To think some people found lockdown really hard and it wasn't their fault

[elliejjtiny]

I don't normally think about this, it's something horrible that happened but it's over for us for the most part thank goodness (I appreciate there are people who are still struggling a lot).

It's that time of year so some people are saying 5 years ago we were doing xyz for the last time etc. Mil was going on about how great she found lockdown. Not a lot changed for her and FIL as they don't go out much and they are retired. Meanwhile I had 5 dc with SEN, one of whom licks everything and for us life changed dramatically for the worse. I was saying that it was nice that MIL enjoyed lockdown but for us it was extremely hard. She told me it was my fault and it would have been fun for us too if I had been more organised.

IMO for some people lockdown was awful.

But I agree that some people ended up excluded from the scheme - esp if the business was very young etc…..

It was fine for me but I did not have children then. I have an almost 3 year old now and I would have mental breakdown if I had to go through lockdown with her not attending nursery.

I worked for the nhs and being an older nurse at 64 and husband 8 yrs older than me I was v.scared of catching covid and passing it on to family and no ventiators for us if we needed them as we were older ..as the hospitals ran out of space..I did enjoy being at home and gardening and walking local area but was scary xxx

My friend worked on a Covid ward too and she’s borderline traumatised at what she endured during lockdown. Her hospital had loads of deaths including her own grandparents. She had skin issues with all the PPE, she couldn’t buy groceries etc as the shelves were empty when she finished work, she found it odd that people were banging on pans for the NHS etc.

It's definitely not anyone's fault if they hated lockdown and were miserable.

Important to remember thought that the normal world is generally more understanding to those people, than to the people who find the normal world treadmill of engagements and requirements exhausting (often the same people that enjoyed lockdown).

I loved lockdown. I am disabled and housebound and all of a sudden, things that I'd been told for years that weren't accessible suddenly became accessible.

I was able to take online classes, socialise, reconnect with friends, attend parents evenings, go to virtual events etc. I was even able to get a remote job in my field!

Guess who had all those things taken away and remains in lockdown while everyone else gets on with their lives?

Nope, lots of people were excluded - limited companies were only a small factor.

We had the stupid 50:50 rule
The £50k profit limit where you got nothing at all if you exceeded it the year before covid by just a pound!
and the timings rules i.e. your business must have started before 5/4/19 AND you must not have been caught by the 50:50 in the 18/19 tax year (i.e. 2 years before covid!!). Absolute nonsense.

Hundreds of thousands of people were caught out by those three rules alone (and there were more).

I know, I'm an accountant and saw half my sole trader/partnership client base excluded on purely nonsense criteria - including cafes, guest houses, contractors, shops, cleaners, - the list was endless, all down to sheer bad luck of falling the wrong side of nonsensical criteria.

At first people thought HMRC/Treasury/Rishi would see sense as he made an announcement in Parliament that "no one would be left out" of the support schemes. A few months later he changed his tune to "we can't help everyone"!!!

Limited companies are a different kettle of fish. Even those who paid themselves a high wage could be excluded if they didn't make a payroll run in the February (lots do it once a year to save admin time/cost/hassle - and despite a history of a "one off" yearly payroll every March (as allowed by HMRC), they were excluded. The other exclusion was that for the first few months, to qualify for furlough you were banned from doing ANY work, which excluded small limited company directors as they still HAD TO do admin tasks like submitting VAT returns, payroll returns, Co House annual return, banking a cheque posted by a customer for work done pre covid etc. It took Martin Lewis to highlight this stupidity that led to the "partial" furlough where you could claim furlough proportional to the work done compared with time usually spent pre covid, so directors after the first few months could start to claim partial furlough, but of course, no backdating to cover the months they were excluded.

Fucking brilliant for me. I was furloughed and had the best summer ever. No one I know stuck rigidly to the rules either

Seriously??? Think laterally here. How about small businesses owners forced by law to close their businesses cutting off 100% of their income?

Somehow by magic, they were expected to pay their own mortgages/rent, food, fuel and livings costs, plus the costs of the businesses (because businesses still cost money even when they are closed: rent, utilities, insurance etc), PLUS they were still expected to pay for their staff pensions, and holidays and NIC when their staff were at least getting furlough and the owners paying these had no income to pay them from.

Do you think these people might have found things little tricky?

Yes, those sitting at home on furlough were probably having a lovely time, but many of their employers were borrowing enormous amounts of money at insane interest rates (which they will be paying off for many years yet) or going bankrupt. Fun times.

I felt like I was in a different class of the boat to DH. He ended up in the upper decks WFH (clearly a good thing that he remained financially stable but not without cost) and retained his purpose in life and a functional level of social contact.

