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?

To be honest l never give it a second thought.
I had already experienced several life changing events previously, l have a very high tolerance towards change and uncertainty because that had already been a huge factor in my life for many years.
Covid didn't really affect me, l still had to go into work, as did my eldest and my youngest was HE anyway. It didn't change our everyday routines, l don't have a car so used to walking everyday, that was nothing different, still walked everyday. I enjoy the peace and quiet after work so that wasn't an issue either, and because l have such early starts l go to bed early. I think not having a tv and not being manipulated by the media helped also, l wasn't fearful. Instead l was busy planting my garden, beautiful things can still grow in the most uncertain of times.

My son is off school poorly today. I WFH and while he's not much trouble, I just feel pulled and distracted and annoyed (this is all my issue).
I was thinking earlier how I managed during lockdowns with both my sons home full time, working, homeschooling and caring for elderly relatives.

I did do quite a bit of slightly crazed running and cycling which I guess stopped me losing my mind, but I think my mindset was very much that we were OK in our little house. Healthy, no financial concerns, space to be outside, a supportive manager, so that's what I kept reminding myself. It changed my perspective.

I agree it is weird to think it ever actually happened. Looking back. It was a dreadful time in many ways, although DD who was 10/11 during lockdown still has fond memories about some parts - the quiet streets among them. I am pleased about that as she, like all kids/teens missed out on so many rites of passage.

Well it will be great fodder for future historians anyway. Especially when the true costs of lockdown become known. How quickly we surrendered our liberties. How the police and the government behaved. Scary in hindsight. No wonder we want to block it from our minds. The way the media (fed by the government) played on our greatest fears.

Children will do history lessons about how in Spain children had to stay locked indoors for 6 weeks - for a virus that largely didn’t affect them.

I also find it bizarre that some people show a complete lack of empathy. On a personal level lockdown wasn’t awful for me (I could work at home, kids yr5/6). But I could emphasise how awful it was for teenagers to miss out on first years at Uni, exams, parties. For people who were having a baby to give birth alone. The rates of domestic violence soared…

I can’t believe anyone can be so self absorbed to say ‘oh well I thought it was great’..

It feels totally unreal & yes, very much like a dream. I've not forgotten what it was like though.
Losing loved ones & live streaming their funerals. I found an invite link to one amongst my emails recently.
I was travelling to & from central London a lot during the lockdowns, using empty rush hour trains, walking everywhere as I didn't want to get the tube, marvelling at the deserted streets around Piccadilly, Soho, Oxford Street, closed shops with Xmas decorations on Feb 2021.

I was in central London a couple of weeks ago, full of tourists, impossible to move at times. It drove me nuts but it felt so good to see once more.

How quickly we surrendered our liberties.

I think it shows more how naive people were, and how lucky and privileged they had been so far.

We hear constantly about times in history when people experienced a lot worst, how people experience a lot worst today, but we feel strangely disconnected, or they don't feel any more real than your popular tv show.

I am not sure if being aware of the fragility of any situation actually helps, but when you look at the apathy of most people when their own rights or circumstances are legally changing, you realise people don't care or never learn.

There were so many bad predictions on here, along the lines of never socialising normally etc again

What gubbins, those posters have left or n/c - probably for the best

I remember saying when they stop bombarding us with death and case stats we’ll forget about it

I have - except for the monumental cost and damage

There were so many bad predictions on here, along the lines of never socialising normally etc again

Yes, I'm glad all those doom-mongers were proved wrong. Humankind has lived through pandemics before and by and large we all want to get back to normal asap, not carry on living some grim half life.

I agree. I find that the years blur into one another as well. I have trouble remembering if something happened in 20, 21 or 22 due to it all.

Things happened we should never forget or forgive such as people miscarrying, alone, with their partners outside, while pubs and gyms were open. I’ve mentioned this a lot but my DD is just finishing Year 2 and it’s the the very first uninterrupted, “normal” school year and she is so stressed and anxious due to never having those years to adjust to normal school life due to lockdowns, covid wankers testing their entirely well children every day so constantly being sent home from school so she has never got used to being without me really. It’s only just coming out now and we are having to get therapy for her.

