To think there should be some kind of national reflection on the pandemic?

[23rdmarch2020]

It’s coming up to three years since the first lockdown. In many ways, it feels an absolute age ago. From personal experience, my life completely changed in the space of a week and so many things happened in my life that never would have because of the pandemic (some good, some bad). For some, it has been an absolute tragedy. In the space of a few weeks we went from being in our normal lives to it being a criminal offence to step outside our homes without a valid excuse. Obviously people are keen to move on but AIBU to think there should be more reflection on the pandemic than there has been?

A lot of people during that period very much needed to be squared up to.

I currently have covid. It’s horrible. I’m just hoping my lovely 87yo mum doesn’t get it.

Like who for example?

And this is what we should be questioning - that awful message from councils that somehow sitting on a fucking bench was spreading covid somehow! How did that ever be allowed to happen?? Anyone with half a brain knew that was total bullshit but people went along with it! I didn’t - i knew all along that was total shit and carried on sitting down / resting with wild abandon (ha!) but if I mentioned that here on mumsnet I’d be told I was a killer. It infuriated me then and it still does now. How people were so sucked in by all the bollocks. It makes me really truly doubt people’s intelligence that they couldn’t see that stuff like this was utter nonsense. Like the fact you could only go to a pub if you were eating?! Or in the gym - you had to wear a mask to walk up the stairs on your own but take it off in a class of 30 people doing spin.
I think it does need looking at. It should never be allowed to happen again. You can’t spread a disease you don’t have, it was all fucking nuts.

I wonder if some of the MH trauma people are suffering is because they think something should have been done about it all to stop it?
It's hard to really grasp that with all our advanced technologies when faced with a viral Pandemic all we can do is quarantine and then vaccinate.

At least we have vaccination now. In the past we had no choice but to keep up lockdowns and quarantine until the virus mutated to a less deadly form.

You didn’t see it come from a wet market yet that’s what you choose to believe even though the FBI chief disagrees with you.

It’s ironic that those throwing around conspiracy theorist slur at everyone else are totally lacking critical thinking skills.

I meant to add perhaps a more robust attitude could be summarised as "Shit Happens"

I agree with this completely.
If it had had the CFR of MERS/SARS1 it could have been catastrophic.
We’re just lucky we haven’t had something else before now and I agree Bird Flu has potential (and seems to have a higher CFR in those who have caught from birds).

I think some lockdown things were ott but we know it was because opportunities were missed at the start.

You’d hope it could be used as a public learning so in the future we acted quicker and had better ventilated public spaces or knew enough that indoor could easily moved to outdoor so more life could continue.

The people who thought they were entitled to berate others for standing somewhere they didn't like in a supermarket, that type of thing. The only food shopping of ours I did was in the market which is outside so I never experienced that, but the stories people tell about that time are awful. So many individuals taking the opportunity to bully those who were weaker than them. Which let's be honest, it will have been.

Lockdown as practiced in 2020 is brand new. That's a big part of the whole experience really. I think you make a great point about it being a nasty realisation of how powerful we aren't though. Probably will have had an impact.

I hope the public inquiry properly considers the scattergun covid financial support schemes. It's one thing being forced to stay inside and lose your job/business. It's completely different to then realise you've been excluded from financial support on random/spurious grounds, whilst at the same time, you watch your neighbours buy a new car, extend their home, etc with all the furlough/BBL/SEIS/ARG grants they received. 3 Million (10% of the workforce) were excluded from financial support and that's the real travesty. Someone I know had 3 furnished holiday lettings and got £28k for EACH from the local council despite not being out of pocket as they had separate entrances so were occupied throughout by key workers during lockdowns and holiday makers in between. That's £84k on top of normal profits - what a windfall! Meanwhile, someone else I know lost his business, meaning he lost his income, still had debts to pay and eventually had to declare himself bankrupt - all because he fell foul of one of the SEIS exclusions - the ludicrous 50:50 rule because he took a one-off pension lump sum the year before!

All the cool ones saying, get over it. If you somehow managed to not be affected by the lockdowns, for instance with your mental health, not being able to attend a loved one’s funeral, having your children’s life chances destroyed because of no school, losing your business. Or maybe you were lucky enough to not be a child at the time being abused because your were locked down, elderly person dying alone.

If you were not impacted by any of that stuff, how is it going now? Are you enjoying the rampant inflation? Because of the crazy money printing so healthy people could be locked at home and paid for doing nothing. The squeeze on you living standards, paying 20% for your food. That fact that your mortgage or rent has shot up because interest rates had to be hiked after all the money printing. The fact that your children’s education and healthcare is dire. Because now the global banking system is now in crisis and that value of pensions are plummeting as the stock market took a loose dive just this week, because of the rapid interest rates post Covid and the value of government bonds. Are you ready for a repeat for 2008?

