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.

It wasn’t ‘a couple of months staying at home’ though was it? It was March to July-ish, then the following Jan-July we were restricted massively.

No it wasn't. In Scotland we never got any respite in summer or autumn 2020. In Glasgow it was illegal to have anyone in your house from March 2020 to about June 2021. Two years of masks, finally dropped at Easter 2022. My eldest started uni in October 2021, his first year was fully online because of restrictions.

We know some people loved the whole thing and thrived with the slower pace of life. Good for them. But at least have the decency to recognise that for lots of people it was (and still is) a real struggle, and certainly more than a couple of months not going out.

Really!

oh well sorry for grieving, I should have thought of this when my dh was dying from cancer.. that was missed and then delays in chemo due to lockdown.

Yes.

OH still has to semi-shield because he has cancer and is immuno-compromised. He's very worried about the risk of catching covid (and other infections). He was before Covid, but we did go out a bit (not overly crowded places), and he was just about OK with using hand gels, etc. The lockdowns etc really screwed with his mind and even know he is very reluctant to go anywhere there is a risk of lots of people - he still wants to keep 2 metres from others so that really limits where we can go and what we can do. Not helped by his oncologist basically telling him at the start of lockdowns not to go anywhere indoors and not to go socialising etc - he's taken it to heart! Didn't help that the one time he caught covid was at the hospital when he had to go in for an appointment and no one (not staff nor patients) seemed remotely interested in infection control and patients were crammed into a tiny waiting area with no ventilation (that was back in 2020 when they should have been taking precautions!).

My business was adversely affected and I've lost over half my clients, most of whom were small businesses who didn't survive the lockdowns. I'm trying to market and advert for new clients, but so are all my competitors and the number of small businesses has declined dramatically, so very hard to get new clients as so many firms chasing a very small number of potentials.

Slowly getting life back on track. DH's business collapsed due to COVID and we ended up with a lot of debt that we'll be paying off for at least another two years.

I had to deal with some awful MH stuff - when I was a child I was abused by someone who used to cover my nose and mouth while abusing me. I've never been able to cope with any face covering as a result. Mask rules were hell - wearing a mask triggered the worst flashbacks and a lot of the narrative about people who didn't wear masks echoed a bunch of stuff my abuser said - no one would believe me, they would just think I was attention seeking, I deserved to be punished for making a fuss (he used to stop me breathing as a punishment) and I had a total breakdown.

I'm doing better now but ended up in a very bad way and I still don't really trust people any more.

Yes, this! Maybe only a few months of the "proper" lockdowns, but restrictions were in place, on and off, for 2 years, with varying degrees, especially when the stupid "tiers" were in force, when people in one town were allowed to socialise, but those in a town just a few miles away weren't!

And yes, Uni students suffered a full year (if not more) of being trapped in Uni flats with entire universities being closed down, nearly all staff at home, entire subject blocks closed, college common rooms closed, libraries closed, clubs and societies cancelled or wholly online, etc. At my son's Uni, they were still on "online only" for some course modules throughout the second covid year, i.e. 21/22.

Lockdown set off a chain of events that have proper fucked me and my family over.
At first, it was peaceful enough and a slower pace of life in our block of rented flats. Then the druggie neighbour went stir-crazy, took a load of god-knows-what and decided trying to kick our door in to stab us was a good idea. Our Landlady didn't want to deal with it, put the property on the market early 2021 which was bought by property developers, they evicted everyone to turn their homes into Airb'n'b's (so much more popular post-Covid). We have been desperately searching since then to find a new home - everyone knows what the housing market is like now. We were only lucky the Landlords didn't follow eviction procedures properly the first few times, but now, we have until May to find somewhere. The CoL crisis has made this near-impossible, what with rents increasing to staggering levels. So we've resigned ourselves to being shunted into a B&B somewhere, and most services that could possibly help us are on their knees and we are effectively forgotten.
All of our mental health are in the gutter, and the effect of constant stress on my physical health has been disastrous.

@AnotherCrazyBirdLady poor you, what a nightmare. I’m so saddened at how I meet people from all over the country from very different walks of life who have such terrible stories of what the effects of lockdown have done to their businesses, families and mental health.

I think people might be mis-remembering the length of lockdowns in both directions.

Restrictions began late March 2020 and didn’t fully lift until late July 2021.

16 months of restrictions (imposed restrictions, obviously some people shielded for longer).

Same

For young people too. And the efforts to minimise were horrendous (and still some on this thread)

Personally, I consider the whole thing to be ancient history now. I don’t spend any time thinking about lockdowns and life is back to normal for me now, and in many ways better than before Covid.

I sympathise with those who are still feeling the effects of lockdown but I’m surprised people are still talking about it in 2024 (only see this on MN, however).

