To not be over what happened to me during covid/lockdowns

[ifyougochasingrabbits]

Just a few of the things I went through

Losing my cleaning business i had built up over years overnight due to everyone cancelling us

Being humiliated by the headteacher at DC school shouting at me in front of other parents because I refused to wear a mask outside . My little girl being made to start school late and finish late because I was unable to wear a mask to collect her (school run was all outside I may add and I had no problem wearing masks in shops etc but I drew the line at in the fresh air outside)

watching thousands of pounds of income disappear at an alarming rate. while wondering if we’d still have jobs and be able to keep the house we’d worked our arses off for for years to buy. Going through six months of trauma with H furloughed and depressed because his work could not guarantee he'd still have a job at the end of it. He was on half pay as furlough was only paid up to about 30k salary iirc and if you were on more it was employers discretion to pay the full salary which his work didn't. He was even applying for jobs at supermarkets and delivery driving etc and getting no where despite having a high level job at a major house builder.

Watching selfish morons stockpiling at the very beginning

“Friends” dumping me, one Cos I dared voice out loud that I wasn’t personally scared of covid and was struggling with restrictions and did not agree with them.

Having to deal with the fact that many of my (remaining) friends had views I completely don’t agree with and accepting they probably feel same about me.
And having to cope with the fact they supported restrictions that were destroying our lives and mental health

Having my business absolutely trashed all over social media and being called a dirty bitch and worse by local people. Fake bad reviews etc. The “reason” was they took exception to me saying on a local page post that I didn't believe in masks in school (this was due to my kids really struggling with them) My 14 year old said he agreed and some of them then found him on fb and messaged him insulted his looks and called him stupid and a fucking moron etc. This was actual grown adults.

a random person inboxed me on Facebook due to seeing my business ad and threatened to "smash my face in" because she thinks i was “endangering lives” by working

My neighbour reporting us to the police for having an illegal gathering. This "illegal gathering" was me, my H and our 3 dc having a bbq in the garden. Needless to say we all live together

Being put on medication for panic attacks and anxiety in fact I minimised it to the gp. I was actually suicidal and the only reason I am still here is because of my kids and the fact my husband and parents had the same views as me. But I would secretly hope to die in my sleep and almost every day I would wake up and cry because I was still here.

Watching my 3 Kids completely fall apart due to schools being closed. While not only having to deal with seeing posts all over fb about how well other kids were doing and coping doing all their work, managing great. And knowing some people I care about actually wanted schools shut. One of my kids is still very unwell mentally and it all started with lockdowns

Oh and to add final insult to injury, in November 2021 I had to pay £5700 (which was part credit card and part all of our savings) privately for an operation that should have been freely available on the nhs. But cos covid they could not give me a date and I was getting more and more poorly and could not wait.

I am still angry and maybe I should get over it. But I can't. And There's probably more but these are the stand out moments. I'm doing okay now and I have a new business and I'm doing well, H has a new job as he could not trust his old place after covid. but I've been very low again recently with the anniversary of it all

I think the difficulty people had with COVID is that the vast vast majority who were infected had a very mild illness. I think the collective empathy thing wore out quickly even with the shaming because some people were asked to sacrifice even livelihoods for a very small minority.

I think the issue was the poor people already suffering from life limiting illnesses had a very poor last few months on this earth. Couldn't even see their families still caught it with all the PPE , hand sanitising it was relentless. Dying having me a stranger for company over their family. Quality over Quantity of life. I would much rather have my life cut a bit shorter than sit in enforced isolation.

I feel so guilty about how rubbish some of those people's last few months were.awful.

Is that so? Bold statements there.

@Fifi1010

I would much rather have my life cut a bit shorter than sit in enforced isolation.

Well, that's you, isn't it? Perhaps, when it comes to those precious last moments on Earth, isolation is better than death.

If you have never had to spend extended periods of time isolated because of illness - and I'm not speaking of the paltry few days of Covid isolation - then you are not qualified to speak on this matter, really.

What all this really is - a pandemic of ignorance.

And it seems to be worsening.

Yes your bullying tactics seem to be working. Laugh away.

This.

I felt that children and young people were seen as less important - the emphasis on the care homes and prolonging life for a matter of weeks against the impact of isolation on young people which will last for decades was in my view wrong. This view was not allowed to be expressed but I believe I was not the only one who held and who still hold it.

Yes, my Dad died in a care home. We hadn't been allowed up there for weeks, before the official lockdown.

It was ok, until our local hospital sent patients there who were Covid positive. It ripped through the home, despite masks and PPE.

I got a phone call to say he was at the end. I begged them to let me go up there for 5 minutes, and offered to buy some PPE from them. They said they couldn't.

So, he died while the GP watched over FaceTime, with the matron and a carer sitting with him. They wanted his stuff removed, immediately afterwards, but I couldn't go in. I texted them when we arrived, and they bought the stuff out to the drive.

Then I had to do a pathetic little funeral. I couldn't even have funeral cars for the 10 people allowed, because their screening was ruled inadequate.

Then we sat, socially distanced in the chapel. Then all went home.

I was heartbroken, but I thought I was doing what everyone else had to, so ok.

Then it came out that on that very day, Johnson and his acolytes were holding a garden party, with a buffet, music and suitcases of alcohol.

