are going by and I feel like I have lost my mum 😥

I hope that’s a joke paragon, is all I can say.

You are anxious because you are changing your behaviour to an extreme degree to avoid a very small risk of something serious happening.
that is textbook anxiety.
I really recommend you seek some mental health treatment.

My mother had to go the gp last week and has caught covid!!!
I couldn’t be more delighted - she is feeling okay - cold symptoms only and now she might actually be released from her self imposed prison 🙏🏻

paragon I wish you well and hope you will find a way to leave your lockdown - or at the very least enjoy your life with simple beauty and pleasure of life inside your lockdown. Birdsong, reading, seasonal changes and good food. I hope you have RL support too 💐

Christ. It’s like Miss Havisham spent too much time on the internet.

im autistic and CEV. The great thing about my autism is that it makes me logical - and I understand that holding back an airborne disease is as effective as trying to hold back the tide.

others may disagree, but IMO that’s no life - and I’m no life and soul of the party believe me!

Kissingfrogs fingers crossed. My Mum got Covid last year and it did change her mindset! She has since had it again.

@Paragon59 I can see why you think it is a rational response. Perhaps what you miss though is that for the majority of others being able to go through normal life is a risk that they are willing to take. No matter how potentially awful getting COVID could be getting the risks of not being able to live is far far worse.

Anyone with a school age child can easily see the effects across all ages (but in different ways) the lockdown had on children - such wide ranging and potentially lasting effects that means it should not be considered again.

I think it you were to poll what scares people more getting COVID or being in Lockdown - it would overwhelming be the latter.

It is to be expected - I said at the beginning it will last 2 years because that is the length of time I thought it would take to assimilate COVID into being a risk people were willing to take. And it was

@Paragon59 please get some help off your gp if you think never leaving the house except putting the bins out Is safer than living a life then you really really need help . if you can’t see this it makes me feel so sorry for you and kind of angry(sorry.

I feel desperately sorry for you and the thousands like you who are grieving for relatives and friends who are still alive. And furious with the former government for the over-hyped nonsense.
Do not agree to meet outside. Do not test and do not wear masks in her presence. By pandering to her, who are validating her ideas. This is terribly hard as it is not really her fault, she is obviously seriously mentally ill and it has trashed your relationship. It is terribly sad, but only she can turn this around if she values seeing you enough.

@Paragon59 Do you have children or a partner?

obviously most people have some social need or rather desire for this that I don't have and such socialising to me is unnecessary and I don't need it either as it literally gives me nothing of use in a pandemic

I suspect that this affects your response @Paragon59 - most people do have such needs, and in fact if they don't have sufficient social contact this also poses health risks to them - and these risks, for a lot of people, rationally outweigh the risks of covid (including long covid). See for instance: www.cdc.gov/aging/publications/features/lonely-older-adults.html

• Social isolation significantly increased a person’s risk of premature death from all causes, a risk that may rival those of smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity.
• Social isolation was associated with about a 50% percent increased risk of dementia.
• Poor social relationships (characterized by social isolation or loneliness) was associated with a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke.
• Loneliness was associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide.
• Loneliness among heart failure patients was associated with a nearly 4 times increased risk of death, 68% increased risk of hospitalization, and 57% increased risk of emergency department visits.

Compare this to the risk at the moment for a 50 year old vaccinated white British man who is overweight but with no underlying health issues - 0.0258% of dying following a positive covid test result (see: qcovid.org/Calculation/Vaccinated) There are risks of long covid too of course, but compare those risks to the bullet points above.

If you feel no need for social contact that you feel you personally are not at risk of developing dementia, stroke, mental illness etc, or feel that in your case they are less significant than the risks from catching covid, then that's your own risk assessment.

But you can understand that for the majority of people on this thread, they assess the risk to their loved ones' health from isolation as much higher than catching covid and worry accordingly that their loved ones' risk assessment is skewed by anxiety (itself made worse by isolation and loneliness).

Have you considered that your years-long self-imposed social isolation may have caused anxiety, which is causing you to overweigh the risks posed to you by covid and potential long covid relative to the risks from social isolation?

I agree with @Xiaoxiong

This is much more common than people realise. Unfortunately, I have 2 people in my family who have awful long covid & this has reinforced the fear in some of my family members.

The idea that holding back the disease isn't likely to be effective is part of the idea of inevitability that they have created in the official narrative and is something that I don't accept, although the more and more transmissible viruses people make by thinking it is inevitable, the more hard it is to keep them away and people are only making it inevitable, if they are, by their own behaviour and then claiming it was inevitable all along. In any case, it makes rational sense to me to do all I can to stop catching the virus especially as doing so repeatedly make increase the risks - it is the situation we have been left in, having to deal with this prevalence of the virus, caused by people wanting normality back and unwilling to do anything to make it any different as well as being hugely influenced by the propaganda narratives that I am now having to fight in all of this that have enabled the Government to shirk and deny responsibility and pin it onto the public, whilst many people willingly accepted and took this on as I tried to send it right back, which didn't work as no-one else supported me.

