Anyone still suffering lockdown fallout?

[EmmaEmerald]

I don’t want to tag any of the original people who helped me out a lot as I know this thread will attract a lot of nasty folk

but every so often I feel absolutely in shock still at how the fallout goes on.

suppose I’m seeking reassurance it won’t be like this forever but it might be, I guess.

Lockdown had no impact on me (apart from making me a bit cross that so many people fell for all the nonsense). I suppose I am lucky, because the whole pandemic was pretty much an irrelevance.

Lockdown was not necessary at all, and the Swedish experience proves this. Let's not perpetuate the foolish ideas spread in the media at the time.

I don't know a single person who is "more anxious about leaving the house". If anything, it's the opposite because people perhaps understand better that they need to seize life with both hands.... and so that's what they're doing. Theatres are packed, everyone books as many holidays as possible, restaurants, sports events, volunteering..... any and all of it.

@BeaRF75 agree 100% (around the no need for a lockdown comment). Looking back I can't actually believe we just went along with it.

No we didn't.
It was to stop the NHS becoming overwhelmed.
NHS staff are not immune to Covid , some shielded, some pregnant, some had severe MH problems.
So as it was we had huge numbers of staff absent.
If Covid had been allowed to run, the NHS would have been overwhelmed with NO staff to care for them let alone try to keep any services running.
It was a nightmare as it was with staff who left due to PTSD.
I can believe people are so dim they can't grasp this.

My ds education was permanently affected...in year seven when lockdown hit. He was so enthusiastic about starting secondary school and just starting to socialise independently with friends. Once schools went back he never gained that enthusiasm back. He missed out on numerous school trips and events. His socialising skills never really took off as I imagine they would have.

I will never forgive them for what they did to children/teens. When kids from his school were told to isolate, the teachers threatened to inform the police if they saw them out and about.

I remember my ds coming home from his first day back at school...he actually said to me "it was so good to hang out with people my own age again". Broke my heart

Indeed. And the enquiry is seemingly there to cement the narrative of "we should have locked down harder, faster, longer, and we will next time." For the next time that certain billionaires keep talking about with a little too much certainty. I haven't forgotten the way BBC interviewers kept cutting people off when they seemed about to contradict the official narrative.

Was I frightened by the virus? Hardly. I was much more frightened by how easily the public swallowed what the media told them in one gulp, the belief in "you are only allowed out for an hour a day"; that was never stated officially, but Chinese whispers meant it was quickly parroted, how much the public appeared to crave being micromanaged by the buffoon Johnson "Boris said this, Boris said that", how easily the public turned on each other, that they fought over toilet paper instead of being furious about what the government was doing to their children, and now that the government have discovered the "success" of frightening the public out of their wits, they are bound to use this method again.

People might want to forget the whole beastly thing. It's tempting, but if we do, we are doomed to repeat it. I have no intention of forgetting this cruelty for as long as I live, and I think we should all keep reminding future governments about how cruel lockdown was, so that they don't use it again lightly, because I do foresee that unless we really show our anger, lockdown will be a first resort, not the very, very, very last resort it should be.

@BeaRF75 the problem is (and we lived in Copenhagen at time and went to Sweden quite often) is that their is a very different mindset to theUK- there is a great deal more space, I've rarely seen gangs of people out on the razz and it wasn't quite how people think- 'some' things were indeed open , however advice was very much to spread out, mix as little as possible and do as much as possible from home etc, etc

m

Absolutely agree again!

We were highly compliant though

And didn’t cases start falling anyway pre lockdown?

They used timing and worked backwards

I think Sweden got it right and the inquiry is an utter farce

Eventually someone might ask was the damage worth it for Covid?

Each pandemic will be different. Hopefully a long gap to the next though

For those saying they can’t understand why friendships have changed- I lived in zone 2 in London during Covid. All my local friends (nct etc) have dispersed now- some moved back to their home countries, others moved abroad and a lot moved out of London because they no longer needed to commute daily. Everyone wanted to have more space and a garden. Of course this happens all the time in London but it has been exacerbated by lockdowns.

I moved myself and I’m starting from scratch friendship wise, so no picking up where we left off.

Population density per square mile

Uk 720

Sweden 62

Think you're likely right.

The deliberate attempts to use fright as a behavioural tool, which are documented, followed up by the collective experience of Partygate, were a particularly toxic combination specific to England/to a lesser extent the wider UK. It's done untold damage.

