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?

I was just entering the third trimester of my first pregnancy when the first lock down hit. People have commented in the past saying, 'must have been awful to have a baby in those circumstances' but I didn't know any different. My parents not being able to meet their first grandchild until he was a month old, and even then, only with a mask on, was really sad.

Feels like a distant memory now, not something I think about often.

Everyone was pretty scared

No, not everyone. I knew from the early days that Covid was a mild illness for the vast majority of people who were to get it. And that the media were playing on fear, because that’s how they make money. I’ll never stop feeling angry that the unnecessary rules and guidance had so much adverse impact, especially on kids lives.

We moved to Copenhagen for 20 months during the first 5 months of covid. It was not great there either as they too had several lockdowns but the biggest mistake I think in the UK was Johnson and co on the TV every evening at the same time stoking up ' anxiety amongst many on a constant basis. Older people in particular I think got hooked on every little detail- It was a very real threat yes, but ramming it down people's throats in a daily dose I don't think helped- they simply didn't do this in Denmark- the gvt were on only every few weeks and changes to regulations. They had precise but not insane rules too and on opening bars and restaurants if you wanted to go you needed twice weekly clear tests for many many months which you had to show- they reopened schools etc much earlier too it seemed

I remember walking through the empty city streets with litter and orange/red Covid posters everywhere, thinking it was like being on the set of Twelve Monkeys. Utterly bizarre, and terrified people diving into hedges (literally!) if you had to walk past each other on a footpath. We witnessed some very strange reactions and a lot of fear. It’s no wonder people want to forget some of the crazier stuff they witnessed.

Weirdly the one thing that really sticks in my mind about covid was the 36 year old dad of two in our town who raved on and on about the "clot shots" on Facebook and how everyone was just sheep. Died of covid leaving his wife and two kids under five.

Yes, it seems unbelievable that if ever happened, and also that we were broadly very accepting of limitations (not everyone was, and I was a supporter of the lockdowns - Ireland not UK - so I'm not decrying them).

The first lockdown post March 17 was 'stay at home, max 2k from home & for essential purposes only'. I remember carefully checking an app to work out exactly where 2k from my house finished. It seems mad I did so (along with most people) so diligently & complicitly!

Lockdown was really bad for me, mentally. Other than work, which kept me sane, I found it hard to function. I did none of the house projects or cosying up with the kids. We all lead very busy lives normally (which I bemoan, usually!) but none of us could really function with all our normal activities & interactions stripped back.

I realised how important micro-interactions, like the chat with the person working in the coffee shop etc, are to me.

My youngest DS became really depressed & withdrawn. I realise now I wasn't much help at all to him.

I lost my mother during Covid so that's my main memory of the time. But there's a lot of posters on here talking about people dobbing each other in etc but not about the people who ignored medical advice and showed little or no concern for others because they didn't want to be deprived or put out in any way.

There was lots of bad and arrogant behaviour demonstrated during Covid, in many different ways.

But there was also lots of generous, courageous and humane behaviour that showed the best of our humanity.

Long Covid is fucking awful. I'm still suffering badly with it and it's impossible to get help. Ive tried my GP multiple times, cried my eyes out last time and left with a website link and a prescription for antidepressants. Neither of which have helped the very real physical symptoms I'm still suffering.

I do ask people here though to spare some empathy for people who have had some awful stuff triggered as a result of covid or possibly vaccine- I had quite mild covid but developed weird neuro issues with migraines , pins and needles and weak muscles as well as arthritis in neck- all came on immediately after 2nd dose of covid and within 3 weeks of 4th vaccine, - met a 28 year old guy last week who developed arthritic symptoms in some joints and still can't smell or taste properly 2 years on- it has left a lot of devastation in its wake both financially , emotionally and health wise for many many people and yet I have seen posts describing people as 'malingerers' -

I think people are processing it all in different ways, and for one group (clearly evident in some of the posts on here) it is to say that it was all a nonsense and totally made up.

That’s their own form of denial. I can see the temptation to downplay the huge number of deaths and the significant health impact from Covi, but the whole “it was just a flu” line gets tired pretty quickly. Anecdotally I know no one who ever experienced flu as any more than a mildly unpleasant inconvenience, whereas I know several people who were either hospitalised by Covid or who continue to have their lives seriously impacted by long Covid.

We live in a world that allows transmission to happen across the world incredibly quickly, and our health systems don’t have capacity to deal with the sort of surges in health problems that pandemics like Covid create. That meant it was never JUST about the health impact on individuals, it was always a balance between impact on individuals combined with the potential societal impact of so many people being out of action/in need of health care at once.

I don’t think we should ever play down the seriousness of what the world suddenly had to deal with, particularly by playing the “I always knew it was a nonsense…” card. Covid is a prime focus for all sorts of biases which you can see playing out ever since - hindsight bias, overconfidence, optimism bias…

Whilst I also hated the restrictions I can understand why many of them were taken - particularly when our knowledge of what we were facing was so limited.

I worry that this has just become another front in an increasingly fractious so-called Culture War.

I also wonder if it leaves us better or worse able to deal with the next global pandemic.

But that's not true! Evidentially at this point we know it's not a mild illness.

Yes for many people they will be fine.