Have you read the thread?

You’d probably be still talking about it too if you’d dealt with the same

I think it’s made people far more self centered & less caring for others in the community. It’s also made people incredibly anxious and less resilient about basic things, like leaving the house or socialising. Very sad.

Agree. Yeh it was more awful for some than others I get that but it’s definitely time to move on. It’s over, in the past.

This is exactly how I feel. Genuinely sometimes forget it happened.

I'm so sorry to read this, please accept my sympathies

My social life hasn’t recovered. Friends don’t really want to go out now. A close friend changed massively in lockdown, sucked into a nutty YouTube vortex I think, and still talks about Covid case numbers.

Groups I was a part of stopped meeting face to face. Some switched to online-only permanently. I can’t bear Zoom.

I volunteered during lockdown so was able to go out, and I also cope well in isolation so it didn’t have a massive impact on my MH at the time. There were aspects I enjoyed but in retrospect I can see how damaging it all was, and I’m so bloody fed up of it being used as an excuse for shite customer service.

The effect on the NHS is devastating.

Yes I am still affected. I was put on furlough then made redundant during the first summer, then I caught Covid at Christmas 2021 and haven't been well since. I started with gastroparesis at the same time as the Covid, no idea if the two are connectec or just coincidence, but the gastroparesis makes me vomit frequently, have nausea constantly most days and I have little appetite so struggle to eat and have lost weight to a point I look unhealthily thin. The Covid has left me with terrible fatigue and aches and pains all over my body. Like the way you feel when recovering from flu, but it has lasted over 2 years now.

I will start to feel like I am getting better then make another downturn. It didn't help that I caught Covid again in summer 2023 and that set my recovery back to zero.

Also, the first summer of lockdown was a long hot summer and my partner and I would sit outdoors drinking gin slings every day. I didn't realise I was slipping into alcohol addiction until it was too late and I ended up with a problem I am still trying to beat now.

I enjoyed lockdown. I can’t think of anything negative (if anything it gave my dad an extra 4 months to live).

I enjoyed having no pressure to go out and see people and the feeling off we are all in it together. I enjoy WFH which never would have happened without it.

So yeah all positive for me.

I am so glad to read this thread and am so sorry for everyone suffering.

@NoHappyEverAfter I'm so very sorry- I know several others for whom post covid has been terrible, health, finances, etc and going through it on your own is just awful - if I could give you a big hug I would . I must admit my friendships have kind of changed- people I know seem a lot less spontaneous -

I’m largely OK I think but I still feel a bit resentful that I lost my job, my world has become smaller, some friendships have changed and probably wont be back to how they were.

I can’t cope with the demands of life in the same way as I did before (not that I was brilliant beforehand). The lockdown fundamentally changed me.

Initially, I was so distressed at being locked in the house and not being able to access any green space, even for the ‘1 hour exercise’, but now I’m a home body. The outside world feels like a danger. Socialising tires me out to the point where I don’t bother any more. It’s as if I forgot how to interact with other people. I’m (still) having to actively teach myself how to speak/interact, and I’ve become very quiet, especially around new people.

Just to clarify I wasn't referring to those who have suffered awful losses , I did too.

@blackheartsgirl
I'm sorry for your loss
I worked in Cancer diagnostics prior to redeployment and I think the situation would probably have been the same or worse had we not locked down
We just managed to staff a skeleton diagnostics and treatment service during covid.
As I said before our staffing was decimated, without lockdown it would have been even worse.
You would think this would have made the government sit up and realise just how skilled staff are but no.

My extended family has been blown apart by lockdown. Resentments bubbled up over who could see or do what/ people became ill and couldn't be visited, then felt abandoned/ others relationships became strained because of being stuck together with no escape for long spells/ family members died and no-one could go to funerals/ house moves couldn't be accommodated/ some of us had to WFH and are still stuck in that rut as offices closed down. As a result of all this there have so been far, since lockdown: 1 mental health crisis, 3 family members going completely NC, 2 divorces, 1 family member moving to a distant town to escape everybody else, 1 lost job, 2 still WFH who would rather not. And none of this even begins to address strained friendships, child learning issues or ridiculous NHS waiting lists (same day GP appointments are but a distant memory!).

I don’t give it any thought. It was a weird time and it felt strange to not have control over my life, but I consider it an odd little adventure and I moved on.
I occasionally talk about it with friends and we laugh at how crazy the whole thing was- queues in shops, arrows everywhere to tell you where to walk, masks, odd atmospheres…
But other than that, I don’t give it a second thought really.

This is exactly how I feel. Genuinely sometimes forget it happened.*

I feel the same. Lockdown was good for me in many ways. However I am really shocked and saddened that people are struggling quite badly.