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?

Lockdown as practiced in 2020 is brand new. That's a big part of the whole experience really.

It's new to us. In the 17th century people with plague were literally locked in their homes.

It will be the subject of theses and academic studies in the future though.

It's not about being cool. I'm someone who doesn't want to look back and reflect on it. I lost my only remaining family member in awful circumstances during the pandemic and wasn't able to be with them at the end or attend their funeral.

I'm in my 50s and have experienced lots of traumatic events during my life. Looking back and going over them again and again doesn't help. For me it's about looking forward. The pain doesn't go away but you cannot turn back time and I treat each day as a new day. It's not always easy and others will feel differently but it works for me.

But it's definitely not about being cool and baking banana bread.

No, it's new full stop. Coercive and usually localised practices during pandemics are ancient, but aren't the same thing as 2020 style lockdown.

The poster upthread was right when she said it could never have happened before the internet became so widespread. Even ten years earlier we couldn't have done it. I would agree we're going to see a huge amount of research on the period though.

Yup! Dd started uni in Sept 2020 - she was lucky in that she gelled w her flatmates, but the course was a disaster and she dropped out (doing a different course now but is 2 years ‘behind’). We’ll never know if she would be graduating this year if it wasn’t for covid.
Blended learning consisted of 1 in-person tutorial/seminar every other week on a science degree. Terrible!

The way students were treated at universities was appalling. Whatever one thinks of the necessity and utility of the restrictions, they were basically lied to. Because the sector would've collapsed if the 2020-1 intake really knew what they were getting.

It's interesting to reflect on how easily and quickly a population can be influenced to act in irrational ways by an external threat, that's for sure.

I’d rather stick pins in my eyes, OP.

Historically quarantine was isolating infected individuals/ households, not shutting down society and healthy individuals for months on end.

Isolating against Black Death was of limited efficacy when it wasn't understood that the illness still passed around on infected fleas and rats.
It spread to Eyam through the fleas in a bundle of cloth that came from London.

So many of the rules were farcical and counter productive. There should have been no restrictions on non-crowded, open air activities, and a lot of those types of risk were understood within a couple of months.
All one way systems did was hold people in public places for longer. Counter-productive.

I hope the fear propaganda is investigated. It reached the point where you could predict upcoming government announcements from the headlines of individuals' deaths.

The concept of a collective reflection reminds me far too much of the NHS clap.

Some of the bonkers shit should really have been called out. There should have been better working guidelines given to public services and businesses so that measures were sensible, proportionate and effective, as there were some really counter productive measures in place.

The sitting down thing was one of the stupid pointless rules. As if the virus was going to absorb through the fabric of you clothes and the skin of your arse 🙄

I remember taking my disabled mother for her first post lockdown trip out to a national trust place and all the benches had been removed or taped up, there was nowhere for her to rest and she can only walk a limited distance. The chairs at the café were stacked up in a compound and every set of steps was packed with old and infirm people sitting on the steps, because they couldn't stand any longer. Fitter people sat on the grass. Removing chairs served to useful purpose, in fact they could have used them to encourage people to spread out more.

The people asking for reflection just seem to want to argue that we shouldn't have had lockdown or vaccination. The pandemic is not actually over. People are still dying. There is nothing to stop people reflecting on what's happened so far. You are obviously reflecting at the moment, for example.

I remember taking my disabled mother for her first post lockdown trip out to a national trust place and all the benches had been removed or taped up, there was nowhere for her to rest and she can only walk a limited distance. The chairs at the café were stacked up in a compound and every set of steps was packed with old and infirm people sitting on the steps, because they couldn't stand any longer. Fitter people sat on the grass. Removing chairs served to useful purpose, in fact they could have used them to encourage people to spread out more.

I noticed that. They also stopped letting people hiring mobility scooters which was ridiculous.

What would national reflection actually achieve? I agree that there were a lot of stupid rules around but usually they were made by individual organisations or police forces who had no understanding of infection control. I think there could be reflection on the fact that decent air filtration indoors would have made a huge difference to infection spread but as that involves spending money it's something only the Houses of Parliament have got.

Hmm, up to a point. Some of the worst excesses involved police bullshitting, but not all, and we also know from the Hancock leaks that they were being leaned on by the government. It's quite a toxic brew.

Some of the problems stem from the legislation, for example it is not the fault of the police that the rules in the 2021 lockdown in England functionally excluded primary school aged children. It is not the police who decided the curriculum shouldn't be suspended then, creating one class of children who were afforded schooling with reduced ratios and others who were considered unworthy of even the most basic education. Looking outside England, it's not the police who made a law in summer 2021 that Scottish people couldn't go to Greater Manchester. Our legislators shat the bed all by themselves. Obviously there were also things like Derbyshire police telling those women that a cup of coffee was a picnic.

