To ask if anyone else feels like the covid era is a bad dream

[23rMarch2020]

Whenever I think of 2020 or 2021 it just doesn’t feel real at all. The lockdowns for months on end, the clapping for the NHS, the track and trace system, entire school years being sent home because a single case was discovered, panic buying, people developing intricate methods of sanitising their shopping, public shaming of rule breakers, religious holidays being stopped at very short notice. It’s all so bizarre to think of that this was in our country so recently and, really, there’s nothing to stop any of it happening again. In so many ways it just feels like a different world, my DS who had his GCSE’s cancelled is about to go off to uni (if he gets the grades 🤞) and my then little year 7 DD is doing her own GCSE’s next year. I guess my Aibu is to ask if anyone else feels so totally disconnected from that era to the extent it’s all like a bad dream?

Nahh it's not consigned to the 'bad dream' box for me. The consequences are still a living ducking nightmare. DH went from training to a marathon to being a blue badge holder (no previous long term health issues fit 40s). The resultant blue light near death trauma tipped DD into understandable anxiety, my work (NHS) has been a shit show ever since and it didn't look like any of these three covid era impacts are shifting any time soon. I am exhausted and near the edge. So no it's all too much of a living reality still.

Same. Of course they do shit like this, even if it happens that on this particular occasion it was a knee jerk decision that was correct and/or one agrees with it.

You can see it just now.

You can't mention anything about the lockdown without the conspiracy theorist accusing you of "defending" it.

But then some people don't seem to realise that "politicians" are just like you and me. They prefer to idea of leaders holding their hands and managing everything, so they can safely moan about everything from the safety of their little sofa.

Speaking of propaganda, has anyone ever gone back and looked at the original videos from China?
They are so clearly fake. So badly fake

They are indeed, but the abuse to those who pointed this out at the time was incredible

Same when I posted this:

But then some people don't seem to realise that "politicians" are just like you and me.

And that's exactly why I said it's a fallacy that everything, including the nonsense with taping up products in the supermarket, is carefully considered or is for good reason is ridiculous. No hand holding required here. The people who required handholding the most seemed to have been those who stridently supported even the most draconian and foolish of lockdown rules.

They needed the government to go to insane lengths to make them feel safer.

I had this discussion with friends just this week. I admit I somewhat blasé about the whole thing and did think it was absolutely batshit at the time but we did follow the rules because everyone was shamed into it.

A Facebook memory popped up the other day that a friend had posted and tagged many of us in right at the start of the pandemic. It said something along the lines of: The reality is, if your child catches this illness, they will be travelling alone in the ambulance.

I am absolutely outraged that people were led to believe that level of fear mongering... utterly disgraceful

Clot shot? IQ test? Grow up for goodness sake. How can you expect anyone to take you seriously when you're talking like a rabid conspiracy theorist.

OP I agree that it's insane looking back, just surreal.

We had kept ourselves and our staff clear of COVID but at the end of 2021 unfortunately we started catching it one by one, we deal with the public and the outrage and abuse we took because we couldn't do everything NOW I even had someone demand when I was working from home *feeling like death that I go into the office with COVID to find information she wanted! We were so short staffed as we were all ill that those that didn't have COVID were stretched to the limit and this woman just would not let up whining at me. We had suppliers whose staff had COVID that meant deliveries to us were slower, that apparently was outrageous too, it was like it was over in their heads so we should all just get back to normal when it just wasn't that easy. Materials hadn't been manufactured so they were not available for fabrication etc. It's a long supply chain that we are at the end of and we're beginning to get sick ourselves, I will never forget how some people behaved towards us, we were sworn at, shouted at .. like we hadn't been through it too!

I couldn't attend a funeral, my wedding was postponed twice, we worried for our business as we didn't receive furlough pay as self employed and fell through the gap, I am chronicly ill and treatment stopped, i was at risk and shielding,.live 159 miles from friend and family so didnt see them for months even when mixing outside was allowed as you were still unable to leave your tier area and then when we could see the beginning of the end the absolutely shameful behaviour of some members of the public.

