Triggered by lockdown

[user64827723]

It can't just be me.

I just replied to a thread about small age gaps and was triggered. During Covid I had a 1yr old and a 2yr old. We lived in a flat with nothing to do and no where to do.

I cried most days and I still get so upset and mad about it now, those precious first years completely lost. 2 years of nothing to do, no swimming, no baby classes, wearing a face mask at soft play and even then the cafe was closed and numbers were limited.

Life with babies and toddlers is bloody hard but nothing will compare to trying to parent in lockdown.

I felt at the time, and still do feel, that parents of very young children were completely forgotten in the madness of covid lockdowns.

Anyone else feel like this?

@ChatBFP

I think the issue is - with both GBD and what you are suggesting - is a division of society into sectors. “90 year olds” or assuming that a certain portion of society can be easily partitioned off while the rest of us crack on. I think it’s drastically over simplifying. Those vulnerable to Covid were also mothers, fathers and couldn’t just be ring fenced away. They would have been exposed, in hospital and there would have been a much higher fatality rate and pressure on hospitals. Sweden - their ‘success’ is controversial. They had a much higher fatality rate their their neighbours initially. Also they had a compliant population, high vaccine uptake - less density. They had a health system that could cope better than ours. I don’t think you can assume that it would work here when our demographic is so different. And if it applies here, you then have to apply the same on a global level. That strategy did NOT work in India or Brazil.

It’s a case of putting economy and individualism over high death toll and collectivism - the Swedish approach. One maverick country it could maybe work for. Everyone doing it? I don’t think so.

@ChatBFP

Finland perhaps managed lockdown ‘better’ than many countries - I think also in terms of their approach to schooling.

Also - if a 90 year old is somehow deemed ‘disposable’ in pandemic terms @ChatBFP - it would be inhumane to let that person die without intervention to ease their suffering. That still needs resources, hospital resources, manpower.

So just we’re back to arguments for and against lockdowns and not feeling able to just talk about personal experiences. Same old same old. Some policies and decisions in the name of “keeping people safe” were stupid, cruel, illogical and have ended up costing far more (not just in financial terms), and this was predictable at the time in many cases. This doesn’t make me a right winger or anything, I didn’t pay any attention to who was putting out statements because I was too fucking busy absorbing all the shit so that my family didn’t suffer. Lucky for us I was able to do that.

@DramStokker

I don't totally disagree with you. I think that it would have been hard (but it was what was in our pandemic plans before the event). I'm not necessarily advocating that we could have done a full GBD style thing where we let things rip.

But what I am saying is that we should never have closed schools for that length of time. We should never have bothered with track and trace either - total waste of time that only identified those who would have been encouraged to isolate anyway. Both totally wishful thinking.

Unfortunately, a lot of people initially liked having time off and I think that this really motivated people to get behind what was a disaster for many of the most vulnerable.

I was pregnant at the time and am under no illusions as to how difficult it would be for many to totally isolate from others and yet keep things running, which was I agree the issue for the GBD.

Covid killed very few children or young people. But it has blighted many futures, killed some people by failing to diagnose cancer, caused some serious mental health issues in many children, has led to hundreds of thousands of children going missing from school and allowed some abusive families to escalate their abuse to the point of killing their kids more easily. I guess that what I am saying is that none of that really got weighted in the balance at the time. Everyone was just concerned with preventing death (mostly in elderly) now even at the expense of future death (of younger people)

Can you imagine how much we could be investing in young people or the health service now if we had spent at the Sweden level? I honestly think that "squashing the sombrero" (which is what Sweden did) was correct, but trying to pretend zero covid was desirable (which is what we did) was the mistake. A big one.

(If you look at Sweden their excess deaths over the last 5 years are not that dissimilar to their neighbours, so really their neighbours protected a lot of older people in lockdown for a couple of years that they couldn't leave the house anyway 🤷‍♀️! www.spectator.co.uk/article/sweden-covid-and-excess-deaths-a-look-at-the-data/)

(I am aware that you'll say that the Speccie is a right wing abomination 😁, but the WHO have admitted that they got excess death wrong for Sweden too)

@ChatBFP

I don’t think I necessarily disagree with you either - in fact you may well be right. It’s interesting to read your view.

@Tinybrother

Sorry, have said my piece now. Totally agree. Carry on talking about your experience (mine survivable whilst wfh but very tiring whilst pregnant and with toddler trying to work around childcare then totally shit with new baby and almost no healthcare support)

This thread has become pointless bickering now.

I find things about lockdown triggering.
My DD had a MH collapse and dragged me a long way down with her.
I would avoid any 'lockdown' TV drama, and don't really even like watching TV programmes where people are wearing masks.

