Evidence of the pandemic?

[LaceWingMother]

Just idly wondering whether it's clear from any aspect of my life that the covid era ever happened.

Fortunately, no one I knew died or became seriously unwell from it, DH and I don't work from home because of it, DC now going through secondary school as normal, I didn't make any large purchases linked to it (one friend built a home office and a feckless neighbour bought a now-neglected dog). Apart from a few face masks stuffed in a drawer and forgotten about, I don't think there's any evidence of it in the house.

Does the impact of the pandemic appear in your life now?

I work bank for nhs, I still wear a mask when I'm on shift. Haven't had covid, hoping to keep it that way

Well my mother died as a result of not receiving check ups from her cardiac consultant as she should so I’d say I’m living with the effects of the pandemic.

My mum died at home with us in our arms. It was horrendous. My son was so traumatised he’s never been the same since. It seriously messed him up emotionally. Bloody pandemic. I’ll never forget it.

Well guess that's ok for you. Not everyone. I am immunocompromised but not bad enough to qualify for any treatment. As is my DS - it's a risk to his life and certainly to his skills as if he gets covid the chances of his skills regressing is very high - he has learning disabilities so we definitely don't want that. To protect both our lives we all mask when out and about still as FFP3 masks protect us, in addition to everyone else who has forgotten about it (Lucky you eh?). And get increasingly abused for trying to stay alive as seemingly it sets a lot of people off when we try to do so.

I've had covid twice and it's been horrendous. Couldn't get out of bed for 2 to 3 weeks both times and have long covid from the first one and made worse by second infection. Luckily my DH could care for disabled son with SEN. Still suffering fatigue, breathlessness and now got a diabetes diagnosis - yes it linked. As its linked to heart attacks and strokes AND IT'S STILL VERY MUCH HERE! Just have a think about people who can't protect themselves and all of those that have died maybe?

My friend lost her husband and brother due to Covid. I lost an aunt. I worked throughout the lockdowns (in social care) as did my husband and we caught it multiple times. I ended up having a mental health crisis (which I never, ever thought would happen to me) just before Christmas during the second lockdown due to stress of shopping for 4-5 vulnerable people in my extended family, weekly, (remember being so physically and emotionally exhausted and with this baffles background awareness of many people saying what a fab time they were having, baking, redecorating, exercising etc ) , and (by far our main issue) being unable to physically see, cuddle and go out with my learning disabled young adult son who has many complex needs and being unable to have him over for Christmas and do the whole Santa experience for him. That broke me.. he just didn't understand.

I've been left with health anxiety for which I've had CBT and currently still on anxiety meds but personally know many people who had it far worse and live the effects now and always will as a result.

I really wish the masks in the drawer were the only reminders.

A dead dad, a mum who is still too scared to go outside. Both me and DP now work partly from home. 2 stone weight gain!

not really apart from living in another state, but not the one we first thought we would, the way they locked down put us right off moving there
We were planning on moving before covid, just there where changed

I have a new job, lost my other one due to vaccine mandates. New job is 100x better and i likely never would have got it cos i had no reason to leave my other job. So being sacked wasnt all bad in the end

Ive still never tested to this day. So to my knowledge, never had it and no havent been sick in that time, even when we moved, we didnt have to do isolation or test, we got lucky with a small free travel window between Qld and South Aus

Dont have any masks about as we never bought them in large amounts
No random sanitizer bottles

We were rural for a good chunk of it and life just kinda went on as normal.

There are many ways in which my life has been affected but very little of it is due to the disease itself. It is the overreaction to what should have been a short lived phenomenon that I blame for the adverse effects on me and mine.
I have an over anxious daughter in law and a grandson with speech delay.
I lost my home, friends, and a lifestyle I loved due to having to relocate.
Strained family relationships are only just being put back on an even keel.
My sons’ careers took a substantial
knock. Who knows if they will ever truly get back on track.
My husband lost two cousins because of delays in treatment due to the NHS becoming a covid only service.
I have a good friend so severely damaged by the vaccine that he needs 24 hour care.
No-one among my family and friends had anything more serious than a bad bout of flu so had it not been for the devastating and unnecessary restrictions and lockdowns I would hardly have known there was a problem.
I know some people have different stories to tell but still believe the whole episode was so badly handled that it will take the country decades to recover.

I saw that a lot here locally and all the old ladies usually out and about are no longer.

Chris Whitty should never have been put in charge. He never considered the big picture concentrating in a very narrow view of infection control without considering the unintended consequences of his advice.

