To find the early COVID era nostalgic?

[Acco]

I’m mostly talking about the pre-lockdown and lockdown 1 era mostly but just 2020 in general to a lesser extent (but not 2021, I still hate it and it doesn’t seem that long ago). I haven’t thought about COVID for ages but I was taking about the toilet roll hysteria with my in laws tonight and then I saw a TikTok throwback to all the 2020 trends and sounds and it gave me a warm feeling inside. It’s an era I’d never want back but I remember the lovely sunny days in the garden in April and May 2020.
Anybody else feel this?

and you're surprised that people are upset and disturbed?? Jeez

Some people on here just lack the emotional intelligence to recognise that people have different experiences and view points. Nowhere have you said I'm so thankful for lockdown it was brilliant and I don't even care about people who suffered. You're talking about your experience, and your experience is just as valid as anyone elses. I despise the trail of thought that if people don't feel the same as me they should shut up- bore off. You haven't denied people died, you're not a conspiracy nut invalidating the experiences of others or claiming it was a hoax or some crap in which case yes, it would be offensive. Myself and my colleagues have varying experiences of lockdown, even though work was horrific there were some parts that dare I say it were ...gasp....enjoyable.

@acco Your updates are arguably even worse than your OP.

I knew three people who committed suicide during lockdown. If I had followed the rules, I might have been the fourth. I kept my sanity by furiously seeing people and going out. Not that queueing for M&S was exactly a thrilling outing, but it was better than being inside. I wasn't scared of Covid, or of anyone I knew catching Covid. But I was very, very scared by the willingness of people to submit to losing their liberty, and the willingness of people to monitor their friends and neighbours and to report any apparent breaches of "the rules".

Someone upthread said it was great because her university student child was at home. How is it great for a student to be at home? My student children definitely didn't think it was great, and neither did I. As for the poor people with young children who live in flats with no outside space (when public playgrounds were banned - stupid fucking rule if ever there was one), and the people - women, mostly - who were supposed to be working from home whilst supervising primary aged children's online schooling: it's frankly amazing that they didn't all become alcoholics.

My friends who live only a mile away from me had a 3 year old and just had another baby in January 2020. I live alone, and was frustrated to be sent to WFH and be stuck in my house by myself unable to go and help them out, while they balanced a toddler who couldn't go to childcare with a new baby while the dad tried to WFH and my friend was driven to borderline suicidal thoughts.

My mum was dying of cancer, and my dad left alone to cope with that as we couldn't visit him. I thankfully got to see her again in the summer when things quietened down, before she died in August 2020. Due to good timing we could actually have a funeral, with 30 people, masked up and socially distanced at lunch afterwards.

Then my sister who lives a couple of hours away had her first baby in November 2020, and I didn't even get to meet my niece until she was almost 6 months old because of the winter resurgence of whichever variant it was.

Yeah 2020 was great fun because it was sunny and less rushing around... 🙄

Whether you are meaning the first or second wave of Covid op it doesn't change the reality for 1000s of people in this country.

First wave was terrifying for hospital staff. I can only speak for myself but I am a senior dr in my trust and before the government did anything we could see this happening, zoom calls late into the evening about training and what to do if icu filled up with Covid. (It did so much quicker than we anticipated), arranging training for staff working on guidelines they changed every day.

The reality of being masked up and wearing full ppe, feeling gloves fill up with sweat, seeing the crash team outside the glass door giving us instructions on how to deal with crashing patients because they couldn't come in.

Holding iPads up so people could talk to their relatives, without being able to hear me or my colleagues and not able to talk to their relative really.

Liaising with nhs England about criteria for ecmo and arguing about who would pay for it because at one point in covid long down 2, we had 25 people (mainly pregnant women) on ecmo and only funding for 8.

Going out and getting these sick people from all over the country.

I think as a unit we performed 7 bedside c sections in intensive care. Patient too sick to move to theatre so we just did it there and then. It could have been more but these were the ones i assisted in.

200 staff had to live in the Lowry hotel because their families were too much at risk from covid they couldn't go home. It really was the worst experience ever.

Of course then we had the (young) patients who had had covid and then got heart and lung failure 4/5 months later and we had to fit them with LVAD etc, in 2020/2022 the transplant list for heart and lung patients tripled.

Also we had the consequences of not performing heart and lung surgery on patients waiting on the urgent lists for bypasses and valve replacements, we really fucked up as a country with that. I tried to argue for a 'clean theatre' where we could try and get patients through the operations they needed who didn't have Covid, but it wasn't possible because you can't put a bypass patient on a normal ward after surgery they have to go to icu and we didn't have the beds or the staff or the perfusionists to get them through the door.

It was awful. It really was a relentless revolving door of shit. We're still dealing with patients who needs transplants after getting Covid, but it went a bit like this.

