To feel like the only person following the f***ing rules??!!

[Stressingismyhobby]

I know the social distancing rules are contradictory, confusing and mostly bollocks but I don't think I'm above them and follow them as closely as possible.

But hardly anyone else I know does. I've just seen a picture of a friend wearing a mask in a taxi...to go to her friend's house with a load of other friends. All pictured together huddled on the sofa.

A family member keeps posting pics on FB with her kids gathered with all their friends.

And I've been invited to a party in a week's time at someone's house with lots of other people.

Videos of kids running to hug both their grandparents (my kids would love to do that!)

We met with some friends outside a week or two ago who also (without us knowing) invited other people so our group was bigger than 6.

I had to say no to giving someone a lift in my car the other day.

And so it goes on.

I feel like I'm the boring, goody two shoes who's always having to decline invites or say things like "I'm not really sure we're supposed to do that yet" etc only to be met with sighs or rolled eyes. I'm constantly being put in situations that make me feel uncomfortable. I'm made to feel like the bloody fun police who is making live difficult for everyone!

Anybody else feel like this???

Try to stop getting stressed about other people's actions, you cannot control them. All you can do is control your own behaviour.
Sometimes other people's actions may have a direct effect on you, mostly they won't.
If someone else is breaking THE RULES, it's not up to you to make them behave/follow the rules.
Give up getting angry with other people because of the way they behave.
It's like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.
It's not your problem and you can't fix it.

I no longer know what the rules are. I've really let go of trying to follow. It just seems like something from another world that I don't live in.

If I were one of the demographic most affected, ie “old” or with underlying health conditions, I’d be staying at home to avoid being infected.

You do realise that the "underlying health conditions" group is about 20 million people? Many of whom are at work - teachers, bus drivers, drs, nurses, shop workers, police officers, paramedics, office staff... - they don't have the option to stay at home. As of 1st August even the most vulnerable, the shielded, will be back at work and exposed to all the pub goers and social distance avoiders.

[quote TheFormidableMrsC]@EnlightenedOwl What a nasty, ignorant comment.[/quote]
Its honestly amazing how many covid front line heroes there are. Look. It's a job, they are paid to do it, and be honest look at all the freebies handed out to reward the heroes. While some people have lost jobs and homes and they don't get free entry here, free meals there. And some of those benefiting from the freebies have done nothing for months as the NHS literally shut up shop and became a covid service.

I'm following the rules, when this is over I want to know that I did everything I could to stop myself potentially passing a killer virus onto another person. That's important to me

@CountreeGurl

I'm following the rules, when this is over I want to know that I did everything I could to stop myself potentially passing a killer virus onto another person. That's important to me

Good for you

@Stressingismyhobby

To be fair, this thread really highlights (as if we weren't all acutely aware) what an awful job the government has done. "Guidelines" and "advice" don't work in a crisis- we needed actual rules and laws that are not open to interpretation.

It doesn't highlight the awful job that the Government have done. It highlights how that Stasi was able to flourish and gain control. Because so many people want to report, tell tales on, keep a strict control over other people's behaviour. It's quite shocking.

This pandemic has really highlighted unpleasant aspects of human nature.
As a PP said it's been a wet dream for a certain type of person .

You are getting a hard time here @Stressingismyhobby which I think reflects real life. I’m with you - and really fed up with being treated like some kind of weirdo fun-sponge. Yes I’d love to come to your house party, share lifts with you, get a home facial... but it’s not safe enough yet. I’m ok with meeting in a pub garden but not when others don’t respect my need for social distancing. It’s so shit because I really want to go out more and do more things but self-appointed experts with 1 science GCSE seem to know better than actual real professionals- making it more risky for everyone.

I’m with you OP. I shop for cancer patients. I owe it to them to do the best I can to keep them safe. It really pisses me off when other people don’t give a fuck. Don’t they think my poor patients have suffered enough?

You can't blame people for breaking the rules when they are strange and confusing Even the hscottish rules have become a bit weird and confusing very suddenly

If you are 11 you can hug your grandparent if you are 12 you can't.. Unless your parent and grandparent are single adult households then its OK

You must keep 2ms apart from your colleagues but it's going to be OK to be 1m apart from the people at the next table in the pub.. What if the people at the next table are your colleagues!?

