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?

We talk about this in the staff room sometimes. Kind of 'as if that actually happened' it's just bizarre when you think back and is a bit of a blur. It is like trying to remember a dream after you've woken up and hard to put in order. We work on a school so plenty of impact. The mumsnet posts were bizarre too. I particularly remember one where an OP was aghast that someone had gone to Tesco and only bought a cucumber!

It was awful. I'll never forget it. I do lab based work for a university and one day in march 2020 we got sent home and that was it for 6 months.
My partner who worked from home anyway was busier than ever.
DD was 2 at the time and went through an awful sleep regression. I used to have panic attacks at night and barely slept for 3 months. DD used to climb on every kitchen worktop, pulling every glass and dish out of cupboards. I remember having a teams call with my boss and DD was flying around everywhere and you could hear my partner shouting in the background.
Partner used to come downstairs to me tearful on the sofa and have a huge go at me. I guess it was self pitying but I couldn't help it. I'm not a homebody at all and found it so tough. Thankfully the weather was brilliant and I took DD out round the fields for a long walk every day to burn off energy.
It annoyed me that so many people said it was amazing, they were sunbathing, getting drunk and baking banana bread. These were childfree people and no one seemed to be struggling at all.
My parents were very strict with it so I didn't see them apart from at the door for a long time. I'm so glad it's over. I took photos I've. Lockdown day 1 , day 2, day 16 etc and I look like a different person.
Tbh lockdown is one of the reasons I never had another child.

Do you mean Harpur Hill? That wasn't dyed due to covid, it was that the water is toxic so it was dyed to deter people from having a swim.

Yes the lockdowns seem surreal in retrospect, I had a hard time processing the restrictions at first.

I stayed in the house with a 1 and 3 year old for 4 weeks. 2 weeks because there was a case at my sons nursery (no idea if he had any contact with the child( then another 2 weeks as I needed an operation and they required us to all isolate beforehand. I can’t believe I did that looking back.

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?

Unfortunately not. I wish I could say I did.

It's certainly possible that we're being encouraged to forget; by which I mean the ill effects upon people's mental health caused by the isolation and 'snitching' culture are being minimized because everyone's busy pretending it didn't happen. In mitigation, it's entirely understandable that people can't put this awful period behind them fast enough.

The effects upon those who lost loved ones - either to COVID or the collateral damage caused by no access to AA and addiction support, no help for the significant numbers who relapsed, those who didn't have their cancer caught quickly enough, etc - will be there forever.

The high street is practically dead in the water. The hospitality industry hasn't fared much better.

This is largely anecdotal, but in the accounts of many young women (I'm a lecturer; I speak to a lot of them) male aggression, sexual harrassment and hostility to them ramped up significantly in the period after lockdown. Even I have personal experience of this. The atmosphere even in daylight was that of a pressure cooker on the point of release. Trains were a space in which I felt particularly unsafe.

People clapped like performing seals and displayed rainbows everywhere. I refused to be part of this empty performativity and was criticized in my community for it. Now I'm backing the strike action of our local junior doctors and nursing staff for fair pay and desperately needed better conditions. Elsewhere - amusingly this often relates to the 'clappers' - they are being excoriated for daring to try to improve their lot.

The public services and educational sectors are in free fall. We've just seen the closest thing to a general strike since 1926 that the UK's stridently anti-union legislation - the most draconian in Europe - will permit. Granted this had been a long time coming, with real-term pay cuts dating back long before the pandemic. But the pandemic and the economic conditions it's brought about, have exacerbated it.

The cost of living crisis following Brexit, COVID and the war in Ukraine has resulted in a hike in interest rates that's likely to result in many homes being repossessed.

Changes in the labour market have ruined many people's prospects. Some of the shifts taking place in Higher Education - many beginning with the pandemic and continuing after it - will have a potentially devastating impact on the future economy.

We have shown ourselves to be worryingly compliant, meekly obeying the rules handed down to us and voluntarily placing ourselves under house arrest. All this whilst our neighbours reported us for any perceived breach, our leaders partied, and the police became power-drunk with frighteningly predictable speed. We saw basic liberties like the right to protest being made illegal. This does not bode well for any nation, and I'm concerned for the future.

I wish I could say I thought it a horrible period which now (thankfully) has been put behind us. Its effects are unfortunately not going away any time soon. Nor will I forget who the mischief-makers are, or those who cannot be trusted in my workplace or community. They know who they are.