I still use my knuckle, not my finger. 🙈

I remember contorting myself trying to open a dog poo bin with my elbow! Crazy times.

Yes. I had a moment yesterday when I pressed a button to call a lift and it triggered a memory of pulling my sleeve over my hand to do it in the ‘covid era

I still do that but I did it before Covid too. It's nothing to do with germs though. It's because I often get a static shock when I do.

I thought it was bollocks at the time and nothing has happened to change my opinion. My husbands sister didn’t have a visitor for 12 months in the care home, we eventually got to see her on her death bed. It’s was cruel, draconian and what’s even worse it was bloody pointless. It didn’t protect the vulnerable and it has caused massive societal and financial harm.
Don’t even get me started on the vaccines. What a load of shite. I can’t believe people are still having them.

And yet it was ok for them to send Covid infected people into the care homes without testing

I think it’s easy now to look back and finger point at people for being ‘hysterical’ or like Quisling now we are vaccinated and we know covid to be relatively mild. But all we had at the beginning was a rising death toll, news of lockdowns, photos of rows of people lying on their stomachs in intensive care fighting for their lives. We didn’t know how it affected children or how it was spread.

I’m willing to bet most of the people claiming they were all chilllllllled mannnnn about it were actually very worried, at least throughout that spring, and did one or two crazy things themselves.

I relaxed that summer and more again by autumn, and I wasn’t in favour of the second or third lockdowns. But the beginning was frankly pretty terrifying and when all you’re being told is how lots of people are dying by drowning in their own fluids then yeah you will act in response to that.

I have been feeling shit enough when I had covid recently, I am rather grateful I avoided it at the high of the pandemic and didn't end up under a ventilator like so many did.

It's easy to say we would all have been fine without a lockdown, we can say whatever we want, the time is gone anyway.

I think I’ve just blocked it out of my mind, it makes me so angry how duped we all were. The stupid nonsensical rules they implemented like not having background music in a restaurant because it would supposedly make people talk louder and increase the risk of infection. Utter shite.

It's made me reconsider past events like the war. I'd always sort of thought that the world wars were the punctuation marks of the 20thC 'between the wars' 'post war' etc and that people living in that time must have felt like that but actually since Covid I wonder if they also felt a bit like this. In 1948 was life getting back to 'normal' for most people & wartime seemed a weird blip?
Obviously it was on another scale, thousands of husbands, sons and fathers away for years, death and destruction from bombings etc. but when it was over we're people fundamentally changed or did they just wake back up like we are?

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow yes interesting

I'll admit I was bloody scared at first, especially as I had to go into work. Was a Teaching Assistant and my school was open for almost the whole period for SEND pupils, vulnerable pupils & children of other key workers.

Felt so much more relaxed once the vaccinations became available. But things like the furlough scheme and pressure to wear masks and rule of 6 went on far longer than was sensible for the economy and for our mental health.

Thinking back I found some rules batshit at the time but people were getting stopped by police or dragged on social media for ‘breaking them.’ The play park was cable tied shut for months. Fucking mental thinking back now. I know that isn’t the worst thing, of course, but little things like that now seem totally alien thinking back. Plus the fact my children were out of school March-July 2020 with ZERO work from the school then January-March 2021 with online learning. Batshit.

They went into a post-war economic boom (aside from coping with rationing until the mid-50s). High employment, low interest on debt, unusual financial stability, implementation of new technology to expand industries. Pretty much the exact opposite of what we're coping with. I reckon the war being over brought more relief and hope than the end of Covid.

It does seem like a bad dream now. I remember one woman gleefully telling me that she didn't believe in the vaccination. She found out that I had Covid quite badly in February 2021, and actually laughed in my face..
'Ha, see I was right all the time. You had all the jabs but still got it'
Such a nasty thing to do. She said it made her day. How can people be so bloody awful?

Just comfort yourself with the thought that she was showing her ignorance

It feels like it didn’t really happen. Everything was so extreme compared to normal life.

Circumstances varied wildly from family to family.

Looking back, I only have happy memories from that time.