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.

@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.

You realise the youth of today have put their lives on pause to keep you same right ? And they’re the snowflakes ?

*keep you safe

You aren’t wrong, there was a new article recently I will see if I can find a link.

It talked about how the young are normally worse affected by recessions with job losses / money earnt. Unless the economy picks up there isn’t much we can do from that POV? I think working is a life line for most people, making friends, money, your own space and not being reliant on parents is amazing for mental health. I can’t even begin to imagine having to move back in with my parents, potentially ask for pocket money and have very little job prospects. It must be an awful time for so many people.

It did also state that a small percentage of over 50s who are often seen as too old to hire but too young to retire are also affected.

If anyone has any ideas on how we could tackle this I would be interested to hear them

@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.

What a silly post.

I’ve no doubt young people would prefer to be partying atm if only they didn’t have to consider older people at risk from a virus

@Arewethereyet21

Rather than vaccinating people in their 80s and 90s and older first they should be vaccinating school teachers etc. to get our kids back into school and back to a little normality. Older people should isolate until the vaccine can be rolled out. Except the majority of them won’t - I’ve heard time and time again from that age group that they want to live their lives and ‘when their time is up it’s up’. My primary school aged son cried when I told him schools were shutting again. I was really worried about him in the last lockdown and he’s only just getting back to normal and it’s happening again.

exactly this , iv got a friend in her sixties with copd and although shes too terrified of catching covid to come back to the workplace , its not stopping her going out when she wants to and shopping , when i was whinging about us getting put into tier 4 and how i felt it was time the elderly and vulnerable were told firmly to isolate , so the rest of us could just get on with it ,she got all arsey with me and started going on about how they need to go out and do things too . and then when the damn thing starts to spread like now , its the kids and students that get the bloody blame for it ! . makes me so annoyed . i suppose the only bonus i can think of to vaccinating the very elderly first is once they are done the rest of us wont have to be under restriction to protect them from catching it !

I'm in my mid/late 20s so not exactly a young person anymore but if you compare my friends to my parents friends they have definitely been affected more in terms of job losses, social lives etc. and I imagine for younger people it has been even worse. I have friends at uni wondering what the point is anymore others who have just graduated and have no hope of a decent job because so many companies have hiring freezes, friends who have been working for years to save to go travelling only to have plans cancelled and all the money lost, others who have lost jobs and been forced to move back home at in some cases to the detriment of there mental health.
This year has been very hard on everyone but I agree younger people are often expected to put up and shut up or risk being a 'snowflake' when they have every right to be finding it just as hard as an older person, small child or family unit.

@thetoughhaveleft

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.

It's not senseless. It's pure cold practicality in the face of a virus that makes the oldest sicker and leads to more deaths in that age group. More use of NHS resources in that age group. The more this group are vaccinated, the less burden on the NHS quicker, and the more the rest of society are able to relax restrictions.

Is this really, really not obvious to those who keep on and on about how we should vacconate the more deserving younger people first?

Daily on here I see people talking about how giving up their rights is leading to a worrying kind of dystopia. I tell you what I think is the dystopian narrative here, and that is this creeping, insidious annoyance and irritation at the old and the sick for causing the young and the healthy to have a lesser life for a while. You see it in the citing of the 377, discounting ALL those with ANY condition, however minor. You see it in the insistence that we should 'just shield', without researching the many, many medical papers and models which completely debunk any viability to that idea. You see it in the 'why are they getting vaccinated first?' scramble of places. You see it in the 'they're going to die anyway' rhetoric. In the 'my nan says she'd prefer to die than allow young people to suffer.' in the 'if I was vulnerable I wouldn't want to get in the way of the young and healthy getting on with their lives.

Step aside, disabled people. Lock yourself away, chronically ill people. Get out of my way, people with cancer. And most of all, just die anyway, people who are old.

My blood is running cold.

