To feel like we are just existing now

[Ghostlyglow]

In a miserable, joyless world of queues and masks. A couple of friends have lost their jobs this week. Where are we going with this?When will it end?

That was a brilliant post Moondust001

👏👏👏👏

I couldn’t agree with you more.

This thread and the others like it just prove Dominic Cummings strategy is working... get them to argue between themselves, set social group against social group, young against old, parents against childfree....

and no one will notice that this government and their austerity regime antics are precisely to blame for our country coming off worst in the world.

Cummings was elected by precisely no one, yet he is directly responsible for the state of our nation.

Oh, and if you think 2020 is bad, wait till 2021 and the no deal Brexit. Gove has confirmed no request to extend the transition period and we will be royally fucked.

Better start re stocking those toilet rolls....

Short term pain for long term gain.

Open everything up too soon and all the sacrifices we have made will be in vain, and the numbers will shoot up again. It's a balancing act. Be patient, time it right and we'll be back to normal more quickly.

Those who want it all now, are potentially making it worse for themselves in the future.

The NHS built capacity and coped admirably. Is coping. It's not coping at all. Waiting lists are rising. People needing urgent treatment for other conditions aren't getting it. A second wave will probably finish the NHS for good.

Someone posted this a couple of pages back and it's just wrong. The NHS isn't overwhelmed. People aren't getting their treatment for other conditions because the NHS is almost solely focused on COVID. And because there aren't nearly as many cases as anyone well Neil Ferguson predicted, vast swathes of the NHS staff are sitting around with nowt to do. That's why the backlogs are building. They need to start up normal services again.

It might be worth you contacting a local group for some help

that's exactly what I wrote! And I got abused for it!

I am sorry if I appear antagonistic when I am trying to show I am not goady, I am just expressing my point.

I am not going to apologise for wishing for a stricter and SHORTER lockdown, instead of having not just 2 short holidays cancelled, but an entire summer too!. Some of us are not dementor and trying to be down all the time, but we are not enjoying the state of things either. Just because we are nowhere near house arrest doesn't mean we enjoy being stuck in the UK for the foreseeable future.

zingally I have stopped going for walks too, can't be bothered any longer. Same with books, I can't focus. it's horrible.

Short term pain for long term gain.

More like medium term pain for long term even worse pain.

People probably won't like this viewpoint but I think that younger people are being mentally and economically thrown under the bus to keep a lot of old folks, many with dementia, alive another few months or a year. My mom has had coronavirus and my whole family were philosphical about it, including her. She's 79. I've been going out for long walks since the beginning, I'm getting on trains for non necessary journeys now too. I don't care. My mental health comes first. The only way this is going to end is if it can pass through the population in a controlled way, ie keep R=1. But people are too cowardly to admit that. It's this cowardice that's pissing me off more than anything.

@Nihiloxica

Short term pain for long term gain.

More like medium term pain for long term even worse pain.

True.

@overnightangel

This pandemic has certainly highlighted how many people basically see schools as a free babysitting service

Whatever you believe the function of schools to be, they are not free for people who are paying school fees. I wish people would stop trotting out the "free babysitting" line.

I wonder how many people would have children if they were told in advance that it would entail giving up their jobs, extended families, and social lives all day, every day? And that they would also have to be their children's teachers every single day, without the skills, knowledge, resources to do this job, and without any face-to-face support from another living human?

The 'school as babysitter' comment is very hackneyed now, and ought to be retired.

DH and I have taken up doing jigsaw puzzles. Much to both our astonishment, we love doing them! We are both doing our three times a week workout, doing squats clutching a 10KG bag of jasmine rice instead of a power bag, and tricep dips on the dining chairs. But I still voted YANBU. This whole situation has seriously disrupted the normal we love. No restaurants open, masks everywhere, feeling like other humans are carrying leprosy - or maybe we are - who knows. Grocery shopping has morphed into a masked queue in the rain, no one speaks, dystopian nightmare. I know it'll get easier as stuff opens up, in the meantime, just trying to find new sources of enjoyment.

The 'school as babysitter' comment is very hackneyed now, and ought to be retired.

as some people still confuse education and childcare, I can't see that happening any time soon.

How the hell can we view the school as a babysitting service as when covid isn’t around we’re fined if the children don’t attend!!!! You can’t gave it both ways 🙄

This whole situation has seriously disrupted the normal we love.

