To think young people have been totally forgotten ??

[Mossang3l]

I was watching something earlier and it was the very elderly talking about how the community has come together to take care of them. Christmas dinners, companionship, gifts, phone calls, check ins etc. Wonderful. I’m very happy they are being looked after.

But it’s really struck a chord with me. There is NOTHING like this to look after the young even though they are sacrificing so much for everyone else.

They don’t have careers or adult social connections, they’re probably single, they’re missing their educations and exams, they’re probably the highest percentage to have lost their jobs, they can’t see their friends, their future prospects have been reduced massively (through the economy, educational inequalities, brexit etc).

They’re all lonely and isolated and scared and all that adults seem to do is bitch about students and the young. They’re moaned about and criminalised just for being young (well they were is September anyway but it’s stuck I fear). Far too many of them are committing suicide and yet still nothing happens.

My daughter (20) lost her job and can’t get a new one, hasn’t been into uni once and is so lonely. She signed up to volunteer with every organisation she could find and hasn’t heard back from a single one.

Surely we need to be doing more to help the young ? I fear they are being totally forgotten and may be having the worst time of all.

@HeyBaby2020 maybe read madhairdays post and learn something ?
Those vulnerable to covid aren't solely the obese and 90 year olds, they may be your colleage with mild asthma on monteluc, a friend with breast cancer undergoing chemo or a your child's teacher who's got stage 3 renal disease.
Have a heart

My 10 year old is medically vulnerable, he isn't sick, he isn't old. He has learning disabilities and complex needs, has been shielding for the majority of this year....no vaccine in sight, talk about forgotten eh!

Yup. It's teens that will suffer the msot... They are called formative years for a reason.

I’m not sure why people have to turn this into a competition about who has lost “the most”. Why can’t we just acknowledge that many people have suffered, teens and early 20s (the subject of this thread) amongst them?

And yes, @BaddestDaughter we are middle class professionals, but no, we most certainly haven’t been sitting comfortably on our arses at home. What a ridiculous generalisation. We have been going out to work throughout, dealing with the sickest COVID (and other) patients. Doesn’t change the fact that I feel sad for my son and what he has missed out on this year.

[quote Schonerlebnis]@HeyBaby2020 maybe read madhairdays post and learn something ?
Those vulnerable to covid aren't solely the obese and 90 year olds, they may be your colleage with mild asthma on monteluc, a friend with breast cancer undergoing chemo or a your child's teacher who's got stage 3 renal disease.
Have a heart [/quote]
No 😴

Agree with Xenia.

And whilst I'm at it, no way would I be dosing up the over 70s with the vaccination. I'd have started with HCP's. Then the clinically vulnerable. Then teachers. Then parents. Then over 60s etc etc.

@SleepingStandingUp

Young adults have definitely had to give up the most as far as restricting their normal activities for the benefit of others they've given up exactly the same as everyone else.

Yes I've had to give up clubbing, going to gigs, playing sports, socialising with my mates, having the university experience I expected, to stay at home, so that a virus that has a minute chance of making me ill doesn't spread. Oh no, hang on I haven't, because I don't do most of those things, or only very occasionally, because I'm middle aged and did all of those things 30 plus years ago. Yes, I want to be able to go for drinks or a meal with friends, or go to the theatre, but they're not things I normally do every week anyway, and I'm still going to work full-time, so my life feels pretty normal most of the time. Don't get me wrong I can't wait to be able to do things I did before, but in reality I'd normally be at work or home a lot of the time anyway.

[quote Schonerlebnis]@HeyBaby2020 maybe read madhairdays post and learn something ?
Those vulnerable to covid aren't solely the obese and 90 year olds, they may be your colleage with mild asthma on monteluc, a friend with breast cancer undergoing chemo or a your child's teacher who's got stage 3 renal disease.
Have a heart [/quote]
Single me out as well why don’t ya! Not the only one that agrees!

It is a fucking disgrace this country is a joke

It is a disgrace because for a virus that only really affects so little out of the population people have had to give up an awful lot

My heart goes out to anyone that has lost someone, but if it was me dying I would want life to carry on and not let life just stop and ruin the future for my loved ones remaining because my god will we be paying for this for years to come ....

I kind of wish I’m not around to see it and I’m only 26

@BaddestDaughter

And in fact I wonder if this narrative about young people being most impacted is driven by the middle class perspective.

The parents who feel that most has been lost by students are maybe middle class professional parents who have been able to work from home throughout and so the only people in their immediate circle whose circumstances have been affected are their own children?

Because actually where I'm standing, with lots of friends on minimum wage, all of us older, so precarious anyway before you even factor in the effects of covid exposure and possible economic national meltdown during middle age, it's been a lot more than what you do with the spare bedroom that you don't have anyway in your rented house.

I haven’t been replying to be people because I want everyone to freely express their opinions with no backlash as we are all feeling big emotions but I think this is an outrageous comment.

So many thousand of families have been pushed into poverty from this and this can really tear away at the young people’s future prospects. (Obviously it effects the whole family but my thread isn’t saying who has it ‘worse’ it’s just trying to discuss the issues regarding the young).

I could not be less middle class. My daughter has worked since 15, she’s had to contribute digs although I’ve hated to ask for it and now she’s worked so hard to get to a top Russell Group Uni, and lost her job and I don’t know how her rent will get paid next year ( expensive city, not covered by student loan, I can’t cover it although I WISH I could). That’s so shit and there’s no help for her.