My routines and life beyond home were switched off and on a bit and off and repeat by the government's whims. My purpose was reduced to service human on the lower decks to feed the family and pathetic attempts at inflicting an education on the children with recently diagnosed and undiagnosed additional needs, while trying to keep them quiet to not disturb DH's constant work calls. I loathed 15 months of existing in DH's office so much. (He was out of the way, but sound travels easily through the house. I could tell which colleagues he was talking to by the tone of his voice)

I was worried about recently diagnosed autistic DS1 and his social skills. He actually emerged OK long term. He was fortunate to be at a stable point of schooling with no transition points. I don't know if his disposable attitudes to friends was shaped by the fact that the government considered children's social contact to be utterly dispensible.

It was DS2 who came of worse. It took years to recover socially and educationally. He learned fuck-all in the 6 long, long months that he was prohibited from going to school. A couple of months in and he lost his motivation and inspiration to play with with toys at the age of 7. By the June he'd lie on my bed staring vacantly at cartoons in a depressed state. I didn't confidently know peers prepared to break the law to play with him, so the next best thing was sneaking into isolated, locked playgrounds. We got out and about as much as possible July-Sept while there were some options and that alieviated it a bit for him. In the winter lockdown the online lessons were a daily torment of him sobbing into my lap, taunted by the names of half his class on the screen. Some children were able to continue social contact and continue developing and he just slipped behind, lost his friends and social contact and there was fuck-all I could do to solve that for him. His educational needs were also overlooked. Fortunately we've been able to afford dyslexia assessment and tutoring to close the gap, but again, it's taken years. DS1 had earlier interventions while DS2 was brushed off as general covid delays and the difference really shows.

At least the several family members that died in 2022 got normal funerals. The 2020 rules were so cruel to bereaved families. Due to travel/ hospital/ carehome rules we last saw MiL on our routine visit in late 2019. DH did manage to see her a few times solo thank goodness, and we tried a partially thrawted trip in 2021 as a family. By the time rules were eased in summer 2022 it was too late, she was fading fast and struggling to recognise family which would have been so difficult for the DCs and it was better for them to remember her pottering around at home, not wasting in a carehome bed in her last few weeks.

There are so many reasons why lockdowns were hard, destructive and cruel. Society is still trying to recover.
At the time sympathy for people who were socially isolated, in difficult living or financial circumstances, bereaved (especially if not sadly Covid) was so thin on the ground. So many shameful responses on MN to struggling people on MN (often with SEN children who needed more walks, driving to safe places, or people with no private outdoor spaces) because people decided that Covid was the only legitimate thing to be concerned about. MN was a cesspit.

When humans struggle they seek each other out for support, but that is what was banned and why so many people found it an ongoing living nightmare with little concrete end in sight amongst constantly changing goalposts.

Finding it hard was not a weakness.

Low income was a shop worker before and during covid, a very small village shop with a large local population, much added to THROUGHOUT that time by wealthy folks moving into their holiday homes and some actually bought and moved house DURING the time they were not meant to be travelling. ( pushing rental costs to triple what they were before it all started) We even had folks travelling to the area from 100 miles away for a much needed holiday! I was told by the council representative who came round that I had to enforce customers wearing masks, only 3 at a time inside the shop etc etc None of us knew what was going to happen so was scarey but no furlough for the likes of me, I was spat at, my mask grabbed off my face, groups of 10 or more would deliberately barge around the shop a lot stole and laughed, saying what are you going to do call the police? ( we did but no one ever came) very few customers wore masks the locals decided that it was all a conspiracy/ My mum was very ill just before it all started and because of my job it was advised strongly that I not visit her, then she was hospitalised near the end of lockdown and died ( not from covid but because of covid her illness treatment kept getting cancelled or delayed, till it was too late). That awful low paid job meant I never saw my mum again after the lockdown started. Despite being very careful and having the jabs I caught covid 3 times, the first bout not so bad, the second my son thought I was going to die and couldn't get help despite called for an ambulance as apparently he thought I had stopped breathing. Thankfully i am still here but there was no sick pay in my job, in fact i got sacked for not turning up for my shifts and the jobcentre decided I had voluntarily quit!?! End result I am still repaying credit card debt from tryin to keep up with the rent and bills and even now can barely walk a few feet without resting, find it hard to stay awake for longer than 3 or 4 hrs without sleeping and have strange growths around my eyes. Can I get a doctors appt? Can I feck. So yes, seeing those Insta moms living the perfect lockdown life was grating, I don't blame them but the sheer lack of empathy from a lot of folks is astounding. How the feck do you think all that home delivery stuff actually got to you in your safe cocoons? I have friends who work in hospitals, they had it far far worse and had to watch so many people die. I think maybe get your MIL to read this thread, am glad she and her hubby had a nice time, but sad she feels the need to be superior about that. And OP you did a fab job of getting through it all never forget thatxx

Everyone is going to have a different experience of it.

