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?

A place it’s really really common is on threads where sometimes a mum will come to say ‘oh I’m struggling to make friends at work/school gate/playgroup.’

Instantly an outpouring of replies will say ‘they don’t owe you anything/god they’ve got their own lives/they’re busy/I never even look at anyone at my workplace and wouldn’t be able to name one of my colleagues for a million pounds.’

When in reality (well in every workplace I’ve ever worked at) normal socialising in a polite way is expected and assists in feeling comfortable with asking your colleagues for help and having a good working environment.

Are you implying everybody must go back to work so people have someone to talk to?
Mandatory socialising.
Listen folks you cannot save thousands on commutes or have family time or go on holiday because certain employees have no one to talk to or are in shit marriages.
Considering what you are implying, should my wife invite her whole department to our wedding so as not to upset anyone.

Are you okay? Do you really think that some people disliking working from home means they want to go your wedding?

If you want to stay at home with your wife for all eternity then do so. No problem. The problem this thread is about are people who don’t just want to stay at home themselves, but want everyone else to stay at home too.

And not just at work, so I’m not sure where these accusations that people who like going to work mustn’t have a social life have come from. The OP refers to non-work, social hobbies, which some people still insist most continue online. It’s not work, it’s a hobby. If you don’t want to do it then fine but you can’t expect everyone else to continue to knit looking at Zoom on their kitchen table just because you can’t be arsed to go to the pub to knit, but don’t want everyone else to without you.* **

*The hobby isn’t knitting and doesn’t take place in a pub

**And before anyone says it, a reminder that yes, we asked people what they’d prefer, and over 70% said back to real life

Whatever the view points the government are planning to unravel the pandemic response.

Then companies will decide for themselves what working environments they want to have.
Then society will reboot.

you can’t expect everyone else to continue to knit looking at Zoom on their kitchen table just because you can’t be arsed to go to the pub

I know someone who has got this about one of her hobbies, but a) it is the kind of hobby where they aren’t even really interacting with each other much on the zoom calls and b) has plenty of zoom classes now all over the world! which she could join. But no, she got annoyed when the existing group went back to meeting in person because she still wanted to nominally be in that group, just not actually see them.

@Kanaloa

I also love meeting new people and I'm open to chatting with anyone. Yet I don't like people calling me without checking first. Family yes, otherwise no. I've always hated phone calls though

This is exactly the type of thing. If someone isn’t related to you they have to check if they’re allowed to telephone you. It’s just very over the top - for me someone is checking if they can phone me when my phone rings. If they emailed me first to ask my permission to phone me I’d be perplexed.

Why? I just don't like phone calls, they're awkward, that's it.

Maybe it's because im younger, people just text more. It gives the opportunity to say no, have time to think, take your time to respond etc.

I always call before phoning people and give them a chance because not everyone likes calls with people they don't know well and have not much to talk about

Not really shy in person, not unfriendly, I just dislike unending phone calls scheduled on another persons terms🤷🏻‍♀️

@onreee

I’m not exactly ancient myself, I don’t think it’s some huge generational gap.

If you’re having ‘unending phone calls’ then I can see how that might be difficult. For me though your post definitely highlights the level of hyperbole I see on mumsnet all the time around relatively normal social interaction, eg needing to check if it’s ok before phoning, needing ‘time to think/respond’ or not wanting calls ‘scheduled on another person’s terms.’

It makes out it’s some huge violation or like it’s a terrifying burden when realistically it’s just a phone call.

If you don’t like them, you don’t like them though. But I would never presume I had to text or email someone to get permission to call them if I had a question to ask them.

[quote Kanaloa]@onreee

I’m not exactly ancient myself, I don’t think it’s some huge generational gap.

If you’re having ‘unending phone calls’ then I can see how that might be difficult. For me though your post definitely highlights the level of hyperbole I see on mumsnet all the time around relatively normal social interaction, eg needing to check if it’s ok before phoning, needing ‘time to think/respond’ or not wanting calls ‘scheduled on another person’s terms.’

It makes out it’s some huge violation or like it’s a terrifying burden when realistically it’s just a phone call.

If you don’t like them, you don’t like them though. But I would never presume I had to text or email someone to get permission to call them if I had a question to ask them.[/quote]

No, im sure you're not ancient im just barely in my twenties, so there's probably a fair gap

It's not a violation but I think if you can ask first, why wouldn't you?

But yes, I do just hate phone calls - some love them and hate text🤷🏻‍♀️

I haven't Rtft im so confused how this even became the topic of discussion 😳

It's not a violation but I think if you can ask first, why wouldn't you?