@PropertyManager has said earlier in this thread that we should have left people with covid at home.
That is actually what was done with care home residents, they were discharged from hospitals into care homes and because those were viewed as their homes, at the start ppe was non existent for staff and residents.
What happened? An enormous amount of them died without proper medical attention because they were old and vulnerable.
That's what would have happened to far more people if we'd just cracked on and collapsed into bed when we had to.
People forget just how bad it was, the lockdowns were absolutely necessary because unlike Sweden most the UK population has a pretty poor standard of living and health.
Lockdowns were a necessity but if we hadn't had them things would have collapsed pretty fast.

Whatever one's views on the necessity of lockdowns, deliberately using fear as a behavioural tool was a disgusting thing to do, and witnesses the amount of judgement of others that followed on from that genuinely changed how I see society.

No we didn't.
It was to stop the NHS becoming overwhelmed.
NHS staff are not immune to Covid , some shielded, some pregnant, some had severe MH problems.
So as it was we had huge numbers of staff absent.
If Covid had been allowed to run, the NHS would have been overwhelmed with NO staff to care for them let alone try to keep any services running.
It was a nightmare as it was with staff who left due to PTSD.
I can believe people are so dim they can't grasp this

thank you EvelynPlummer.

Like you JenniferBooth I’m politically homeless. What makes me laugh the most about Labour’s position on lockdowns/restrictions and their gaslighting is “Beergate.” In other words when Starmer and 16 other party grandees were mingling In Mary Foy’s office in Durham in April 2021.
The official Labour position at the time and in the run up to that when the UK government outlined the plan for relaxing restrictions was, “too fast, too soon.” Let’s not forget the original planned “freedom day” as it was being dubbed was delayed thanks to Labour calling for it.

Just over 2 months after Beergate had happened but before we knew what went on, Starmer called the decision to lift all restrictions in England in July 2021 as “reckless.” https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/19/keir-starmer-condemns-reckless-decision-to-lift-covid-restrictions

Come on! Surely to God anyone can see that privately Starmer and co didn’t really believe in the worth of restrictions. Why else would you have been mingling with that many people who clearly didn’t all live in the same household indoors otherwise? So basically their official position was a load of hokum.

The point for me about Beergate isn’t whether the “rules” were broken or not. The point is the only “opposition” from Labour was when the government was trying to return to some semblance of normality but privately Labour grandees were doing what the heck they liked. It’s unforgivable.

It was disgusting and I can understand why it worked. As mentioned in an earlier post, I have started but to date never finished reading Laura Dodsworth’s book about this, “A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic.” That book was published in May 2021 and the weaponising of fear was still going on. I’ve not been able to finish reading the book yet because I feel the anger rising after a few pages. It is a challenging read but worth it for anyone, particularly those who have managed to not learn about what the “nudge unit” was doing.

There’e a short chapter within the book that also just collects some of the bonkers the mainstream press ran with during 2020 and early 2021. It’s enough without any commentary to underline how piss-poor the UK press was on the whole too.

One of the other really interesting topics covered is the Chinese government’s propaganda from the early days in 2020. I remember some of the fake clips that were doing the rounds and are described. All I’ll say is it’s worrying.

I haven’t read the book but I have had a bit to do with behaviour change campaigns

Of course saying anything on here on messaging was a total shit show

Children and young people caught the brunt of that created fear

A lot of people I know aren’t the same. I get irritable in a crowd and annoyed by all the people. I used to be quite socially anxious when I was younger but overcame it. I think lockdown has set me backwards again.

They put people against each other, anyone that didn't agree was called selfish or told they'd kill their granny. The daily press conference was propaganda at its worst. It was deliberately put out to scare people.

I remember walking the wrong way round the supermarket and the looks i was given you'd think I had knocked over some old dear. I was in my local town doing the stupid one way system when I needed a shop on the other side so I walked across the middle, got told off by a covid Marshall. There was no one on the other side!

The thing that actually made me cry though was going to sainsburys for bread and cat food and watching some selfish cow fill up a trolley with cat food leaving the shelves empty. I've never forgotten that or people saying Easter eggs should be banned for some bizarre reason.

No we didn't.
It was to stop the NHS becoming overwhelmed.
NHS staff are not immune to Covid , some shielded, some pregnant, some had severe MH problems.
So as it was we had huge numbers of staff absent.
If Covid had been allowed to run, the NHS would have been overwhelmed with NO staff to care for them let alone try to keep any services running.
It was a nightmare as it was with staff who left due to PTSD.
I can believe people are so dim they can't grasp this.

It's completely overwhelmed now, anyway.

Yes we needed some kind of action but the manner in which lockdown was imposed and perpetuated with deliberate fear inducing propaganda was just utterly wrong.

(I can't seem to quote on this thread, and the asterisks seem to have produced italics)

The Easter egg nonsense was perhaps the police's fault. At least, they didn't help.

If you think I'm exaggerating read Plague History and think about the population then compared to now.

The difference being that the plague was far far deadlier.