@Delatron

How long do you think protection from the vaccine lasts? Genuine question.

That depends on many things: the current circulating strain, age of the person, co-morbidities, general fitness. However, vaccine protection in this instance is more about reducing disease severity. In my case, I already have enough problems disease-wise to want to add to them by catching a severe dose of Covid.

I had a lot of personal loss (my mum and two close colleagues) and the loss of many patients. NHS was a hideous place to work during it and the staff were poorly protected, emotionally blackmailed pawns. I’m still quite bitter.
Having said that, I believed then and still feel the whole thing was managed badly. Endless lockdowns, full reopening and repeats were very damaging to children, the economy and our mental health. The herd mentality in accepting all the nonsense rules was pretty frightening. One short intense lockdown if needed to reduce the virus spread, followed by keeping schools and businesses open should have been the priority. They should have thrown the money at the airline industry on proper supervised quarantine and supported the vulnerable until the vaccine rollout.
I don’t think people would comply to this level in future.
To those saying vaccines were useless or damaging, the evidence does not support your words. If this were the case the hospitals would still be overrun. One of the patient groups I manage covid mortality rate pre vaccine was 35% and post vaccine hardly anyone has died.

I guess that’s why the vulnerable have boosters every year. Just like they do for flu. But for the rest of us - I don’t think my vaccines are still giving me protection (I’d love it if they were..).

I believe Covid won’t be an issue for a children in the future due to the fact they will have repeat exposures, not necessarily being infected each time. It will circulate every year obviously. Much like a colds. That’s my argument. A novel virus is a dangerous virus. That’s why Covid was so serious for some. Not all though. The vaccines were a great stop gap until as a population we built up some immunity.

The Spanish flu is still with us. It just doesn’t wipe out huge swathes of young people like it did on its first iteration. Due to - immunity in the population.

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.

Britain was never as bad as other countries though.

People sacrificed a lot and were entitled to moan about it. It turned out that a lot of the advice was rubbish with the benefit of hindsight. So for many some or all those sacrifices were pointless.

It was a shit time for many many people. And the means did not justify the end.

Believe it or not my (ex)GP's surgery thinks we are still in 2020. You have to ring a bell to get in - 1 at a time. You can only get in if you have an appointment. Seats are still 1m apart (though I don't know why there are so many cos they don't let in many people at a time) You have to phone in still, to get to be triaged (eventually), and you MIGHT get an appointment that day. If not you have to ring the next day at 8.30 and then you get 3minutes of recording about if you have covid symptoms or if you are at death's door to phone 999, before joining a queue which has up to 40 people ahead of you. I know this is the pattern in so many surgeries and I dare say it was going that way anyway, but I feel they have adopted policies which worked fine then and that they are still using as it maintains an element of control.
I say (ex) surgery cos we did bite the bullet and register somewhere else in this small town and everything's back to normal.

This drives me batty. I live on the same road as my GP and I used to go in to book an appointment. 3 years later and they are still behind screens at reception while I sit on hold. I can see the flipping doors from my living room.

Hindsight is great.
Chaos on ITU. Patients (multiple) admitted and dead within 24 hours. We went from an 8 bedded critical care pre covid to a 28 bedded one entirely filled with ventilated patients. 3 wards taken over to accommodate them. Running out of equipment to the extent that we used cobbled together scuba masks from Decathalon to stand in for rudimentary CPAP masks. We were close to running out of oxygen to the extent it was almost being rationed as was sedation medication.
When lockdown finally kicked in most of my colleagues breathed a sigh of relief. Hugh visible drop in cases. I'm not sure what would have happened without lockdown tbh but pretty much certain the NHS would have been entirely overwhelmed.

If you found out that the initial “mild” infection wasn’t the end of it, that the virus lingered & hid out all over the body, for months or years, that the vaccines gave only limited short-lived protection, that you and your kids could get infected over and over and over,
and that every infection increased the chances of heart, brain, multi-organ damage, and that SARS2 was not evolving into a mild cold,

would you do anything differently?

No, I am still very, very angry about lockdown and the impact it had on children - mine particularly.

