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?

Same here.

No report of anything, for what? Despite what posters tried to claim at the time, we were never allowed "just one hour" a day, what was it to monitor?

People won't taking the piss and having big parties, people had a bit of respect.

Neighbourhood groups coming together to collect and deliver necessities and food to elderly people or people too scared to venture out,

Neighbours doing colourful chalk drawings underneath the windows of children for their birthdays, and leaving them presents,

People arranging bicycles for those who were missing out, the list goes on.

I am not rewriting history, I am well aware there was a lockdown and what was important to me, mainly travelling, was not happening.

I am not going to pretend things were worst than they actually were, what's the point?

I could legally go for a jog in the morning, go to the shops to buy food for my kids, or milk, it's always milk we need, take my kids on a bike ride. Ironically the post was working a lot better than it is today.

It wasn't house arrest, thank god. No paperwork needed to show the militia outside 🙄

Do you have school age dc?

all this. it was a nightmare hopefully never to be repeated. Insanity reigned everywhere.

The next time a pandemic like that hits I won’t be so utterly compliant. It did a number on me.

That’s ridiculous.

Why pretend people are still worried about it when everyone is going about their business (shopping/going to restaurants/ cafes/work etc) without masks?

I had a medical appointment recently in a clinic and the letter told me to wear a mask. I didn’t though had one on my bag just in case they enforced it. They didn’t. Literally no one in the place was wearing a mask so why still say it in their letters? Pathetic.

@SamW98 i had the same shit from my housing association re, the electric check back in Feb of THIS year. They even said if i refused to wear a mask they would put me down as denying entry They said they needed to do everything by the book. So i did and pointed out to them that these checks arent yet mandatory in social housing

I remember visiting PIL and SIL in their garden and they'd set out various tables and chairs all at the required distance which we all sat behind like a game show. Then daren't have a drink as couldn't go in to use the loo.
Utterly bonkers.

Neighbours doing colourful chalk drawings underneath the windows of children for their birthdays, and leaving them presents

Hideous.

Well it's better than doing nothing.

I remember meeting the in laws and SIL in a hotel for afternoon tea. There were too many of us to sit at the same table ( rule of 6 and there were 7 of us) so they made us sit at 2 separate tables.
Afterwards we all went to in laws house and mixed freely 😂

It wasn't house arrest, thank god. No paperwork needed to show the militia outside

I went to my parents at Christmas 2020 As a carer i was allowed to "bubble" with another household. But because of what over zealous plod had already been doing i had a print out of the rulz in my hand bag. I didnt trust the police not to try and argue that black was white if they did stop me.

Very much so. People were saying things like "life will never be the same again," and "I was skeptical about climate change, but this is different," etc. I remember an expert on the news saying "I don't think people have grasped just how serious this is. It isn't over by a long shot. We're looking at years of disruption." And that was in 2021. People talked about economic meltdown, how we'd never find a vaccine this decade, and so on. Yet here we are, three years later, and everything is pretty much back to normal.

It did teach me one valuable lesson though: books make me happy, but TV, news and social media make me depressed. Less screen time + more books = more happiness. And that includes laying in a hot bath listening to audiobooks (especially Stephen Fry reading Sherlock Holmes or P. G. Wodehouse). To hell with the news. It really is just relentless misery and fear.

I think people are forgetting lockdowns happened because the vaccine was not available in the beginning. The death rate did go up because of covid and would have been far higher if not for lockdowns. Lockdowns did happen for a reason! It wasn't the government arbitrarily enforcing dystopian rules.... of course some rules such as family not being able to see loved ones in nursing homes who were dying seem too stringent in hindsight. And a lot more care should have been taken of vulnerable children. However school lockdowns happened because covid could easily spread in schools and then be given to parents. Children have lost their parents to Covid. The no 10 parties were totally wrong. They are in no way an indication that lockdowns should never ever happened. In the UK lockdowns happened too late and had to be more stringent as a result they occurred too late in the day.

If Hancock had his way lockdowns would be policy and the first resort.

@Appleandoranges First lockdown fine
Subsequent ones no. We kept being told how unprecedented this was yet they all fucked off on their summer recess?

Closing schools was fucking immoral.

So unprecedented that Strictly went ahead.

It's easy to say now. People started taking their kids out of school BEFORE they close, and who can blame them? They heard and saw the videos from overseas. Insight is the usual wonderful thing, but protecting their kids was not wrong.

By the time the school legally shut down to anyone but frontline workers, the classes had half the kids left in my school.

None of it was utter insanity at all! It was so that people didn't get the virus and end up sick and dead. Masks and social distancing and being outside do work in that context. Having parties and continuing as normal as a virus spread would be insanity. In countries, where the governments did not impose these rules, people actually voluntarily socially distanced, so did not go out because they were worried about the virus! But deaths were generally greater. But agree with the op, weirdly seems ages ago and like a dream.

Schools closed while pubs opened and reality tv shows went ahead.

They didn’t just shut for a couple of weeks. It was two terms out of three and even more for isolation.

It was a big mistake.

I think people have a selective memory about what was happening at the time of the first lock down. The scenes in Italy, the hospital admission numbers, not enough breathing apparatus. Making difficult decisions about who should get those.
The government made most of their decisions based on the information at the time. This was before anyone had made a vaccine and there was no inclination that we would ever be able to create one.
I worked in the NHS (mental health) throughout. Decisions being made so reactively. We had to stop visits, stop leave, it was so damaging for those patients. The decision was made to turn on the Wi-Fi one day on a whim to allow them to video call and keep in touch with relatives. These are secure patients and so a massive decision made on a whim due to us frantically trying to fire fight against a possible revolt against us limiting their freedom even further.
There is now the greater issue of the impact of lockdowns on mental health. You cannot tell people to stay in and fear the world for a year and then expect them to just get out there again when it's 'safe'. I have two close friends who have never got back into socialisation again since covid. Some people's mental health will never be the same again.

I'm angry at the government and they made some awful decisions but lockdown at the time seemed the best thing to do. I don't care what anyone says covid is not mild for a lot of people and I believe without vaccines it would be a very different situation.

The things I remember:

• phoning student DD to tell her about the lockdown. Both of us in tears as we didnt know if she was going to be stuck up in her uni city
• realising there was a window of opportunity to collect DD and her then bf (now husband) to bring them down for who knew how long. Driving up the M1 worried we were going to be stopped by the police. Driving back with the car rammed full of all their possessions as we didnt know when they would go back again
• working, working, working. My employer had furloughed my assistant as a cost saving wheeze so I was doing his job as well as mine.
• DD's wedding - the rules constantly changing so they ended up with a lockdown wedding which DH and I couldnt go to.

We were fortunate: everyone kept their jobs, DS actually got one. None of us were ill.

IF schools did not shut down, far more parents would have died. Covid spread very quickly in schools and lots of parents would have got it from their children. And that would have far worse consequences for children than disrupted schooling.

I think people have a selective memory about what was happening at the time of the first lock down. The scenes in Italy, the hospital admission numbers, not enough breathing apparatus. Making difficult decisions about who should get those.

No I do not have a selective memory. I can look back on my old MN posts and see that my views on lockdown were exactly the same as they are now.