To think some people are ‘enjoying’ the pandemic

[Flynnqwer]

I’ve noticed an attitude amongst some people where they’re nothing short of praying for a new, more lethal, variant.

I’ve noticed it amongst people I work with and people I do a hobby with. Any discussion about going back to our workplace (we can work from home but not easily or particularly effectively) once the Government ends the restrictions on waiting from home, or back to our hobby in real life instead of on Zoom (the hobby is controlled by a central board who are following the WFH advice until it is lifted) are met with cries of ‘No! We can’t do that! It’s dangerous!’ and it anyone points out that, thankfully, it looks like the vaccination programme is working and Omicron is less severe, they come back with ‘but what if there’s a more lethal strain that appears and kills millions?’

My workplace has one element which has legally got to be done in person. I have had emails today from managers begging us to cancel said work thing and do it online. We cannot do it on line lawfully (it’s along the lines of witnessing signatures). We have told them no, we must go into the building for an hour to fulfil this function. They are saying that that is breaking the working from home directive, that it’s unsafe, and what if a deadly variant is discovered? Then we’d have to find a way around the law.

AIBU that some people are actively hoping that the situation worsens and we are locked back down? Why would anyone want this to happen?

Im in Ireland too and the level of zealousness here was incredible. They also closed down schools completley with no provision for key workers or dcs with sn. I have family who work in hospitals including in icu who couldn't work during our many lockdowns

The lack of provision for key workers in Ireland was absolutely appalling. I never understood why more wasn't made of that. Heaven help the nurses and drs trying to cobble together childcare to do their jobs.

We also still have restrictions in Ireland. I live in a usually busy place and all restaurants, bars etc have to close at 8pm here, i feel so sorry for business owners here..
Op you can often tell the job of the person by the enthusiasm for lockdowns.....
Also complete control freaks or plp who hate their inlaws etc etc

@Kanaloa, it's sad that you and your family had a hard time during restrictions and lockdowns.

It's also sad that my cousin had to deliver her second baby alone because someone else's husband lied about covid symptoms and the day she went into labour was the day the non-covid ward had to be bleached. Maybe it was a good thing it was her second baby as she knew the ropes. Another cousin had chemo during the lockdown. She had to drive herself from the SE to the Mater Hospital and back for each session.

The alternative to restrictions is a situation where the old and the poor and those with chronic illness die. I'm thinking of the poor of New York City whose bodies were stored in refrigerated containers until they could be buried in mass graves, and the poor who rely on kidney dialysis whose numbers have gone down significantly in the US thanks to covid.

@Offmyfence

But the virus is weakening? You can surely understand that? You are over reaching. Maybe you need the hope, and don't like the uncertainty, that is fine and your right.

Patients admitted to hospital with Omicron clearly have less need of ventilation and the damage to lungs is less.

I am just not able to pronounce yet where things will be in a year, and neither are you. To use your phrase, surely you can understand that?

Everyone's hopes are the same.

It’s not just me and my family. It’s most poor people on low paid jobs.

And the old, the poor, those with chronic illnesses, they’ll also suffer through lockdowns, restrictions on support groups for them, restrictions on services they can access, care available to them etc.

This isn’t just about me being ‘sad that my family had a hard time.’ It’s about the difficulties of those propping up the lockdowns people sitting in houses working on their laptops ask for and the total lack of practicality for many of those poor families during lockdowns.

But yeah, it’s sad that you know some people who were sad during Covid, to throw your patronising comment back at you.

I couldn't understand it at all @TheKeatingFive , I feel that they can be more proactive in the UK at times whereas in Ireland it's just shut down. Yes, imagine my cousin an ICU nurse who couldn't work as small kids all at home who also needed to be taught. Like us they received lists and chapters to recover so parents covered the syllabus and loaded it on a platform to get a thumbs up... no one is accountable here.
I mean how long were they closed after Christmas , was it as much as 3 months?? And meanwhile in Europe they were by in large open..

And also the hypocrisy of expecting those people to go out and work in supermarkets and retail and care with colleagues and the public so everyone can be fully supplied during their lockdowns then calling them ‘stupid and selfish’ for wanting to see a movie.

Well, yes, but for that to work, firstly, whole
world has to do it - apart from Alpha, the other variants have emerged elsewhere - and, secondly, we have to do it forever.... I'm not prepared to do that. That doesn't make me selfish, it just makes me a human who wants normal, natural human interaction in their life before I die.