Oh shit Covid
Icu full of Covid
Icu also full of chemo patients who got sepsis
Where do we put non Covid patients
Icu full of Covid
Expanded icu to accommodate 80 patients
Filled it
Covid icu got a bit less full
Icu full of patients who need ecmo
Icu full of patients who need transplants after Covid
More ecmo patients
Even more ecmo patients
Heart failure patients have got nowhere to go
Covid again
Normal lists for 2/3 days but patients struggled to get off the vent because of Covid

Agree 100% and you still have some nutjobs testing themselves for covid these days!

@Ilovecakey I am one of the 'nutjobs' then. I am CEV with asthma so if I am feeling unwell I do test. My daughter also tests as she is a nurse and would rather err on the side of caution to avoid her patients contracting it.

Yes, it's always 'oh the nut jobs testing for Covid' until they have a relative who might die if they caught covid on chemotherapy and then all of a sudden it's 'well you should be testing'

On testing
That's another reason I was cross about being called a denier, anti vaxxer, conspiracy theorist etc (in real life and here).

I took tests when necessary, as well as having vaccines

But dare to question the scotch egg policy, or the "pubs close at 10pm so everyone piles on the Tube at the sane time" and you were a denier, a granny killer.

I remember talking to a neighbour about concerns on vax mandates - she was a carer back then but left on principle - and another neighbour assumed our views and said laughingly "you know, I had the vaccine last week - look, I'm still alive".

When we explained we were in the vaccine cohort earlier to hers and had it maybe two months before her, she was so thick she seriously asked us what we were worried about! 🤦🏽‍♀️

@Thepeopleversuswork

*Yes exactly.

I think there's a correlation between the people living in a ridiculous pastoral fantasy world based on an endless COVID lockdown and the "my little family" people. The ones who describe themselves as "introverts" because it sounds cool but they're not actually introverts they have social anxiety and are misanthropes and are looking for any opportunity to opt out of normal social interaction unless it's with their "little families". They basically are the people who can't cope and want other people to not be able to cope as well.

For people like this COVID was a godsend: it allowed them to retreat into their misanthropic shells for months on end and not experience the feeling of not being very socially confident. And were so self-centred they thought this over-rode the fact that millions of people were dying, millions lost their jobs and were working in unsafe conditions and millions were cut off from their loved ones.*

But they were being paid to go on walks with their children and do baking and watching hilarious clips on the internet so it's all fine.

What is this ridiculous bile? You sound unhinged. No one found Covid a godsend. No one. And you have a deep misunderstanding of introversion, BTW. It isn't simply repackaged misanthropy.

@Ilovecakey i can understand in some situations those who need to test, such as living or working with vulnerable people. But the majority of us get no benefit from finding out either way.

If I have covid, I still have to go to work, in a NHS hospital. I don’t have to wear a mask either. ( non patient facing role)

For me at this point, id treat the symptoms the same as I would have pre-covid. Pain relief, rest, fluids and stay off work if I don’t feel well enough.

I don’t think I’d test again though.

I only saw the extremes online to be honest. Sure most people I know stuck to not mixing etc, but everyone thought the scotch egg policy and 1 lot of exercise a day etc was ridiculous and didn't make much sense. Lockdown was needed though, just not with the ridiculous rules the government made and then refused to backtrack on to save face. Even the scientists thought rules should be more realistic as we saw in the WhatsApps. But to suggest the entirety of a lockdown was stupid is ignorant.

@IamRa

What is this ridiculous bile? You sound unhinged. No one found Covid a godsend. No one. And you have a deep misunderstanding of introversion, BTW. It isn't simply repackaged misanthropy.

There are literally pages and pages of people on here talking about how much they enjoyed COVID lockdowns without the slightest reference to how awful it was for others. I'm hardly the only person to point this out so if I'm unhinged a lot of other people feel as I do.

On the point about introversion: I totally understand that introversion isn't repackaged misanthropy. But most of these posters don't.

You see this all the time: there's a long burst of invective about how unpleasant people are and how much people hate socialising, immediately followed by "but I'm an introvert". No you're not an introvert. An introvert is someone who needs time on their own after exposure to people. You're a whinger. And you being a whinger doesn't mean it's OK to loudly celebrate how much you enjoyed growing vegetables with your family and cycling through fields of wheat when other people are dying.

I saw social distancing signs on the floor of a tourist attraction today (not being enforced anymore obviously) and wanted to rip them up myself.

Most people didn’t have lovely furloughed days at home on their spacious gardens. Most of us were working as normal (or while trying to homeschool) or trying to stop their business going under.

Those who did have a lovely time on furlough did so at great expense to everyone and economy did years to come.