You do know he wasn't in charge though, don't you? It was Ministers making the decisions. Whitty's role was to bring the evidence to the table and advise on next steps. Whitty and his team coordinated all tha SAGE groups and pulled together the expertise. Johnson and his team of elected officials - with advice from senior civil servants - made the decisions, supposedly balancing the scientific evidence with wider policy and public perceptions. I say this as someone who was working directly on this at the time.

It is very rare in the UK that one individual makes all the decisions.

It's true, you need politicians for that. This is why the 'follow the science' shit was so unhelpful. There was no unified 'the science' and a political decision had to be made about who and what to prioritise.

We need to be clear about the difference between the pandemic, and lockdown: they are two very different things, and it suits the politicians to mix them up. Evidence of the pandemic is, sadly, people ill or dead, or overworked. Evidence of lockdown is businesses destroyed, children and adults in terrible mental health, and in some cases, people ill or dead because they could not seek treatment for anything other than covid. And I think there's a third category: the vaccine, which we were bullied, bribed and coerced into taking, and told with 100% certainty that it would have no ill-effects, and that it would prevent infection.

The pandemic might have been an act of nature (although that is highly debatable, but not for this thread). Lockdown, on the other hand, was most certainly NOT an act of nature. That was the extremely panicked and damaging response, and has become synonymous with "pandemic". I've sometimes corrected people with "no, not because of covid: because of LOCKDOWN".

Politicians like to say "because of the pandemic". Nope, the reason that so many children are in a terrible place right now is because of LOCKDOWNS (in plural: politicians try to pretend there was only one, or none), which were a political choice. And even now, they're trying to pretend that lockdowns never happened, it was all "the pandemic". They're hoping that people might one day think "Lockdown? I believe that's something that schools do when there's a dog in the playground."

My dsis had long COVID and is still suffering the after effects of her immune system taking an absolute battering.

My stepfather died as a result of not being seen for an unrelated condition.

Despite all the negative effects of lockdown, I still think it was the right decision. We don't know how many would have died if we hadn't done it. People seem to forget that.

I agree, I likewise tend to correct people who blame covid/pandemic for things, but reminding them it was the lockdowns and restrictions which did the more widespread damage.

Take the economy. Huge numbers of small businesses simply don't exist anymore as they couldn't survive the lockdowns and restrictions, it's had a massive impact on retail, small cafes, guest houses, etc many of which never re-opened after the restrictions were lifted. The evidence is right in front of our eyes, especially in the less popular "tourist" areas. Places like the Lake District managed to bounce back to an extent (although there are still empty premises in prime destinations such as Ambleside!), but lesser resorts, places like less popular seaside resorts are still really struggling.

It's very easy, now, to forget just how chaotic and frightening a time it was.

The government was woefully unprepared for a pandemic, and Boris Johnson and his failure to either listen to the scientific advice or act on it swiftly or consistently, was largely responsible for a lot of the problems. Rishi Sunak's 'Eat Out to Help Out' caused untold issues, even though it did (presumably) help the hospitality industry.

Getting the vaccines as early as we did was, undoubtedly, a gamechanger. Sadly, though, as is the case with any vaccine, some people had adverse reactions.

What's very clear from this thread - which I hope @LaceWingMother has realised - is just how devastating the whole thing was.

I'm so sorry for those of you who have lost loved ones, due to Covid or them not getting proper healthcare, plus effects on children etc.. with all the illnesses going around now - flu, still Covid, RSV, myriad others, I'm still wearing N95 masks when I leave the house. I couldn't care less what people think, I haven't had Covid, not willing to risk it, last time I had a flu jab it knocked me out for the best part of a week, not doing THAT again.

I think you might have posted on the wrong thread @Pippyls67

Oh no! I meant to start one!! Thanks for pointing it out. Not sure what to do now. Gosh !

I’ve just reported it so hopefully it will be moved asap. I’m so sorry to all those who have shared their dreadful pandemic experiences. Please excuse my mistake.

We don’t forget it. We know that the so called cure was far worse than the disease. We might not have known at the beginning (March 2020) but we certainly knew by the end of April that year that lockdowns were having detrimental effects on children. The embryonic organisation Us4them showed the government the evidence then. And yet no one took any notice and we had devastating lockdowns and restrictions for another two years.
The oft repeated refrain that we don’t know how many more people would have died if it hadn’t been for lockdown is nothing but simple deflection. Across the world the outcomes were largely similar regardless of the severity of restrictions.

This 100%

Every western government that was in power during the pandemic has lost power in subsequent elections. People blame them for the way they handled an unprecedented situation. I disagreed with almost everything our government did at that time but am still grateful that we never had to find out what the socialists would have done.

That was meant as a response to Lacewingmother, sorry.