Yes, the whole world has to do it. The whole world also has to get vaccinated. The alternative is to see populations decimated in underdeveloped parts of the world where medical facilities are inadequate.

If you really feel you are justified in returning to your normal routines, that does make you selfish imo, and also short sighted.

Unless you are in your late 80s there is little chance of all of this going on until you die.

If you really think we should all throw caution to the winds then of course there is a chance that these could be your last years, or that the remainder of your life will be blighted by long covid problems.

Do any of you teach your children to wait for things they want? If so, why?

@treeflowercat

I think it was Freud who pointed this out "Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” The pandemic gave the perfect demonstration of this. People still wanting lockdowns just before Xmas is just.....this. We are risk averse to a frightening level and I don't think it is healthy at all

I agree with this. Some people seem incapable of basic risk assessment and want everything prescribed for them; and fret when something arises that doesn't quite fit in with the rules, and they seem incapable of applying the most basic common sense to any situation.

For instance there was a thread the other day about someone fretting whether they could take their Covid+ child in a car whilst they dropped their other children off at school. Yes, technically it may be a rule breach but even basic common sense meant it was obviously unavoidable and zero risk (the risk was the children going to school and passing it on!).

This, with big brass bells on.

This has had my head battered more than covid itself. No problem navigating the risk myself and being responsible for my decisions, but life was made so much harder for having to deal with people who can't manage their own risks and responsibilities.

And also the hypocrisy of expecting those people to go out and work in supermarkets and retail and care with colleagues and the public so everyone can be fully supplied during their lockdowns then calling them ‘stupid and selfish’ for wanting to see a movie.

Exactly. So fine for others to take risks to serve them, but then pile on the judgement when they do something for themselves. Just awful.

To top it off some if the most zealous and outspoken people i knew re rules etc here were dropping their kids off at ( unregistered - normal in Ireland ) childminders in the middle of the " dont mix or step outside your door " part of the lockdown

Some seem stuck on the idea that restrictions will get the results they want

France has incredibly high cases but even more telling the Netherlands couldn’t suppress omicron with a lockdown

Selfish etc won’t wash. It’s an extreme position but one they are welcome to take personally - stay home don’t go out - but that’s it, sense of control will go and insults will stay going by this thread.

@Kanaloa the alternative to lockdown is - what, exactly?

Everyone remaining in their workplace? Covid running rampant? Bodies piled high, as Boris Johnson is alleged to have envisioned?

The lockdowns exposed a sorry truth about our society, namely that the unpaid and unappreciated and largely invisible work of women in the home is vital to the economy, and the underpaid work of people who take care of young children is too.

The problem of low pay and work that is grossly undervalued was there before covid, along with dire provision for SEN. It is up to voters to make sure that all of that is addressed now that nobody can deny the impact on our lives of losing so much that was taken for granted.

We don’t need a further lockdown, cases are declining again. We need to recover the economy.

A lot of people here would find themselves very much at home in the red states of the US.

Whereas some sound like they’d love China

I’m fine with U.K.

@mathanxiety

A lot of people here would find themselves very much at home in the red states of the US.

You haven’t lived through the last 2 years here. We have. I was never anti lockdown or anti restrictions. At this point, I can see the devastating impact on mental health, education, young people, certain industries and the economy. We have to find a way to move forward.

The alternative is being as careful as we can (wearing masks when asked to, washing hands, taking care when we feel unwell) while also returning to our lives, opening services like schools and sen provision for those who need them etc.

I would also like to see some sort of measures put in place for the extremely vulnerable (eg if someone had some sort of disease or illness whereby they could not leave the home) whereby those people were supported to work at home if they needed to do so, or perhaps could access some form of financial support.

That to me makes more sense than insisting those people who work out of the home mixing with people day in day out are somehow selfish awful people for wanting to see a movie on their day off work or for their kids to access a real education with a qualified teacher in the company of their peers.

You seem to be keen to forget Ireland's statistics for most of the pandemic.

Ah, I see. So your proposed conversation that the UK should have with Ireland about reopening should not be about whether UK’s higher cases will affect Ireland as a result, but instead about whether it will retroactively raise Ireland’s pre-vaccination death rate, presumably through some sort of time travel mechanism? And your evidence for why we should take this approach is somehow that Ireland turned around their early 2021 spike - when it also had higher cases than the UK for a while, but managed to turn that around fast through lockdown, like… the UK?