I will never forgive that arrogant bastard, laughing at us all, while he partied through it. 😡

I hope they throw the book at him.

Next time, if they ever dare, they can stuff any restrictions where the Sun don't shine.

Yes I completely agree with this

Agree with this too and no you're definitely not the only person to think this. More and more people are coming out and saying it and a lot thought it even at the height of the hysteria but didn't dare say it then

I'd say a lot of the people disagreeing with me are arguing with me and belittling me so yeah I've done it back I've got every right to. Especially when personal, nasty comments have been made to and about me. Like one poster assuming what my house looks like I mean ...why? LOL . And belittling the type of work I have done and do and making wild assumptions there. It's one thing disagreeing me or even saying I'm a cunt for my opinion but I don't see what my job and house has to do with that

Anyway I did not want or expect "support" as such this is MN AIBU I've been here a long time and know the crack 😆 so I knew I'd get a lot disagreeing and arsehole comments. although I'm impressed with the brave ones who've admitted to agreeing with my opinion

The reason I posted was I just wanted to get it all down and I do feel better for doing so. And I have been though enough shit in my life that nasty comments from faceless internet randoms don't bother me ...at least unlike in covid no one has threatened to beat me up yet they'd have to find me first 😂

my question was aibu to still be affected and I think I got my answer there. 👍🏻

I thought it then (and did say it quite loudly).

I have written on here many times that history will not look back favourably on how awful we treated children and the young in this pandemic.

Spain in particular - children couldn’t leave the house for something like 6 weeks. How anyone can think that is ok… it’s batshit crazy. Many were stuck in apartments with no fresh air or exercise.

Do you remember Italy, New York, India.... any of the pictures in the UK of ambulances stacking up, etc etc

That's what happened when covid was unmitigated by actions and vaccines. Even a small % of a large number has a major impact

It's really not that difficult if you chose to open your eyes

The most extreme measures were at the very beginning when no one knew exactly how deadly the virus could be and when all we had to go on from China, the ground zero of the outbreak, were pictures of bodies piling up in the streets. I think most people with the benefit of hindsight will agree a lot of measures were disproportionate, but what was the alternative? Letting a new, unknown virus rip across the globe with no attempt to slow it down until a vaccine was available?

And there you go OP

You asked AIBU

Most pointed out partly you weren't, partly you were and you bought many aspects on yourself

You've argued with this and shown no recognition of your role in anything

My empathy for you is now gone, but you won't care.

Plenty of posters on MN expressed that view, and worse. And are you suggesting that the elderly, vulnerable, disabled, and people in care homes - ie. those the most susceptible to severe illness or death from Covid - should not have been prioritised in any way? Before vaccines were available? How odd.

I agreed with a shorter initial lockdown to get a measure of things. The alternative was a
Swedish approach (with a ring fencing of care homes). No harsh lockdown for months and months but measures and advice based on science. We quickly knew this virus affected older people and vulnerable people.

Well, I agree that most people who had COVID did not need to come into hospital, that is true, although, especially in the first wave, many of my colleagues who caught COVID were very unwell, despite not needing to go into hospital (temperatures of over 40 degrees, feeling beyond dreadful - someone in their 40s was sending me text messages that clearly showed their brain wasn't working 100% during that time, and the colleague who was the devoted mother of a young child who said as they got better "Today is the first day in 5 days that I have even thought about my child").

However, the fact is that even though only a small minority needed to come into hospital, even that number was enough, then combined with staff sickness (because even if your COVID is mild, giving it to a patient with a poor immune system may kill them) that the only way to cope was to shut down almost all other hospital activity. That's the point - it didn't have to even be 10 % of patients with COVID needing hospital i.e. 90% of COVID patients not needing hospital to break the system - just a few percent was enough to almost break the NHS.

My hospital (and others) "ran out of oxygen": what that means is that we had the amount of oxygen needed in the storage tanks, but the volume of demand and the high pressures required to deliver it to so many patients were more than the structure was designed for- it was literally unforeseeable. That's the scale of the problem for the NHS.

2% sounds small, but 2% of 60 million is a lot and even small increases in % mean huge numbers of patients. 2% of 60 million is 1.2 million people. A 0.5% increase in numbers would be 1.5 million people.

TL:DR It didn't need to affect a high percentage of people seriously to cause a crisis.

Ah, but if we followed the Swedish way, how could Tory ministers have given all those PPE contracts to their mates to help them get rich?

Well yes we would have needed to not have a completely inept government to follow the Swedish way..

I feel like the masks gave us a feeling of control in a scary time, so they did serve some purpose at least.

Personally I was really ill with Covid, the most ill I’ve been as an adult, and so was my 8 yr old. That was a later, milder variant and after the vaccine, so I’m very thankful I didn’t get it early on.

I believe that aside from the very first few weeks when fear was rife and everything was unknown we should have tried for normality. The disprotionate emphasis upon care homes was wrong in my view - yes isolate them but the priority should have been getting on with life and not shutting everything down. Clearly the government was not as worried about the virus as they appeared on the press conferences given the parties - I think they were scared into their public response.

The poster said ‘most people’.

Most people were not on ventilators.

I seriously cannot cope with the level of drama llamas and obtuseness on this thread.

Sweden got to much crap from many countries, I lived there during covid which I’m very happy about now. But, the government pretty much handed it over to the state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, a very clever man. He did well.