And we are by no means the poorest in society by a long stretch. Youth homelessness is on the rise, drug addiction etc. Many foster children haven’t seen their parents since March.

It’s not just middle class complaining

Tbf that kind of deprivation - poverty, homelessness, addiction, foodbanks, poor education and employment prospects isn't new to many parts of the country. It didn't suddenly materialise with covid. Sadly it was hidden from many in this country who continue to vote the same fuckers in year in year out. Protect our NHS would never have been a thing with proper investment from a decent government. And the comment about libraries shutting, 5 out of 12 in our town were shut in 2012 due to austerity...

@Schonerlebnis

Tbf that kind of deprivation - poverty, homelessness, addiction, foodbanks, poor education and employment prospects isn't new to many parts of the country. It didn't suddenly materialise with covid. Sadly it was hidden from many in this country who continue to vote the same fuckers in year in year out. Protect our NHS would never have been a thing with proper investment from a decent government. And the comment about libraries shutting, 5 out of 12 in our town were shut in 2012 due to austerity...

It has actually increased massively throughout lockdown (poverty). 700,000 more people living in poverty that in March

@ReadyFreddy

Not going to gigs. 😂 Hardly compares to fighting in the Battle of the Somme at 18yo.

But we're not comparing with 18 year olds in 1916.

What I'm thinking of is how a young person whose life revolves around socialising with friends is far more affected, than somebody in their 30s with a partner and kids or someone in their 50s whose kids are young adults themselves.

give up clubbing, going to gigs, playing sports, socialising with my mates, having the university experience I expected, to stay at home, so that a virus that has a minute chance of making me ill doesn't spread.

I'd probably take that over having a fair chance of being knocked sideways health-wise by this thing but still having to get the bus to an £8.72 ph public facing job that I was scared of losing in the upcoming economic shitfest but that I had to do so I could make rent tbh with you. And I wouldn't take kindly to talk about missed gigs either.

Harsh though it is I don't understand why the over 80s are the vaccine priority. Young people who need to be out in the world working and being educated should be far higher up the tree than the over 80s who can easily isolate with very limited impact on them.
My parents are in their 70s. They go nowhere much (never did, even before Covid and now even less) and are happily retired. They will be vaccinated long before me (mid 40s and a secondary teacher). It's senseless.

What I'm thinking of is how a young person whose life revolves around socialising with friends is far more affected, than somebody in their 30s with a partner and kids or someone in their 50s whose kids are young adults themselves not everyone in their 30s is married with kids, not everyone in their 50s is married with kids. Some of them have been alone and not able to go "home to parents" , have also had to give up socialising and travelling, have lost a year of finding a partner, TTC. Lots of people in their 20s are married / partnered with kids.
Of my fellow school mom's, most are on their 20s. Is this somehow harder for them that those of us in our 30s and 40s?

I’d have imagined that somebody in their 30s with a partner, kids and a mortgage is going to be much more distraught at losing their job than a young person who can’t go out. Most young people don’t have dependents and haven’t really built up much they can lose. All this will be a distant memory by the time they’re 25.

Yes, sorry I should have reiterated that I was responding to a previous post about how everyone's day to day activities were being restricted in the same way, rather than how any specific demographic is going to be affected in the long term. My point was just that young people who generally socialise outside of the home, often in large groups, in many different ways, have had all normal activities taken away, even though they, by and large will be at very little risk from the virus themselves.

It's shit for almost everyone ( I know some on here would be perfectly happy to be locked down for another year), so we could argue all day whether it's worse to be working outside of the home, but at higher risk of catching it, or to be 80 years old and stuck at home, or to be wfh with kids around etc.- everyone will have a different perspective.

@ReadyFreddy

Fair enough, I agree that day to day young people are more curtailed, even if it's partly because they have lives with reduced responsibility. I'll admit I'm probably a bit hard on today's youth tbh, but so many of them seem a bit snowflakey for want of a better adjective. Guys with silly pencil moustaches sitting on social media telling off people twice their age for not being PC/woke enough. Many seem a far cry from youths back in the 90s who would be partying at any opportunity and up to all manner of things, which they'd later grow out of.

Wow how judgemental you sound!

Young people live lives with reduced responsibility precisely because they're young. And it's only for afew years whilst we're young that we can live this way. And covid is essentially taking these few years away from us - what are meant to be the best years of our lives.

If we 'partied at any opportunity' and 'got up to all manner of things' now we'd be called feckless and accused of murdering vulnerable people.

The vast majority of the youth don't sit on Twitter lecturing other people on being 'woke'. You've zoomed in on a very specific stereotype there

And feeling hopeless in a pandemic where every single support system of our friends, partners, university and work taken away isn't 'snowflakey'. It's a natural reaction to having everything you enjoy life taken away from you for 9 months and ongoing. With the addition of economic disaster waiting for you before you've even got to start a career or get on the housing ladder. All the while being stereotyped by people like you as feckless, selfish, to blame for the new spike, and 'snowflakey'.

Makes me laugh the moment about gigs, clubbing etc.

I'm in my late 30s and still go to festivals and clubs. All thats changes is instead of flying to another country for a festival ir going to a club I've been partying in my house to all the numerous streams by DJs making friends around the world.

So I dont buy into all this crap thsy are missing out when there is so many virtual events taking place.

Rather than moan about stuff embrace the temporary new way and find ways to still do the things you feel like your missing out on, albeit slightly differently.

I miss other stuff like going to museums but there have been lots of virtual tours too.