Why would you? Surely if you ring someone and it’s not convenient then they don’t answer and you leave a message?

I’m not a huge phone call fan but I’d never consider asking them first, unless it was a huge topic I was ringing about which was going to take an hour or so. Then I might ask when they had time to fit it in. But if I rang and they were busy then they’d either leave it to voice mail or just say ‘I’m busy now - can I ring you back’.

And I’m in my early 30s so not a huge gap generationally.

If people have enjoyed the pandemic there is something seriously amiss. 5.5 million worldwide have died in under 2 years. Surely they aren't enjoying it, rather they've just been terrified by the frequent and rapid deaths and don't feel confident enough to feel blase about it yet? Some people consolidate threat more quickly than others.

@SafeMove

If people have enjoyed the pandemic there is something seriously amiss. 5.5 million worldwide have died in under 2 years. Surely they aren't enjoying it, rather they've just been terrified by the frequent and rapid deaths and don't feel confident enough to feel blase about it yet? Some people consolidate threat more quickly than others.

But that doesn’t account for those who went on holiday in 2020 and 2021 but are apparently too concerned about a lethal variant springing up in their local church hall to go to their reading club face to face, or to a relatively empty office for an hour to fulfil a work duty.

@MarshaBradyo

They're upset because others don't want to play in their Wendy house.

Not sure why people go to gleeful meanness. Why would you feel better for doing that.

This entire thread has been meanness from the other viewpoint. Incredibly nasty.

@HarrietPierce

Toanewstart22 Tue 18-Jan-22 12:39:18 I think this militant introvertism

"I literally ONLY see militant introvertism on mumsnet
Not amongst friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances etc
Only mumsnet"

Me too. Never in real life.

I suppose that you wouldn't see such a thing in real life, no matter how prevalent it was because you aren't going to meet them. The closest you'll get is seeing their curtains twitch as you walk past.

@Kanaloa

I also love meeting new people and I'm open to chatting with anyone. Yet I don't like people calling me without checking first. Family yes, otherwise no. I've always hated phone calls though

This is exactly the type of thing. If someone isn’t related to you they have to check if they’re allowed to telephone you. It’s just very over the top - for me someone is checking if they can phone me when my phone rings. If they emailed me first to ask my permission to phone me I’d be perplexed.

If my phone goes off unexpectedly, I assume that it must be urgent, so I'll put down whatever I'm doing and answer it straight away. Which makes it incredibly annoying when it turns out to be trivia (or a scam call). It's simply so much easier if someone messages with "are you free to talk?"

@onreee

Not a big age gap really at all. You’re a few years younger than me. I really don’t think it’s a generational thing.

Fair enough if you presume every phone call is urgent and you need to answer it. I really don’t see a phone call as any more intrusive than a message asking if someone can phone me. It would take me as long to answer and say ‘sorry must ring you later, tied up at the moment’ as to text ‘hi no you can’t call me.’

And of course if I’m doing something important/can’t be disturbed I simply switch my phone to do not disturb except for DH in case of emergency.

Those of us introverts and those with overbearing families with no sense of boundaries have been LOVING it and I don’t care who knows it.

@Goldenbear

From my own experiences and those of my friends this manichean divide doesn't really exist when it comes to living in a pandemic! It is not a question of relishing the idea of pandemic spikes allowing us misanthropes to wfh and not engage with the outside world. It has opened up our eyes a bit to a more balanced way of living so my DH for example although does have to go away for work, he can now wfh on 1 or 2 days rather than those days being in a London office. This is great as my dc see him more. I can have a fulfilling job but still collect my youngest from school, go to the park, go to meet friends in the pub at night as I am not home late from work. At work, I don't really see anyone as my job is very isolated. I can literally go a whole week with only having seen someone in the loo so for me, seeing the parents of my DC's friends, being part of the local community has made me more sociable. Where I live is a totally different area to where I work so I find it has improved my mental health as I was lacking that human interaction. I did lose a family member to Covid so I would certainly say I'm not celebrating this new world as that is the wrong way of putting it but I have found some improvements.

Your problem is that both you and your husband chose to commute far away from home. Or I suppose it could be possible that there were no homes available at all near your work, or affordable. That and your job being strangely isolated.

For others, the opposite has happened. It's easier for me to go to the pub after work if I go to work first. Then at least I'm already out and not a zombie because I've had no interaction. Most people do interact at work and the commute includes exercise for many people and exercise that is a natural part of their day.