You can let someone get close enough to cut your hair or do your nails but sitting beside my brother on the couch is not allowed

I can see why people are like eh?..ill decide for myself thank. You very much

I’m with you OP. Some people are ridiculously naive. The virus hadn’t gone and probably won’t have gone for years. You are not alone but I totally understand why you feel that way.

I feel the same. I was shielding and am now clinically vulnerable. I went out for the first time today since March. We had masks on, no one else did, but that is obviously their choice. What annoyed me was the people shoving past me, standing way too close, ignoring all of the rules about social distancing in the shop and then getting cross at the staff who were asking them to follow them.

I am doing my best to protect myself, but it was so difficult and stressful today that it has put me off going out again for a while. There are several new cases in my small area as well, can't imagine why.

Yep, you probably are.

@EnlightenedOwl

My post obviously touched a nerve for you. I just want to stay doing my normal boring job, the one I am paid to do. This is dependent on covid not flaring up again. I don't consider myself a hero and I never asked for freebies, and don't really agree with being offered them when I have total job security and like you said so many people have suffered financially. Sounds like lockdown has been hard for you, hope it gets better.

[quote Lostnameperson]@EnlightenedOwl
Disgusting, ignorant comment. We’ll be lucky if we have any nurses left wanting to do the job with attitudes like that![/quote]
Was just thinking the same Lostnameperson. A few weeks ago NHS staff were being praised and clapped for everything they had done to help those critically ill with Covid. Now people, like Stressingismyhobby, are fed up of hearing that the same staff actually risked their lives (and in some cases died) to treat and look after these critically ill patients!

It certainly says a lot about them and I do hope that if Stressing (and those like her) do catch Covid they crawl back under the stone they came from and don’t expect to be looked after by those she is “sick of hearing” about!

Oh,for god's sake, I'm not saying it's the same as drink driving, it was just an example of people interpreting a risk themselves rather than listening to expert advice

Well it’s a fucking idiotic thing to say.
And a shit example of that you were claiming to try to say.

You also say
“we needed actual rules and laws that are not open to interpretation”
... which contradicts the title of your thread 🤷‍♀️

You’re all over the place

@Whywhywhy321 you’ve got the wrong person I think? It’s not the op saying that about the nhs, it was enlightenedowl.

Apologies, I have got the names the wrong way round in my post. Lostname person should be PopcOrn and Stressingismyhobby should be EnlightenedOwl. At least I think it is . Too late at night!!

Thanks BanditoShipman, I realised I should have put EnlightenedOwl instead. I hope I’ve got it right now.

I feel the same as you op, but there is a great majority on here who will be condescending and nasty about you doing that, telling you they are not rules, but guidelines, that all you need to do is use your common sense, that the Government have got it wrong etc

All I know is that in a number of areas in this country cases continue to go up, I live in one of the top 10 we continue to move upwards with no explanation or ability to pin point why ( mainly it seems to crap data collecting, the larger testing sites haven’t bother to collect addresses or postcodes and certainly no one testing appears to have asked ethnicity of those being tested). But I bet the not following rules had a large part to play.

So I will continue to follow the rules, I don’t want it

The clapping thing was social media driven and it was the thing to do. On a par with the dreadful ice bucket challenge

Im only doing what ive done for years, anti-social don't like going out

This kind of conversation tends to lack nuance.

Some criminally irresponsible idiots have completely ignored all the rules all the way through. They have no excuse, and are no better than the kind of criminally irresponsible idiots who think speed limits don't apply to them.

Some overzealous busybodies have over interpreted the rules and tried to fanatically enforce them on all their neighbours. Their denunciation instinct would make the nazis proud.

In the middle, normal people, trying their best to balance their own self-interest, with the greater good of the wider community, by accounting for everchanging, confusing, and sometimes conflicting, pieces of public information on this unprecedented pandemic.

It's hard. We won't all agree on what's reasonable. That doesn't mean any of us "normal people trying their best" are wrong. Apart from extreme cases, there is simply not enough reliable information to know for sure what's the best course of action.

I try to follow government guidance. But sometimes it's completely unpractical. And you have balance them with other considerations. Mental health is hard to maintain. It matters too. Just like finances matter as well.

The good news is that numbers do seem, slowly, to be dropping. At least one thing we should all be able to agree is a good thing!

Yanbu op.

If it was only their lives they are risking then it wouldn't be so bad, they could crack on, but whatever they do is likely to eventually impact others.