Hindsight is great.
Chaos on ITU. Patients (multiple) admitted and dead within 24 hours. We went from an 8 bedded critical care pre covid to a 28 bedded one entirely filled with ventilated patients. 3 wards taken over to accommodate them. Running out of equipment to the extent that we used cobbled together scuba masks from Decathalon to stand in for rudimentary CPAP masks. We were close to running out of oxygen to the extent it was almost being rationed as was sedation medication.
When lockdown finally kicked in most of my colleagues breathed a sigh of relief. Hugh visible drop in cases. I'm not sure what would have happened without lockdown tbh but pretty much certain the NHS would have been entirely overwhelmed.

Wha struck me listening to 'Memories of Covid. NHS at 70" was one HCP said they had never seen, in their career, so many deaths one after another.

That's why we did the first lockdown isn't it?

No.

Would you?

Yes it does feel like a terrifying dream, like a film. The fear and sorrow of losing a colleague to covid, the isolation of lockdown while living on my own, being in a bubble with my daughter the only person I could see socially, not being able to see my son as he lived further away and wasn't in my bubble, not seeing my partner for a year as he was working abroad and got stuck there while travel was banned. Only going out for local walks, few cars on the road. Scary news broadcasts and rising death rates and just not knowing where it would all stop. Scary and weird times.
And now we know that Johnson and the other parliamentarians pissed all over that by partying and carrying on regardless while peoples loved ones died on their own in hospital 😡🤬

Considering most people have had Covid a few times then you’re talking about billions of people with these health issues. I don’t see that. Sorry! But you carry on being terrified and theorising. What a way to live!

Yes our children will get infected over and over again. Less so as the years go on. They all seem fine funnily enough. My children were asymptomatic.
One seems completely immune. Thankful for strong immune systems. (Which hiding away in terror does not promote).

I’m more concerned about antibiotic resistance for the future. Not Covid. Doesn’t register on my list of things that concern me. 3 bouts later and I’m as fit as a fiddle.

Life seems mainly normal for me now but there are still obvious lingering effects.

The elderly relatives who still don't go out to eat.

The friend with elderly parents who still monitors COVID levels, won't eat indoors in cafes etc when infection rates over a certain level, and, regardless, will mask up when not eating, if in a cafe.

My own fitness which never quite recovered from catching it. Same for other people I know.

Friends who work with young people, saying how anxious and socially delayed a lot of them are.

Sigh.

I think the government REALLY should have just booted everyone outdoors once it became clear how much lower the infection rates were outside. Flung the classroom windows open and wrapped everyone up. Encouraged people to meet friends for walks.

I think the government REALLY should have just booted everyone outdoors once it became clear how much lower the infection rates were outside. Flung the classroom windows open and wrapped everyone up. Encouraged people to meet friends for walks.

I get what you're saying - but where would that have left the hospitals . Who were apparently in danger of being flooded with patients in the first instance?

My DH had every vaccine - but he died of Covid last April. I wouldn't rely too much on the vaccines or the herd immunity.🙁

@Delatron of course you don’t see it, you’re not looking. Not reading. Not following the thousands of papers published, raising the alarm and trying to warn people. From doctors & scientists across multiple disciplines.

Have a read for yourself. There should be nothing to fear from simply reading, right? I’m sure you’re mentally strong enough to cope with learning about Covid brain damage…(that’s just one aspect). And once you’ve had a mo, there’s more. The heart. The endothelial lining. The gut. The nervous system. This is not a mild virus even if it seems mild or asymptomatic when it first infects you.

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41420-023-01512-z

“Studies showed that SARS-CoV-2 infection can cause more than 10% patients with the Long-COVID syndrome, including pathological changes in brains. This review mainly provides the molecular foundations for understanding the mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 invading human brain and the molecular basis of SARS-CoV-2 infection interfering with human brain and memory, which are associated with the immune dysfunction, syncytia-induced cell death, the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, microclots and biopsychosocial aspects. …”

2.https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/studies-add-picture-how-covid-can-affect-brain-long-term

@Delatron the link between pandemic viruses and brain damage/degenerative disease isn’t new. The 1918 flu caused an uptick in Parkinson’s Disease years later & scientists who study past pandemics were looking out for SARS2 doing similar as soon as it started spreading. Sadly, more & more studies indicate they are right to be concerned.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220127-could-covid-19-still-be-affecting-us-in-decades-to-come

I understand that many people do not want to think about this. And I am used to seeing fear/anger/grief reactions in others when they are asked to consider it. Often this becomes minimizing or attacking the messenger.

whatever. I still think it’s worth saying: and also advocating for clean air and not breathing it in, not consenting to repeat infection.