But I agree with your scepticism about what national reflection could actually do. I don't know how it would work and it would inevitably be if not led then influenced by some of the people responsible for the stupidest rules.

I don't think there should be national reflection on the pandemic. It was an odd time that will never happen again in our lifetimes. Also it's just a depressing thing to centre your life around.

It's very likely that there'll be another pandemic during the lifetimes of at least some of the people who lived through this one and were old enough to remember it.

Yes, not all the stupid rules were made by the Tories rather than individual organisations but given but that those particular people won't be making the rules in future, and we are very unlikely to be in exactly the same situation in the future, I still don't see what would be achieved by national reflection..

Yes, not all some of the stupid rules were made by the Tories rather than individual organisations but given but that those particular people won't be making the rules in future, and we are very unlikely to be in exactly the same situation in the future, I still don't see what would be achieved by national reflection..

I agree we should look forward. I am still furious with media and media personalities and labour mp’s that pushed and pushed for longer harder lockdowns and school closures etc especially after June 2020. But what’s the point in remaining cross about it? We need to move on imo.

Well that's my point really. I certainly feel they need to be critically analysed and the harms spelled out, but I don't see how this is the mechanism for it.

My mh has never recovered. I’ve developed poor coping methods that I never had before. I feel traumatised from it, and now no one talks about it. It’s as if this collective thing we all went through never happened. I can’t process it at all.

When I was 22, my dad died of Covid in the first few months. I had to deal with the pitiful funeral of 10 people for 10 minutes, sat socially distanced. I didn’t know my dad’s family, so I essentially had to go through it alone.

I started a new job I was really looking forward to. I’d been off work for a year to look after the baby, and I was already isolated. Instead the job became work-from-home-while-looking-after-a-15 month old baby-for-months, because the nursery couldn’t have him and neither could family.

I was suicidal by the end of the lockdowns. I’d been enveloped by grief, loneliness, stress and guilt.

Something to recognise that horrible event would at least comfort me that people remember. Otherwise I feel like I’ve been left with a load of issues that have been brushed under the carpet. People like my dad were snatched away so suddenly and unexpectedly. The government behaved awfully. It should not be forgotten.

It was crazy but it was bloody terrifying. You heard of people getting moved on by the police or fined for sitting down or drinking a coffee (being out when you weren’t specifically “exercising”).
One time I went for a jog in the evening and at one point I slowed down and started messing around with my phone (I wasn’t out to for a jog, I was out to be without my children for 20 minutes) and a police car saw me and slowed down to crawl along side me I put my phone away and started jogging again and the police car left. It was quite clear what the message was.

I don’t think we can blame people entirely for being sucked in. The police were enforcing zealously and rules were rules - it’s not like I could have had a drink without a “substantial meal” in a pub because they simply wouldn’t have served me. I went back to the gym the day it opened but it’s hardly like I could have gone before. Like so many people I was scared of the police more than any virus.

By the winter lockdown I was breaking some minor rules and sticking very much to law vs guidelines distinction but I’d decided at that point that I would pay a penalty notice or two if it came to it so a lot of the fear was gone. I think a lot of it fell apart with bubbles because there was no register of bubbles so if you said you were in a bubble no one could ask you to prove it.

For most of us, life has gone back to normal, but I have a neighbour who still wears plastic gloves and prowls around the street asking people why they have put their garden bin in such a position or whether they have permission to do anything. Lockdown made her into this person.

Sorry I’m not sure how to reply directly yet. I’m truly so sorry that you had this happen too, it’s horrific and I think quite a large section of society don’t actually get how bad many of us are still feeling and probably always will feel. I just can’t begin to imagine hashing over it, hearing about everyone’s hindsight and discussing it all like it was ‘the good old days’, we were all ‘in it together’ or even talking about remembering or learning from …. It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me and to my family and it’ll haunt me for the rest of my life. I don’t want to reminisce about all the ‘silly rules’ etc, i genuinely think a lot of people have no idea what happened to some of us during it all.

I don't think it's helpful to generalise about whether people should or shouldn't be sharing or looking forward. For some people, discussion and reflection will be helpful and for others it won't.

CocoFifi · Yesterday 19:31
It's over, look forwards, not backwards and move on with your life.“

On my and my husband’s behalf, I would usually agree with you. It had terrible repercussions for our young people though, that are still being worked through.

Derbyshire police were a particular low.

Not only was there the incident with the two women having a walk and a coffee having travelled mins from a village that was technically in Leicestershire, they were also behind the lake the was dyed, the drone footage of dog walkers, banning people from city council postcodes from a county council park (despite them being within walking distance), and countless other overreaches.

I remember my DH being really anxious about being stopped by the police while walking.