Of course, but we can't magic the virus away. We have to work with the options we have and try to get the balance right.

I'm sure those making the decisions, would also love to get back the normal they love, but they have to balance this with everything else to ensure the safest and overall quickest, return to that normal we love.

@crystaltree me too! I'm not doing train journeys but I'm definitely doing other things that are strictly not allowed. Because the rules make absolutely no sense in proportion to the actual risk, and when rules make no sense you shouldn't stick to them just because someone says so. Especially when that someone can't actually stick to the rules themselves.

So we all do exactly what we want and bugger the bigger picture?

Yep. The government's strategy is to get the little people fighting between themselves, so we're not looking at them. It's morbidly fascinating the way the groups have been fighting on MN:
Smug preppers v evil panic buyers
Online shoppers are murdering warehouse staff v we love our deliveries
Rainbow lovers v "rainbows are offensive; they symbolise trapped children"
I won't send them to school v we need the schools back right now
You can't because Saint Boris said so v use your common sense (ask Saint Dominic, the patron saint of common sense)

Lockdown was the biggest mistake,

Saved 450,000 lives in the UK according to the BBC yesterday, and several million throughout Europe.

@ShebaShimmyShake

I hate waking up. I get no pleasure looking after my daughter, I get no pleasure in working, I get no pleasure in my husband. I hate waking up and thinking how to fill the coming day. I'm done with shitty crafts and all the rest of it. Just done. For the first time ever, I wish I were single and without children so I could stay in bed all day and at least waste all this time honestly in the way I want to.

I could have written that

I feel for you op.

I don't think this is a government plan at all, this is very damaging to any political party. It will be almost impossible to win a future election with this hanging over the country. CoVid is the last thing any government needs apart from the autocratic/dictatorships.

The division to my mind is being fed mainly by the media. The UK is broadly a country with general consensus, not on everything, but on a great many things. The levels of stress that people are suffering, encouraged by SM and other platforms simply work to reinforce entrenchment. We could all do with being more moderate, more considered and not quite so fixed in our view. What happened to everyone's view counts? Even those we don't agree with, that is what has changed, differences of opinion have always existed.

Beyond fed up this isn't a life

The only thing I have to say is that having nursed people with the Coronavirus it's most definitely NOT "a bad cold".

Couldn't read any further once I read that load of rubbish.

i hope people will come out of this with a little more empathy for the disabled and housebound.

i’m in the shielding group. but nothing changed for me. i’m disabled and live with chronic pain. i’ve been housebound since november when my car broke down and i couldn’t afford to get it fixed. i haven’t been able to go for blood tests until now, as i have no transport. my friend has just had a negative covid test so she can now drive me to medical appointments but this is a new and exciting development.

so, while lockdown eases and people can go out to shops and zoos and parks, spare a thought for the people whose lives are just...on hold.

my physical and mental health are shit. i’m waiting for 2 vital surgeries with no idea when they might happen. i was housebound before, this is just an extension of that.

so yeah. everyone crack on with ‘it’s just a bad cold, nobody’s forcing you to stay home’. if i get covid, it’s likely to cause massive complications and i could die. not really on my to-do list aged 47.

a little empathy goes a long way.

I’ve just got to the point now where I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up. I had a lot going on before lockdown and things are much worse now. If there was a light at the end of the tunnel I would feel like there is hope of being happy again.
I feel like a failure with the homeschooling too and my children were doing so well at school. It’s such a fucking shame.

Why don't you all just watch a comedy like Fawlty Towers on the telly to cheer yourselves up?

Oh, wait...

My kids are miserable, I'm miserable, I'm a teacher and massively stressed with my job, dh is furloughed and climbing the walls. I want to wake up and it all be over. Every time someone tells me they're "loving lockdown" I feel worse. Honestly if you're enjoying this you need to reevaluate your life before.
Everything takes longer, everything is more difficult.
Kids are missing friends, I'm missing my mum and my hairdresser and having friends over and I've cancelled 3 holidays (I know first world problem 2 were in the UK). I'm missing watching my daughter play football on a Saturday morning, taking my son to school, the pub, the coffee shop..
The worst part is having no end in sight, I can't plan my calendar only has the days I'm in work or meetings on it, no fun stuff.