The first six weeks, yes. Our first baby was only 3 months old and suddenly DH had 6 weeks off work (we're overseas and he only got one week paternity leave) and the kind of job he does can't really be done from home so we got to spend lots of quality time as a family. When he went back to work full time after six weeks it got old fast!

I never expected it to go on as long as it did. By the time family were able to come and visit us again our second baby was older than DD had been when the lockdown first happened. DH misses the lockdown traffic though. Until all the office workers and school kids went back it was amazing!

As I said before in an earlier PP, I can see why others may have had a nicer experience but what struck me most in your latest update OP is that you mention the number of Covid cases being low at that early point as if it is some sort of measure that things weren’t that bad.

I don’t think you’re appreciating that lockdown had an impact on a whole host of other things. People didn’t have to have had Covid or lose a relative due to Covid for it to have had an awful impact. As an example, as mentioned in my first PP, my grandma passed away during the early lockdown, passed in April, funeral in May. She didn’t ever catch Covid but the lockdown meant we couldn’t be with her in her dying days or have a proper funeral. This has had a big impact on us as a family. I think about her a lot and I didn’t feel like I had closure as it didn’t feel like a proper goodbye .

Less importantly, we went on a much looked forward to and much needed holiday in the UK just before lockdown as we were told it was fine to go but had to come home after one night. Not the worst thing to happen at all but it was shit.

Work for myself and many others I know was awful, everything was in disarray and that summer was the busiest I have ever been in very pressured circumstances. I can’t begin to imagine what it would have been like for medical staff or carers.

I guess my point is that lots of people will have had very different experiences in that first lockdown, some terrible some apparently great. But to use the number of cases being lower as a marker isn’t taking the bigger picture of how bad those early days were for many into account at all and this is why so many people are finding the thread and I think some of your posts difficult.

I saw social distancing signs on the floor of a tourist attraction today (not being enforced anymore obviously) and wanted to rip them up myself.

Whenever I see one of those, I wonder how many years into the future it'll be until they all vanish. When I was a kid, there was a notice up in a park near us about a pathway that had been closed temporarily due to floods, and it stayed up for 6 years after the event. It used to fascinate me. Maybe this will be the same.

Admittedly I didn’t have a bad time in lockdown, very much the opposite. My own personal families health improved as a result of lower stress and a chance to decompress.

Saying that, I understand others had a terrible time. Different people had different experiences, just because I wasn’t badly effected and got some positive out of a shitty situation doesn't mean I didn’t care or want people dead.

Preferring to work from home rather than take a grim commute to some noisy, crowded office isn't 'misanthropy'. A lot of people feel that way.

Thankfully I didn't lose anyone close, but I still hated that time. Yes the sun was shining, but I remember the underlying fear and sadness most of all, and the feeling of restriction and loss of freedom.

Lots of people of myself and DH's age group (50s/60s) were dying, so yes, we were anxious. We wee also anxious for our elderly parents. Our DCs live far away so I really missed seeing them and other family, and one DS had just moved abroad so I was very worried for him and when he'd be able to come home - I didn't see him for over a year.

I hated saying goodbye to my colleagues and having to get used to WFH - several colleagues then left before we returned to the office, so I've never seen them again. But most of all I remember the all pervading uncertainty of what the future would hold. Thankfully things are mostly ok now, but there are certain aspects of my life that have never returned.

"I don't know any taxi drivers who are single who have fully recovered, income wise"

One of our taxi companies had fifty drivers pre lockdowns Post lockdowns they have nineteen. Yet on here its always "get a taxi" instead of bothering the ambulance service. People dont seem to be able to connect the dots. My nearest A&E is fifteen miles away. So if God forbid i am ill and cant get a cab an ambulance it will have to be. To get a taxi here you have to book one over a week in advance. And then you still arent guranteed one. So those moaning about the ambulance service being under pressure....well this will be one of the reasons why. You reap what you sow!

Exactly this! I lost count of the amount of people I had arguments wwho LOVED working from home in their 2 up 2 down semi with a massive garden, where they could bake bread and catch some sun if they wanted.

Meanwhile, a colleague's 'office' was literally the end of her bed!

But WE were the 'selfish' ones for objecting to being confined to our homes for over two years.

You couldn't make it up!

No. My elderly Mum was taken in to hospital and I was unable to see her for months. Her health has never been the same. My uncle who was very important to me ( my dad died when I was young) died and I could not attend his funeral. Teaching from home was hideous and showed me I would never want to work from home in the future.

But WE were the 'selfish' ones for objecting to being confined to our homes for over two years.

Where on earth were you that it was over two years?

Ive just contacted the main taxi company for this area as i need a cab to get back from my parents on Saturday night. Already all booked up as there are so few of them now.