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?

Best not to get hung up on how other people live their lives.

True but it’s wrong to pass on irrational fears to children. They’ve been through enough and you are prolonging the impact on your son’s life.

I can't help but think that the fallout of the Covid Lockdowns, on the population as a whole, has probably been worse than not locking down after the initial scare would have been.

Actual SAGE or indy?

Actual SAGE I believe. It was Professor Susan Michie who said it

I feel that we lost at least 2 years, like 2019 feels like 2 years ago but at the same time like another lifetime.

She was on both. It definitely sounds more Indy Sage though!

YY @StormShadow I was against the lockdowns particularly 2 and 3 but happily had the vaccines. A lot of people seem to think that if you are against lockdowns you are against vaccines.

My child was born into nicu as covid was gearing up to send us into chaos, she left the isolation of an incubator to the imprisonment of home where no one could visit and the health visitor arrived when she felt like it and reported an empty home to police and social services postnatal depression was brushed aside to support the rule not the mom it became unbearable so we fled in fear confusion and doom we were still denied contact but we had more space it was warmer and the paediatrician was human I hate that she has only just started to mix with children her age but it is what it is we can only wish it was a dream …. nightmare

Totally agree

Sigh. There’s nothing irrational about continuing to take simple, easy steps to avoid being pointlessly, repeatedly infected with a systemic thrombotic pathogen that is known to persist in multiple organs and cause long term sequelae.

also lol at the idea of getting my DS to do anything he doesn’t want to do.
That kid wants to be an aerosol physicist. He totally gets what’s going on, better than many adults.

also wtf at me literally explaining kid’s bestie’s mom is undergoing chemo & the kids WANT to mask, and people somehow still acting like it’s normal to be cool with passing on a disease that could KILL her, like, maybe try some perspective & empathy here. Over 16,000 UK kids have been orphaned by Covid.
https://imperialcollegelondon.github.io/orphanhood_calculator/#/country/United%20Kingdom

lockdowns sucked, but were a blunt tool that was needed at the time, unfortunately. The UK could have locked down & earlier & avoided some of the infections, deaths & economic devastation, as other countries showed.

Three years on, people worldwide are adapting to living in a world with novel organ-damaging virus running amok; some better than others. We are all mostly doing our best.

I was back at work as soon as the first lockdown lifted but I have a few flashbacks to the crazy nevertheless:

Not seeing aged, widowed DM for six weeks because Boris said so.

Guy diving six feet into the road as dh and I approached on our permitted daily walkabout.

Hi-vizzed up covid police directing me away from an entirely empty yet apparently one-way only doorway to enter the sacred premises through the correct door one floor down and all the way round the outside of the shopping centre.

School hall turned into a testing centre with all staff solemnly gowned up and recording results on test and trace.

Queuing to get into charity shops and being accused of being a death plague vector for allowing my mask to slip beneath my nose in one.

Fucking insane.

I do miss speeding unhindered lockdown driving on empty roads though...

People acted with the knowledge they had at the time, and often out of concern for vulnerable family members and friends.

What struck me most about that time was how spoilt and self centred many people have become. Could you imagine a similar attitude during the war?

How dare the government tell me to put horrid lining on my curtains and pull them every evening. Have they no idea how depressing that is for me and my family?

Ooh I can't wear a gas mask. Where can I download an excemption sticker?

I'm so stressed I neeeed a holiday. How dare anyone tell me I can't go to Spain just because there's a war on?

I don't live in the UK but the general opinion where I do live is that the British have come a long way from the stoicism for which they were once admired and are now just a bunch of spoilt pampered selfish brats. Not all of you obviously, but your general reputation has gone way downhill.

What struck me most about that time was how spoilt and self centred many people have become. Could you imagine a similar attitude during the war?

Please stop romanticising WW2 and dismissing how hard the restrictions were for others, It was not all Knees up Mother Brown and cheerily waving at the Luftwaffe. People struggled, were left traumatised, complained, cheated, stole and got around the rules then too.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-33566789

Please stop using cheap arguments about romanticising the war. My precise argument is that the conditions and restrictions then were even more gruelling and long drawn out than the restrictions that existed during covid. It wasn't all easy and about sing songs down the air raid shelters etc etc.

And yes, people got around some of the restrictions. But they didn't endlessly whinge and whine, put other people at risk, be outraged at having to make sacrifices and basically behave like pampered princesses.

I remember, at the height of restrictions and when English people were being appealed to about not travelling abroad posters on here kept banging on about 'having done my own risk assessment' ie decided I'm going and to hell with everyone else including the unfortunate people in the country I've chosen to travel to'. One particular Princess announced she was on holiday in Greece because her family 'deserved a holiday more than most' then outlined a set of circumstances equal to what most people were enduring ie working from home and home schooling children'. No business going bust, no family members dying that she couldn't visit, no caring for extremely vulnerable loved ones. But no, she 'deserved a holiday more than most'. What a pampered, self centred attitude.

This is just silly.

No it's not.

It really is. People sacrificed a lot during Covid

The old British are blah blah is overdone and out with the pandemic

Yes people sacrificed a lot. But the endless complaining, moaning, deciding to just do what they wanted without any regard for medical advice at the time or the vulnerabilities of other people was hardly edifying.

Or are you saying it was?

And yes, people got around some of the restrictions. But they didn't endlessly whinge and whine, put other people at risk, be outraged at having to make sacrifices and basically behave like pampered princesses.

Did you actually read the article. There's plenty of evidence that many were far from compliant, the existence alone of ARP wardens shows that. Also I'm curious. How old are you? Were you there in person to know this for a fact? Even if so. I think your selective memory might be playing up.

Have you actually read my posts? Of course people tried to get around some of the restrictions. But they didn't endlessly whine, try to find excuses as to why they should be exempt, and basically behave in the highly individualistic fashion that came to the fore during Covid.

I’m saying I think you’re incorrect.

People found it hard, entirely understandable

Compliance was high in the U.K.

Compliance was not high in the UK. Many of us watched aghast as you merrily travelled abroad during the height of restrictions, refused to wear masks etc.

According to data it was

Regardless of how ‘aghast’ you were. That’s irrelevant.

Have you actually read my posts? Of course people tried to get around some of the restrictions. But they didn't endlessly whine, try to find excuses as to why they should be exempt, and basically behave in the highly individualistic fashion that came to the fore during Covid.

And again the article(And others are available) make it clear that people did do exactly those things see ignoring blackout restrictions, avoiding conscription, pretending they had been made homeless by bombs to claim benefits, claiming extra rations, profiteering, buying on the black market etc.