Whilst many autistic people have fared worse off than non-autistic people (which was contrary to what I expected) although the pandemic, when they actually did anything about it, was hard for both, I have in fact fared largely well in lockdown and it has improved my mental health, although it hasn't been plain-sailing for me as I have had issues with a pre-existing long-term condition which is why I am so cautious over this as I understand what such a condition actually means and have lived experience of having one. You can mention all those extra things with social isolation and loneliness to try to frighten me but it fails to do so. I may be socially isolated and I may be lonely but in fact I never feel either of them, and I think that is significant as to why they don't appear to have a negative impact on me.

By contrast, Covid infection increases the risk of dementia, heart disease and I think stroke as well. I am therefore at risk from all of those things more through Covid than I am through social relationships characterised as being "poor" under non-autistic standards and their assumptions, and death isn't the bad outcome that I ever had much risk of, I don't have no need for social contact but I need much less than most people - a phone call once every two months is adequate enough to keep me sane and is exactly the same for me as meeting someone face-to-its usually their chin rather than face in normal times. I don't have any anxiety from lockdown, so I don't understand the final point. In fact I had a lot of anxiety from normal life and it constantly pushing me from pillar to post, as well as the long-term condition it caused to me which no-one at all was bothered about back then as they only bother about mental health once people more generally are affected.

So all this mental health rhetoric and professed concern comes too late, if people really were concerned they'd have been talking about it ten years ago when they failed to see what damage normal life was causing to my mental health, which lockdown helped improve and I am now stable on that, and rather than changing their own activities that caused my previous issue from normal life the CBT told me that I needed to change my own perception, framing it as a problem with myself and not other people's behaviour having to change and this wasn't going to work. Although I never experienced anything on the scale of this, it is like telling someone who has been raped, instead of it being the rapist that should have changed their behaviour, the person raped being told to change the way they perceive it and pretend they weren't raped when in fact they were, so I wasn't having therapy in effect telling me a similar thing. They would never say that to someone who had been raped, so I don't see why in effect that was what it said to me. It didn't care at all about other people causing me the problems they were causing me, or asking them to change their behaviour, instead, no, society will never do that, instead it said the problem was myself and the way I perceived things - and it's unacceptable that that was what it in effect said.

No. Fortunately I am in a good position as not having to send children to school and have them bringing the virus home, repeatedly every few months seems to be the plan from now on in. I do not have work that I need to do away from home so I am also fortunate in that as not everyone is able to do what I am, everyone's situation is different and I do understand how people are concerned for their loved ones. I also do not think I am in the same situation as some people who are having bad effects from being in lockdown and assumptions shouldn't be made that are not necessarily true of me. I came into the lockdown prepared for five years right at the very start, after a few short months, at which 'everyone else' got this strange concept of pandemic fatigue, it seemed even easier for me and prepared for ten years at that stage. The third official lockdown, that seemed to be the hardest for everyone else, seemed easier although I would like to be able to leave at some point rather than indefinite caused by Government and the collective failure of society now keeping me here, due to, disappointingly for both likely everyone else and for myself, people failing to do anywhere near necessary to deal with the pandemic, and only appear to have been able to deal with it by ignoring it through their behaviour of behaving as if it is back to normal and deserting me from the field, leaving me alone here still fighting it.

I am still standing, whilst 'everyone else' has deserted me and is failing to do the job (which is typical story of my life in people generally failing to complete anything, instead doing their usual top-slicing of each individual task, completing fully none of them at all, often worse than doing nothing as leaves me having to work out which bits they've done and which they have failed to do and as usual leaving me picking up the pieces of what they've left undone, will be disappointing to people to find they have done barely a third of the job against the pandemic to date), and unfortunately I am unable to defeat the virus on my own whilst it also isn't defeating me.

I'm not trying to frighten you, I'm an applied mathematician by training so I prefer numbers and statistical likelihoods to emotive stuff about fighting the virus or being the last one standing etc. I thought you might as well, I apologise if this was not the case.

It's fine if you prefer being in lockdown and feel your mental well-being is in fact improved as a result. In which case, there is no need for you to fight anything, convince others of the need to change their behaviour or say that they're shirking, deserting you, not supporting you etc. Feeling happier and less anxious remaining in self-imposed lockdown is a perfectly valid reason to withdraw from the world, though I can't actually tell from your posts if you are.

It is also part of my stubborness and resistance that I have had throughout my life, here my refusal to accept the attempt at normalisation of unacceptable death and long-term disability through defining today as normal. I am not having any of it and I continue to point-blank refuse and to remain stubbornly in lockdown caused by other people's behaviour in order to show how wrong that behaviour is. So it is over to everyone else and to fight the pandemic (as I am continuing to do so and fulfilling all of my task on this), for others that have given up to start to do so again and actually do a proper job for once...