"Good job that's not a view anyone is pushing then, isn't it?"

Oh yes, it is. Even the Welsh Government is telling employers to create more wfh jobs. Green activists are pushing it, which is totally stupid for me as I walk to work whenever possible. It's LESS green for me to be at home.

@thepeopleversuswork I've seen your posts on a few threads recently and always think you have some really interesting things to say. I've noticed this trend too of more people becoming antisocial (as opposed to introverted or shy), but only online - presumably because, as DdraigGoch says, those people aren't going out and running into people like me in real life as often. (Or maye they're all around me and just very good at hiding it to my face )

I remember at one point early-ish in the pandemic, maybe around July/August 2020, reading a statistic that shocked me about the percentage of people who hadn't left their homes at all since March. I can't remember what the figure was now but it was much higher than I would have thought, certainly including more than just the people who were medically advised to shield. I'd thought most people were feeling reasonably relaxed by then, because the people I saw out and about were - but of course, the people who were very anxious weren't out and about, so I wasn't seeing them. It really made me wonder, what proportion of strangers could just disappear from our lives one day before the difference became obvious? Would you really be able to tell if there was 20% less traffic on the roads, or you passed 8 people on your walk instead of 10?

So while I think it's not very psychologically healthy for people to retreat completely into their nuclear families and feel highly imposed upon by minnimal social interactions, I'm not sure it's something the rest of us need to be particularly concerned about, except insofar as it's a good thing to care about the wellbeing of others in general. If the only time we notice this trend is online, that suggests maybe it's not having such a huge impact in the offline world. If anything, from a completely selfish perspective maybe it would be a net benefit for the rest of us? I mean, the sort of people who don't like to leave the house and spend all day being angry on Mumsnet or Reddit or Twitter don't particularly sound like people I'd want to be friends with. And if they're voluntarily recusing themselves from society then the people I meet at my non-WFH job, or sitting across from me on a long train journey or whatever, are more likely to be... well, not those people.

The thing where it really does concern me though is with children. I work in a school, and the last two years have been the first time where our online safeguarding focus has shifted from sexual exploitation to radicalisation. There's been a very significant rise in cases even in my very nice, very middle-class, ethnically diverse Ofsted outstanding school, not only for children getting involved with Islamic extremist groups (though that too) but also incel groups and far right white supremacist stuff. The amount of casual misogyny has dramatically increased in the last year and a half too. I don't think that's an entirely surprising consequence of keeping children mostly indoors and isolated from their peers for months, to get almost all their socialisation from online forums, in many cases with minimal supervision because their parents had to work or because they're ignorant/uncaring of the dangers. By the time the narrative that all the other adults are naive or lying has been ingrained, it can be really hard to reverse that.

It's to do with a mindset that says dictates that anyone outside of a small and hand-picked group of people you already know is a threat, and that any attempt to make human contact is a "violation".

This is either a massive exaggeration of something you have observed, or outright fiction.

But that doesn’t account for those who went on holiday in 2020 and 2021 but are apparently too concerned about a lethal variant springing up in their local church hall to go to their reading club face to face, or to a relatively empty office for an hour to fulfil a work duty.

Maybe they have understood from public health authorities that Omicron is far more contagious than previous variants.

Or maybe they don't want an earful of denial.

@nocoolnamesleft

YABU. Recognising that we are still in a pandemic is not the same as wanting the fucking thing to continue.

But we're coming out of it now! Omicron has displaced Delta & the other variants, and is much less virulent, but it still gives good immunity against all the variants. It's spreading quickly, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Everyone will be exposed, the disease will be very mild, and then everyone will be immune.

It's a factor, for example, in the US in terms of their problems with firearms - social trust is so poor many Americans see other citizens as potential dangers rather than potential friends or allies.

Don't let the guns fool you. America tends to be a high trust society.

The UK otoh is not. The Edelman Trust Barometer (2020) placed the UK second from the bottom, with Russia one notch below.

Omicron has displaced Delta & the other variants, and is much less virulent, but it still gives good immunity against all the variants. It's spreading quickly, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Everyone will be exposed, the disease will be very mild, and then everyone will be immune.

Complete BS.

But we're coming out of it now! Omicron has displaced Delta & the other variants, and is much less virulent, but it still gives good immunity against all the variants. It's spreading quickly, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Everyone will be exposed, the disease will be very mild, and then everyone will be immune.

Amen to this. I don't know why people don't get it! A mild transmissible variant spells the end of a pandemic. It's not BS at all.