I’m finding it so depressing that a poster on here thinks that that all the behaviour changes so far have been about ‘protecting vulnerable people’ (!!!!!!)
This is just such wrong thinking, though I guess the government phrased it as such so I can’t blame that individual too much. I wish people would think though!
However, it’s easier to emote, as if it’s those pesky ‘vulnerable people’ who have been making everyone stay inside, and then do social distancing, then it’s ok to fall into the mindset the poster has ... & I paraphrase:
Now they are ‘fed up doing it, because they’ve been having to be careful ‘because of vulnerable people’ for months, and after all, its time for the turn of other people now
ie. I’ve been kind, I’ve done my bit ‘for others’, now I want to think about me, vulnerable people have had enough!
Which is all fine and dandy except that ‘vulnerable people’ haven’t actually had their ‘turn’ at all! They took a body blow for everyone else, and no one seems to realise that.
‘Shielding’ wasn’t about the general population ‘being kind’ to vulnerable people, it was strongly ‘persuading’ those who would take up NHS resources to get out of general circulation, and isolate themselves, for months.
People did it because they didn’t want to die. Some people are STILL shielding, because it’s so risky for them to catch the virus. But that our individual motivation for compliance.
The government and the rest of society wanted us sickly types gone quick quick licketty split, so we didn’t take the beds and oxygens machines and ventilators that you, the ‘non vulnerable’ people wanted to have.
Of course there needed to be tough decisions, but the government used the virus to show horn in some lovely new decisions of their own, which were unnecessary and very much about policy changes by stealth. I won’t go into it all now but it’s nasty stuff, really nasty.
Anyway, I wish people like that poster would see through the rhetoric and understand: Shielding was just a nice name for it. It’s not caring and ‘everyone in it together’. It wasn’t YOU shielding US, it is US shielding YOU.
It also didn’t have anything to do with the wider lock down in terms of you guys suffering in lock down for us more vulnerable types.
And trust me, I’d take the lock down rules over the shielding rules anyway. I’m gradually coming out of shielding and have been on lock down type behaviours which have been wonderfully freeing.
Nope, the more vulnerable made way for the less vulnerable. No mistake.
Which would have been ok. It’s just now, when people won’t even do us the courtesy of following basic rules that would allow us to live peacefully like you... it’s yet another unequal sacrifice thats too much to swallow. Sorry mixing metaphors there!
I just get so riled by someone glibly saying that ‘we’ve had our turn and now we should move aside and let others do whatever they want because ‘it’s not fair’’, when really the opposite is true.
Anyway. I know that this isn’t what you said OP. But it was posted by someone else on this thread so I picked up on it. I’m seeing it everywhere at the moment.