Actually the November wasn't that bad, but the January one lead to the ptsd.
The context - teaching assistant in a secondary school and felt extremely vulnerable. Caught covid over the Christmas holiday which was 3 weeks on the sofa unable to move. Almost had to call an ambulance out on Christmas Eve as blood oxygen went to 86%. I was incredibly, incredibly ill. Had to return to work whilst still struggling to walk up a flight of stairs (in hindsight I should've signed myself off sick then). Was left in school as support staff supervising the vulnerable students (think 30 teenagers with severe semh issues, most of which were either in care or had social services involvement, with just 4 members of untrained staff). All teachers to work at home, only one member of slt in who refused to leave their office. Daily messages from dcs primary school begging us not to send them in unless absolutely necessary which piled on an incredible amount of guilt too. It was a really horrific 3 months.
When omicron was announced and people were discussing lockdowns again I had a major mental health crisis and I've still not managed to return to that place of work (I get palpitations just driving past it still)

The nurses, the doctors, the carers, the shop workers who still had to work with the general public probably all felt similar. Completely and utterly vulnerable and expendable. I know being locked down at home was really really tough for so many people, and the loneliness can be devastating too and I don't want to take away those very valid feelings. But not being locked down at home was equally hard for many.

There was no right way to manage it (although shutting our borders in February and banning mass gatherings earlier probably would've helped)

Sorry to be all thread police-y

FWIW I think overall we were lucky that with me on ML at least I wasn’t required to work as well as look after children/homeschool full time.

It was the maternity care experience that traumatised me, and it was something avoidable - done in the name of covid but shouldn’t have happened the way it did

I had a 3 Yr old and a 1 week old baby when the first lockdown happened. My DS didn't meet any family other than us for his first 3 months. My dd felt the world shrink to just the 4 of us virtually overnight after her brother was born and I think on some level she blamed him for it. But looking back on pictures now I see family time for real bonding, a slower pace of life that was actually welcome on some level with two small children. Yes at the time I was beyond devastated that we couldn't have the pleasure of showing off our baby to his family but equally I see it as something that happened, draw the positives from it and I have a 6 yo and a 3 yo who are relatively unscarred and are healthy and happy and the relationships with family are as good as they would have been if it hadnt happened. Yes it was hard but I don't have trauma related to it. It must be hard if you do x

Some of your stories are so sad. Thank you for sharing and wishing healing for everyone. I had teens and they have coped but my younger one was once more outgoing and is definitely negatively affected by the whole experience.

Always happens whenever anyone on here wants to talk about how hard they found lockdowns and the detrimental impact on them. It's very telling.

Exactly.

Yep, as things stand they would not be observed. There's no person or body who commands enough trust for the population to accept restrictions. They also can't happen without lots of people being paid to stay out of the way, and there's clearly no inclination or ability to do that.

I'm not saying this is how it'll always be, but equally there's also no reason to assume the conditions that allowed lockdown to happen will be replicated again.

My friends, 37-year-old sister died of cervical cancer as a result of not having treatment over lockdown. I’m sure there are some 75 and 80-year-olds who will go on to have another 10 years of life but my feelings are her sister deserved it more.

I had a friend in Melbourne during the lockdown. She has since left the city for WA I think.

She was single at the time, no kids, she was very lonely and very depressed - I think two years of on-off lockdowns in Melbourne set her off on a spiral of bad mental health. She still suffers with depression and anxiety whereas before covid, she never did.

Yes MN was very nasty to anyone who dared moan about lockdown. I remember.

They could have left playgrounds open for a start.

This.

Whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of restrictions, we did so much that was objectively stupid and/or revolting. We could still have had a lockdown whilst encouraging people to exercise outside instead of creating a policy and law enforcement environment where many of the most vulnerable were functionally denied access to outside space.

Bearing in mind that on average people gained weight during lockdowns, that nearly all of us got covid in the end and knowing what we do about the impact of obesity on outcomes, how much difference might it have made on a population level if we'd pursued a less stupid and destructive form of lockdown?

Ds was 2 when we went into lockdown. We lived in a flat with no outdoor space at the time and I was furloughed with the constant threat of redundancy, as was DH.

We lived in the central belt of Scotland so our lockdowns where longer and more strict than anywhere else. Couldn't leave the flat as there was a play park at the entrance and try explaining to a 2 year old that he can't use the park that he had used almost daily before. It was a hot, miserable, stuffy hell. Thankfully we managed to move soon after the lockdowns ended.

After the first lockdown ended I was still furloughed and DH went back to work. I was then diagnosed with cancer and told my treatment would be delayed as it wasn't an emergency.

On the way home from a hospital appointment, I popped into sainsbury's for my 'essential' shop. I decided to order some foam mats and coloring pens from the argos inside so I could spend some time on our wooden floor with DS. It caused me pain without the mats. I will NEVER forget how the cashier at Argos treated me that day and if you're reading this, shame on you! I got to the counter to collect my items and she aggressively threw them over to me, making me put up my arms to catch them. She then snarled at me, looking me up and down, then gritted her teeth saying "essential items only, pppfffttt" I ran out to the car and cried for hours before I was fit to drive. I have never experienced so much hate and poison from a complete stranger before. In my eyes, I had cancer so every day and everything I did was essential.

A few weeks later they announced the winter lockdown and something inside me broke. I was admitted to hospital with a mental health episode and still take anti depressants to this day. Like most pp, I can't look at photos from that year and I've somehow blocked most of it out as a trauma response. I don't think I'll ever get over it.

I was on my own too. I pulled through with the help of work and good old escapism but I’ve never been in anything like a pit of loneliness like that before. I hope your friend recovers fully.

I can't add my own reply because I will bawl, but definitely not just you. I have very few happy memories of DS2's first 4-6 months. Crying now.