However that doesn't make it a 'mild' illness! In the first wave of Covid (say, March - June 2020) and certainly the later wave (January 2021) it affected so many otherwise healthy & well people, in a way that had not been seen before with a virus. Of course, vulnerable & older were more affected. But so many people outside that category were seriously ill, died or experienced long Covid.

I too was unafraid, in terms of my own risk. (I was more afraid of the falling-apart of the world!). But it doesn't mean it wasn't serious & that these steps were needed.

Retrospectively it's clear some decisions weren't necessary possibly eg (in Ireland) the closure of schools for so long. But at the time it was hard to know if it was a correct decision.

@Nesbi

Cross-posted but excellent points - I agree.

...Piers Corbyn farting in your trousers... the government sending kids back to school for one day after the holidays before closing again...police posting Twitter videos of people going for a walk...Boris Johnson bragging about shaking hands with everyone shortly before nearly dying of covid...Barnard Castle...Trump suggesting people inject themselves with disinfectant...great times.

How hilarious. You're right. I never believed adults would willingly lock children in with abusers and make them disappearing from view a virtue. I assumed people would care. I'm not so naive now

Agree with every word of this.

I was just thinking this, I was watching Kate garraway get her mbe and her husband Derek being there, and I thought how utterly damaged they were from this, how awful it was, as were millions of others damaged in various ways from health , to loss of loved ones and loss of livelihoods , and how the world had literally moved on like it hadn’t happened.

the nightingale hospitals, the images from Italy, people reporting their neighbours for going for a walk, the hoarding of food, selling loo rolls on eBay, people scared to leave their homes, Xmas cancelled, new year cancelled, the nightly broadcasts, the general hysteria, boris being hospitalised, people being nailed into their homes in china, people scared to open their windows in case it came in, people quarantining their post and shopping for days on end, folks stripping at their doors if they went out, then showering and washing their clothes, it was just fucking crazy.

But it’s like we all just went back to our normal lives. Except those who remain Ill, their families, those who lost businesses or loved ones, and those who mentally have struggled to come back from it.

it’s like you can’t even remember just how awful it was.

The propaganda and fear mongering was really something you could never forget!

Remember the "look into my eyes"

Or the vaccination adverts - that statistic about 4 times more likely to be hospitalised there is literally a lie

The 'look into my eyes' advert was so fucking awful - I see children now with anxiety that started after they were branded vectors of disease for their elderly relatives. It was an airborne virus, impossible to prevent people passing it on to one another, yet somehow they had convinced us it would be our fault if you passed it on to someone.

@TheWalrusdidbeseech Go and tell that to the people still going through the courts for breaking Covid rulz while others got away with partying.

You minimize and dismiss what people in the UK went through yet if a similar virus came along which affected children you would expect us all to go through it all again yeah cos its well known that the minimization and dismissal of sacrifices made is the surefire way of getting ppl to do it again. well its a no from me. NO WAY I said in April 2020 that whatever we do it will never be enough and i was proved right.

Ah @itsapalaver the smugness when people who weren't vaccinated died. The memories

Speaking of propaganda, has anyone ever gone back and looked at the original videos from China?

They are so clearly fake. So badly fake. No one ever just collapsed in the street in this way - only to be rescued immediately by people in full hazmat suits. What a shambles.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7923981/Coronavirus-Disturbing-videos-claim-people-collapsing-Wuhan.html Where the fearmongering started!

That’s really interesting, someone I work with got pins and needles in her legs on the way back home from her covid vaccine. She walks with crutches now and really struggles. The doctors say oh well it might be long covid, it might be some weird neurological disease we’re yet to diagnose, could be the vaccine. 🤷‍♀️

dd in her early 20s got blood clots following the vaccine and has been really poorly since.

I remember a website set up to gloat about unvaccinated people dying. Just wow.

What countries had it bad in Europe- Belarus, Russia were lais back, Sweden did not have any lockdown at all, Baltics had distancing etc but life otherwise was as usual, doctors and surgrons helf their apps and dentists stayed open-unlike in the uk where we still see the knock on effect..

But it’s like we all just went back to our normal lives. Except those who remain Ill, their families, those who lost businesses or loved ones, and those who mentally have struggled to come back from it. it’s like you can’t even remember just how awful it was.

What’s the alternative but to carry on as we once did, for most of us? The truth is that most people are focused thinking about our families, our mortgage repayments, our holidays, our hobbies etc rather than think back to those images in 2020 and 2021, because in general we prioritise ourselves and our loved ones.

“whereas I know several people who were either hospitalised by Covid or who continue to have their lives seriously impacted by long Covid.”

I work in an organisation of 120 people. Whilst a very small number had elderly parents who died (5) I know one who had anything other than a bad bout of cold, none were off longer than a week or two, most continued working as we are key workers. None of my colleagues were hospitalised. I attended an empty large regional hospital for a broken bone during lockdown so saw no over worked medical staff or long queues of ambulances. I know a total of zero people with long covid. Neither my dad, my mum (both elderly and mum since died of cancer), husband or child have had covid despite living as normally as possible and using public transport. We are all basing our views on our own experiences of the time and the period since lock down. My experience is different to yours, it doesn’t make it any less valid.