@Chimeraforce my 15 year old daughter hasn’t had the HPV vaccine either, she’s Y10, I’ve asked the school and they have no idea when it will be x

I agree. Totally and don't think this is acknowledged enough.
Protecting the very vulnerable 80 year olds, who should be shielding, is starting to wear a bit thin for me as a main policy.

3 kids at university here, over £60k this year in fees and living costs (ok mostly loans but have to be repaid) for no education for one, poor education for another and one has some proper teaching but 1/3 of last autumn

@Salapandas

With respect that's for primary aged kids who should be living with parents anyway, my kids range from 19-23 and all are meant to be living independently but are stuck with us parents/grandparents/boyfriends family respectively (they got to choose, it meant everyone got a room, we had downsized as they didn't live with us!)

No one cares about the young in this Boomer-centric society.

The best thing we can do for students now is to cancel their student loans for 19/20 and 20/21 with a free (tuition) retake year if they want it. We have one dropped out until October 21, another might.

It makes sense for older people to get the vaccine first because that dramatically cuts the death rate and number of people in hospital.
Young people should be free to live their lives once the first wave of vaccines has been given.

Unfortunately as the fear of covid has been blown up disproportionately to the actual impact of catching it on the non vulnerable, I fear they - and we - will have a few more months of pointless limbo life.

I do think now that teachers need to be prioritised for the vaccine along with frontline NHS and care home workers so that schools can open and stay open and people can be cared for without putting their carers at risk, even if that risk might be more perceived than actual.

[quote movingonup20]@Salapandas

With respect that's for primary aged kids who should be living with parents anyway, my kids range from 19-23 and all are meant to be living independently but are stuck with us parents/grandparents/boyfriends family respectively (they got to choose, it meant everyone got a room, we had downsized as they didn't live with us!)[/quote]
So many young people have to live with parents now. This isn't really because of covid. Young people need to be exceptional now or very privileged to be able to afford their own homes. This isn't a new problem.

There was a poster up thread saying how things were for her in the 70s and how sad it is that young people no longer get those opportunities. Again, this isn't a new problem.

You are right to worry about young people, but it shouldn't have taken a global pandemic to start this conversation. If you or your young adult children haven't already been affected by the disparity in wealth between older people who bought up cheap property which is now unaffordable for the average family, then lucky you. I'm no stranger to this and I'm not particularly young. But even I can see that this isn't the time for arguing that "I'm entitled to what you had when you were young. I'm entitled to gigs and shagging around" . Times change and hopefully young people have been raised to be resilient and able to adjust without falling to pieces. God knows they are going to need to be. When this is all over, there is still the economy to worry about, which was already bad for young people and is now going to be worse. An even bigger issue for young people is climate change. If they are falling to bits over not being able to go to gigs and part like it's the 70s, that is worrying.

Party*

I agree completely. The approach to protect 80-90 year olds at the very high cost of sacrificing the future of everyone else is absurd. And I will not stop repeating it. This goes to show how manipulated we can all be through the media and the internet. The guilt we arr supposed to feel for recognising that the young and the future is all we have and we need to protect that!

Yes, it's just awful for them. All the life experiences they should be going through have been taken away. So hard to get jobs because hospitality and retail are being ripped to pieces, no real life classes to meet people, no going out & making mistakes and learning from them. No point moving out of home to be stuck in a lonely bedroom. I had so much fun late teens, early 20s, messed up on so many occasions but I lived and learnt from all of it. I feel so bad for them all.

My dd left school in March abruptly without saying goodbye to anyone and hasn’t seen them since.
Dd didn’t take exams or have a prom etc all of the normal experiences that help young people to transition and navigate new areas of their life. It’s not about the party - it’s very important to development.
Dd started a new 6th form so tHank fully received some education since September but has been treated terribly by society and members of the public when attending school. Tesco even banned anyone from her 6th form from entering the shop. Lots of hostility from people who regard the young as superspreaders.
Dd cried her eyes out at another lockdown - totally bawled. We’ve not seen family in 14months because they’re up north and we’ve not seen our other Dd for 1 year who lives abroad.
Our dds development and mental health has been impacted considerably.
I feel so sorry for all our young people who have had to endure so much. ❤️

The elderly and vulnerable are vaccinated first to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed.
The pandemic has had approx 10 months direct impact on young people.
Civilised societies protect their elderly and vulnerable - my 18 year old agrees with this.
This is a very unpleasant thread.