I also had a neighbour who was all over social media about the rules, questioned why i wasn’t clapping for the fucking NHS (because it is at DD’s bedtime) while merrily going in and out of her daughters house all the time.

And my elderly grandfather trying desperately to help my grandmother who had dementia, but no doctor would come to the house to assess her because covid. He was up all hours of the night trying to calm her and she attacked him because she wanted to go home. She escaped and was wandering the streets. No one gave a shit because covid.

but go back to the first weeks, there was also so many "predicting" that lockdown would NEVER happen, schools would NEVER close and it was just doom-mongers trying to spread hysteria.

It's always quite entertaining to read some old threads, with always a few "I KNOW for a fact / I work at a TOP level role and I KNOW".

I think a lot of people saying this now were a bit ‘stasi informant’ themselves at the time but prefer to think they weren’t. Everyone was pretty scared.

I remember some of the posters. Daily stoking up fear. I wonder why they did that

Yes they wear them and have always worn them during surgeries where you need a surgical mask to protect from bodily fluids- people used these face rags as if they protected anyone from viruses lol, even the box said it dosent and after putting them in the pocket then putting them on handling car keys back in the pocket out again.. ridiculous and they have 100% fail rate for viral or bacterial protection as expected and proven.

oh and the queues in the car parks waiting to roll their sleeve up to have an experimental clot shot.. there was no pandemic, it was a oay day and laws were passed to control people that would have had otherwise no chance of being passed and bonus was more ministers and their friends and relatives became millionaires, death rates have been in the last year higher than during the “covid years”.

There were some real arseholes on here, I remember a lot of their user names. The people who said life would never be the same, with a certain patronising glee, and anyone who dared to be hopeful that maybe life would return to normal would be shot down for being a naive, selfish idiot. How DARE you say you’d like to go on holiday to Italy again, people ARE DYING YOU STUPID SELFISH FOOL.

I hope all of those people are fucking miserable now. The sort of people who had shit little lives and were revelling in the fact they could justify having no friends and no fun cos no-one else could either. Ha. Serves them right. I only wish there was a way of outing them in real life so I could make them apologise!

• pay day

Anyone remembers 11 BILLION that was spent on the covid app- i never used it is anyone even still using it? Nice way to make taxoayers funds disappear-into someones pocket.

I remember people being really, really ill and dying. I remember the awful feeling when the deaths started and knowing they'd keep rising until the effect of the lockdown kicked in. As they did, until it did. I remember the panic and despair on the faces of hospital staff. And the people we lost.

I totally relate to you, it was horrific.

I remember a woman on the local Tesco till bellowing at me, 'Give that gentleman his two metres!' and everyone turning round to look. I still avoid her.

And the chained-up playgrounds like something from evangelical Ulster on Sundays in the 1970s.

And the bloody jigsaws - I am clearing my mum's house atm and keep finding little pieces, and for some reason they bring back the bleak feelings for me.

Not to mention all the money spent on PPE because all the stockpiled stuff was out of date. And the expensively-bought stuff was about as good quality as a crisp packet.

Its not just the covid era, I worked all through the Aids crisis in the 80's and countless deaths at the beginning of my nursing career and all through covid at the end of it yet weirdly enough I haven't thought about all the Aids deaths in such a long time.
Its like I don't want to remember even though I cared very much at the time.

Completely agree. I do sometimes think did it really happen? It was so weird!

This is so interesting to read. I live in Asia but from the U.K.. We only stopped wearing masks on public transport in February 2023 and still need them in hospitals or clinics. My kids wore them every day on the bus to school for 3 years and at school all day every day for 2.5 years. There are still a handful of countries around here which require entry testing. Restrictions were much stricter here for longer than Europe/U.K./US so it feels like quite an odd mixture of still quite recent but also incredibly bizarre and alien as you are all mostly describing. It's amazing how quickly the brain tries to forget.

The more worrying thing is that governments in the UK are not going to learn a single thing from it or the ongoing inquiry about how to be prepared and cope with the next pandemic.