I do not prefer to be in lockdown, my first preference would be normal life (if people were to make some adjustments to that which the pandemic provided the opportunity to do so but disappointedly, although I properly shouldn't have expected anything less, people simply upped and got back to their own normal as suits their own interests without making any changes to make normal life better for myself on the autism spectrum). However, as normal life is not possible given that the virus is here at such great levels at least, I choose pandemic forever instead. I am fine and happy with this concept, especially as the horrid endemicity at high levels is what people seem to wish for, I hope it is forever thwarted by their own behaviour and that the pandemic continues endlessly instead. People don't expect me, given the choice between endemic and pandemic, to choose pandemic but I do so as endemic allows them to remove all data that enables us to assess our ongoing risk from high levels of constant stable virus whilst pandemic always poses the risk of it getting out of control once again and forcing other people to have to do something about it. It therefore suits the interests of those in power to railroad me into endemic and I am having none of it as they haven't done nearly any job on the pandemic, instead have served short-term economic interests at every stage, and use endemic as a way of avoiding responsibility that others seem willing to enable.

We should be in pandemic and demanding government take action to ensure proper ventilation and public health measures to defeat the virus and end the pandemic, rather than caving in to their wish that we behave as if it is normal and as if to allow them to end the pandemic by maintaining high levels of virus here that pose ongoing burden of death and illness although in fact people will never get out of the pandemic as it will persist regardless and more likely longer the more they behave as if it doesn't.

The media and the government, it’s despicable

Oh, stop.

Nothing more can be done now and this has been the case for a long time. Covid is not gone but there is no restriction now worth doing.

To address what you've actually said, the shirking is by the Government, of its responsible: this irresponsible government that shirks responsibility for everything, in this case responsibility for the pandemic, by pinning it onto the public to take personal responsibility instead, which many people are now showing they don't have any, by failing to wear masks. The deserting is people generally given up, even though I understand people may have had some emotional need for themselves to do so, rather than it being a rational decision. No-one has yet explained what rationality they used to think behaving as if it is normal life back was appropriate or what has convinced them to do that.

I am not "happy" remaining in lockdown, although it is not an emotional feeling, in that I would rather not be if other people would enable this and therefore do need to change their behaviour to do so. Why is it that other people are so resistant to change? When it comes to doing and protecting their own pre-existing status quo, it seems largely non-autistic people prove to be hugely resistant to change (and other autistic people may also have some need to do things that provide specialist interests that they did in normal life and which have been hugely disrupted). Characterising me as "withdrawing from the world" is wrong.

Paragon what would like govt and other people to do?

OP I hope it works out. My best friend got Covid and had a sore throat and a tired feeling. She wasn't keeping herself in lockdown but had convinced herself it was a catastrophe to get it. She was stunned when that's all that happened.

It is not true the nothing more can be done, it is that you are unwilling to do so. The word "restriction" is itself an emotively framed word from the propaganda that has clearly convinced you. Measures short of lockdown are not restrictions. Having proper ventilation does not restrict anyone. It enables people to do things more safely. People make this trite statement of the obviousness that Covid is not gone as if they expect that anything they are doing will ever make it go. It will never been gone the way people are behaving and will instead continue to impose huge restrictions on me because other people consider things less than this as not worth doing.

It doesn't matter though - it will all fall flat on its face in the end I predict. As they are not willing to do anything to make it any different or to make Covid less prevalent, it will continue to mutate even more so and likely eventually force people to have to change - the virus usually does come to my "rescue" on this in the end, it did so in November 2020 eventually forcing the then PM to have to do the lockdown he was doing everything to try to avoid (namely trying to avoid what was the right thing at the time), although sadly it comes only after more devastation and destruction is caused in the meantime and then a worse situation to have to deal with (the eventual official lockdown was longer). So there is an easy way or a long-winded and damaging way and I don't mind which as it is always other people's choice never mine.

People can either do my straight and easier way of dealing with this more quickly, which would be my preference, or, as usual, people can choose to resist what I say and ignore me, thinking they know better, but the virus will eventually force them to get on board and do want I wanted in the first place, only via this long-winded long-drawn-out like teeth-pulling exercise instead. I am fine for people to choose the latter as experience tells me it always does work out this way and it also provides some schadenfraude enjoyment watching people do things I don't like seeing those things descend into the failure that I therefore wish them to be, especially as it is now clear the "living with the virus" approach, which those behaving as if normal are demonstrating no learning of actually doing, is self-defeating.

Anyway I have got to go as I have more tasks to do in my life than being stuck on this thread. All the best for now!

I think for most people it is that rationally the risks of Covid (which of course do exist) are now less than the risks of locking down and preventing it.

Looking at China and the lengths that it takes to keep in under control are so abhorrent to most (can you imagine your child being taken away and isolated by themselves) and the impact that would have.

It is what is the lessor of two evils - Covid or the life that you would need to prevent and keep Covid under control. And rightly or wrongly for most Covid and the risks that come with it is.

Life is hard you have to take the moments where you can and for most that is socialising and being with people. I went into DS school for the first time since his navitity in Year 2 and it was such an amazing atmosphere and to see how excited the children were to be able to perform