It is psychologically satisfying to believe that high case rates only happen to the bad countries that did things wrong, and are merely a symptom of badness. It fits with our desire to believe we could just behave our way out of the pandemic by Being Sensible. And if Being Sensible isn’t resulting in eternally low case rates, well, it must be because people are travelling in from the bad countries.

We get this with Scotland too:
“England has such high cases. We should have kept masks for the second half of 2021, like Scotland did!”
“But Scotland’s had higher cases than England for most of that? At one point they were twice as high as England?”
“Well that must be because people went on holiday from England, then, mustn’t it.”
????

The reality is that all the UK countries and Ireland (and Hong Kong and Australia and France and and and) were always going to see a rise in cases when restrictions were lifted, and yet were always going to lift restrictions anyway, because the alternative is asking people to live under massively burdensome restrictions forever. And most would agree that is not a reasonable thing to ask people to do.

It's clear that WFH is contentious. Some thrive off social interaction whilst in the office. Some buy into the culture, the benefits.
One of the blind spots of these people is the informal pressure to conform with the social interactions during and after work. I think for some the works afters/gatherings are the highlight of their lives.
However, they must be aware that others do not wish to participate in either the common gossip or the booze/shag fest gatherings.

I think wfh should be optional as should company-driven policies surrounding socializing. I know a friend has just had an interview where he has requested to opt-out of company gatherings. He has private reasons for doing so.
I think companies need to ditch the 'Perkbox', employee benefits.
www.perkbox.com/au/platform/recognition

'Enable any employee to shout out to their colleagues to celebrate them and comment on recognitions sent to others, guaranteeing to make someone’s day and create stronger relationships'.
'Choose the types of achievements and milestones you want people to be recognized for, whether work-related or personal.'
Recognizing people for personal, really, where is the boundary.
The company ethos has been found for some employees to be suffocating. It's no longer enough to be contracted for 37.5 hrs, you actually belong to the company, nurtured.

The pandemic has revealed the surreptitious nature of these systems and policies, vast swathes of people have freed themselves of that control. They've rediscovered their old identity.

Personally, I just think companies should ditch all this internal marketing and control and just pay people more. It's insidious and oppressive.

@Hrpuffnstuff1 I totally agree that it should be a choice. If you love socialising with colleagues and chatting in the office go ahead. Have you lunches and after-work drinks.
But it shouldn't be forced on others. I save 8 hours a week by not commuting. That is time I can spend with actual friends. For example, a group of us now meet every Friday after work. My DP is now home to keep an eye out for the teenagers, so I can go to this every week.

People choosing would be ideal but doesn't really work in theory, if you work better in an office environment and feel you'd learn more whats the point if the rest of your team is sat at home?

Do any of you teach your children to wait for things they want?

Well, yes. And when they say “wait until when, exactly, Mother? Because you seem to be holding out for covid going away altogether, which is clearly not going to happen. Surely, in the post-vaccination era, expecting that people still ‘wait’ without being able to give a proposed set of end criteria for this waiting is effectively supporting perpetual restrictions?” I call them stupid and selfish and send them away to write 100 lines on the joys of banana bread.

@3scape

What a stupid and horrible thing to stay. Yes I was furloughed but I lost my fucking job. I did not want to be furloughed.

Furthermore I lost my husband to this fucking pandemic. He died from cancer that was missed and we were only married 8 days.
So yeah I’m fucking enjoying this pandemic, grieving hard for my husband, watching my children fall apart.

Sick of this furlough shit now

@GoldenOmber

Do any of you teach your children to wait for things they want?

Well, yes. And when they say “wait until when, exactly, Mother? Because you seem to be holding out for covid going away altogether, which is clearly not going to happen. Surely, in the post-vaccination era, expecting that people still ‘wait’ without being able to give a proposed set of end criteria for this waiting is effectively supporting perpetual restrictions?” I call them stupid and selfish and send them away to write 100 lines on the joys of banana bread.

Not just that but you teach your kids to wait for a Spider-Man comic until pocket money day, or teach them if they save up they can afford a really nice toy which they learn to wait for.

You don’t teach them they have to wait for the delayed gratification of a decent education, age appropriate sports and skills clubs, and normal childhood socialisation.