How are you enjoying all this? But never mind, at least you got to watch Netflix and bake banana bread in the summer of 2020, while being paid.

I’m more annoyed we were hit with campaigning and harsh restrictions than anything, we’re still seeing the damage.

This. Scary isn't it.....

I agree. I'm normally fairly unsympathetic to complaints about the furlough schemes, at least initially, because they were an absolutely essential part of lockdown and they had to be thrown together quickly because lockdown was never planned for. Exclusion of so many self employed was a choice though, especially as time wore on.

Oh yeah I nearly forgot about the supermarket one way systems and god forbid if you went up an aisle the wrong way......there was always one willing to call you out.

Also neighbours snitching if you had two folk in your garden.....

Oh yes. Thankfully that didn't happen where I am, for which I remain eternally grateful.

The public enquieries are enough for me. I dont want to think about it anymore than I have to.

It could only have happened, and lasted so long, because of the internet, so that people could shop and work and be educated from home. The lockdowns would have been a lot shorter without that as society would have failed to function.

I think we need to properly examine less developed countries where the internet isn't as widespread to see how they coped without the lockdowns (as they couldn't have locked down like we did). Was their death rate a lot higher? If not, why not?

What I'd hoped for after Covid was better hygiene, larger/better ventilated spaces, etc., but it seems lessons havn't been learned. I was aghast last weekend at the football match to see so many people leaving the loos not washing their hands. Our local hospital has gone back to patients being crowded into tiny unventilated waiting rooms, their pharmacy has been moved back into a tiny cramped corner, etc. Even the oncology dept which had moved into a huge ward so patients could be spread out has been squeezed back into it's tiny suite. My OH is back to having his chemo treatment squeezed into a small room with a dozen other people, no room to swing a cat - these are vulnerable people.

Not sure about National reflection, but its scary how we all blindly followed ‘the rules’ from a corrupt and useless govt.
My DCs were more affected than dh or me. They couldn’t take their public exams, one day they’re at school, having a normal teenage social life and the next day stuck at home for the foreseeable. It had a big effect on their mental health - this should be analysed/reported on. How young people were treated, the exam results fiasco etc.

I also have a couple of friends whose MH was badly affected as well. One still won’t eat inside a restaurant 3 years on!!

I suppose we all look at our own circumstances and see how it affected us, although obviously the care home issues, the not locking down early enough to save lives, partygate are all part of the bigger picture.

We need to learn from our mistakes as there will be more pandemics, maybe not in the near future but it’ll happen.

Yep, son was at Uni, when they finally re-opened their library, it had an airport style zig-zag queue for the desk, (along with one way systems, 2 metre lines on the floor, etc). He went in late evening (thought he was doing the right thing to wait for a quiet time), and was literally the only person on that floor besides the desk assistant. He quickly went to get his book, then instead of zig-zagging through the airport queue barriers, he ducked under (there was no else there), and got a tirade of verbal abuse from the desk assistant, saying he was risking her life, etc - highly unlikely considering she was in a perspex screen box and even if he had been contagious, ducking under a barrier rather than walking up and down several times wouldn't make a blind bit of difference - after all, he'd be in there less time by dodging the queue! Some people really lost their minds!

Yeah no thanks, I've wasted enough life due to the pandemic and will just be cracking on now.

You're free to reflect as much as necessary though, as is anyone else who feels they want or need to.

@JustDanceAddict

My DCs were more affected than dh or me. They couldn’t take their public exams, one day they’re at school, having a normal teenage social life and the next day stuck at home for the foreseeable. It had a big effect on their mental health - this should be analysed/reported on. How young people were treated, the exam results fiasco etc.

They definitely need to look at Unis. Some Unis promised "blended learning" but in reality, provided no face to face at all, no lectures, no seminars, no tutorials in person. They conned students into signing up for their courses and more importantly, signing up for Uni/campus accommodation, only for the students to find themselves virtually trapped in their flats randomly wandering around an entirely closed campus, all for the Unis to get their grubby hands on the money. Then after Christmas, they were told not to return to their Unis, but many Unis refused to refund rent on flats they weren't allowed to use!

See its behaviour like that is just unacceptable. I got told off by a person in my street for going out twice in one day, like I'm some typhoid Mary ffs.

The after effects of the response will be seen for years to come. People are still suffering from the toll it took on their mental health, children not having access to resources etc, people still struggle to get medical help in many place and so many more things.