@juliastone

I agree completely. The approach to protect 80-90 year olds at the very high cost of sacrificing the future of everyone else is absurd. And I will not stop repeating it. This goes to show how manipulated we can all be through the media and the internet. The guilt we arr supposed to feel for recognising that the young and the future is all we have and we need to protect that!

My friend is a doctor. He normally works elsewhere, but had to help at a covid ward for a couple of days. During that two days alone, he had two people in their early fifties die. This is not just about the over 80s. He also said it is a very strange death, where the patients are chatting away one day, dead the next and fully awake the whole time. I don't agree with scaremongering or whatever, but the argument that we are all sacrificing for the over 80s is nonsense.

I also knew a young man who died during lockdown 1. He called an ambulance for a non covid issue and they couldn't send one as he wasn't struggling to breathe. By the time they finally got to him, he was lying dead. This was a young man, who had a treatable illness, (malaria, which he caught while travelling). If the hospitals get overwhelmed with patients of any age, we are all potentially in trouble.

@movingonup20

The best thing we can do for students now is to cancel their student loans for 19/20 and 20/21 with a free (tuition) retake year if they want it. We have one dropped out until October 21, another might.

At the very least, the govt should reduce the stupidly high interest rates being charged on student loans. At a time when interest rates are at a historic low, there's no justification at all for ridiculously high interest rates on student loans. Before covid, there was a lot being said about interest rates and some kind of official report recommending reductions, but it's all gone very quiet.

But, yes, even better would be to reduce the tuition fees, or cancel part of the loan. Unfortunately, Unis don't even seem to be willing to give rent reductions for the time that students aren't in their Uni owned accommodation, so it does look like students are going to be screwed.

Even worse, it appears that staff/lecturers etc aren't going back to normal face to face teaching until next October. So for many students who aren't on practical/lab degrees, they may not see their lecturers in person at all for a full academic year (many havn't even set foot on campus since Covid). How on Earth is that considered anything like acceptable when the students are paying a whopping £9.5k p.a. for it???

@Oblomov20

I agree. Totally and don't think this is acknowledged enough. Protecting the very vulnerable 80 year olds, who should be shielding, is starting to wear a bit thin for me as a main policy.

Trouble is that a lot of the 80+ ARE shielding but still catching covid. Especially in care homes and hospitals which are hot beds for the infection spreading. If the 80+ people were catching it whilst out partying or going on holiday, then I'd agree with you. It's a national scandal that hospitals and care homes aren't safe places. This is nothing new due to covid - before covid, hospital wards were often closed after a spread of norovirus.

Infection control, cleanliness, etc are lacking in care/health settings and have been for a long time. Training/precautions etc are all about blood - not clear liquids nor airborne viruses. Health staff take blood seriously, but nothing else unfortunately.

@AliceBlueGown

The elderly and vulnerable are vaccinated first to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed. The pandemic has had approx 10 months direct impact on young people. Civilised societies protect their elderly and vulnerable - my 18 year old agrees with this. This is a very unpleasant thread.

I agree and so do my 20 and 17 year olds, who are able to see outside their own world and have compassion for others.

And no. It's not just about saving 80 year olds. Please read my last post.

As a disabled person I feel sickened by this thread. @MNHQ are you going to do something about the casual ableism and ageism here?

Sorry Alice that second bit wasn't to you, but to everyone else talking about how the young are sacrificing their entire lives for a few elderly people. Completely agree with you.