For me it ended up being one of the best times of my life. My OH had a terminal lung illness so we ended up shielding for 4 years following advice from his consultant. He died from the first infection he caught, a year ago now, so I see every day of our shielding as a day we won back from everything his illness wanted to take away from us.

Suddenly all the social groups he was a part of were happy to do things over zoom so he was able to join in again. The fancy local food shops started delivering so we could make fancy meals to treat ourselves at home. Local restaurants started delivering so we could do dinner and wine and a film. New film we wanted to see went directly to streaming and we didn't get spoiled by people who saw it in the cinema while waiting for the DVDs.

There was no guilt around him not working since he couldn't, and he allowed himself to relax and just read and play games and chat on the phone with people for hours. Something he really struggled with before.

He would have been housebound those years anyway due to his oxygen machine but lockdown meant the world changed in a way that let him still feel included and alive and living.

I'd happily do it all over again 10 times in a row if I had him still with me.

I will never forget at Christmas 2020, having not seen my family for almost a year, and spent the year in a rented basement flat working 13 hour days after my employer realised that WFH meant the total blurring of 'work' and 'personal' time, being told to shut up, sit the fuck at home and stay the fuck in watching Netflix by people living with their family in decent-sized houses with outdoor space, especially by those who weren't working and had a high-earning partner.

I wish MN had a "hug" reaction button I could use for all the people who struggled for which ever of the multitude of problems that lockdown caused or aggravated.

It mattered. And all too often, it still does.

Your MIL is OOO. It was nothing to so with being organised, being in lock down was a sh1t show for the vast majority of us. I was still working and my work moved from 5 days to 7 days and monstrous hours cos what else was there to do.

Lock down has danaged the human population in so many ways we might not have even sussed all of tge damage out yet.

But for me, having a health issue that was a factor in 1/3 of all covid-related deaths, the alternative was more unpalatable.

I do hope you and your family can recover from the impact of it all @elliejjtiny . My family became completely distant. No family time at all and we've never recovered that closeness 😞

I think the reason so many people coped was because of the absolutely glorious weather we had to start. The second full lockdown we had in the winter was soul destroying. We should also be thankful that at least in the UK, we were able to leave the house for a walk. I have no idea how they did it in other countries. In Spain, they weren't allowed to leave the house (even with children).

I hated every minute of it. I’m a sociable person who is law abiding but when people started making up their own rules and when official rules made no sense, it drove me nuts. I worked in a school where staff couldn’t eat together in the staff room but were made to sit apart from each other in groups of four, despite the fact that we’d been standing together all morning in a classroom. We were all encouraged to go upstairs to the staff room one at a time to make a cup of tea and pick a biscuit out of a sharing packet. We all touched the same kettle and put our hands in the canister of teabags but couldn’t make anyone else a cup of tea. There were loads of other meaningless “rules”.
It all wore me down and I gave up on it all. I was the person you saw shopping without a mask and I went into my sister in law’s house and gave her a hug in her birthday. My friend came in and had lunch with me on my birthday, I make no apology for it and do I think I’m a bad person? Absolutely not.

I had a child at high school, that's school thought sending them the odd worksheet with the answers on the back was enough, a full time job (with the nhs) where every day was pretty much a shitshow and a DH who was also a key worker so I found it pretty stressful compared to a lot of my friends but a lot of people had it a lot worse than me.

Exactly. Children and their futures were thrown under the bus to keep granny alive, miserable and isolated. So many people's mental and physical health was sacrificed on the altar of "protect our hallowed NHS", which is now having to deal with the aftermath of the cruel and brutal lockdowns. Several posters have said that their elderly parents lost their independence as a direct result of lockdowns. We must make the distinction that much of the damage was not caused by the pandemic, but by LOCKDOWNS. That difference is important.

Also, I have not forgotten that the party which is now in government was one of lockdown's biggest cheerleaders, had absolutely NOTHING to say about the very obvious harms caused by lockdown and the ruthless campaign of fear, and in this respect completely failed to be the opposition. The only criticism they had of lockdowns was that they ever ended. They had plenty to say about Partygate, which conveniently overshadowed the real scandal of the harms of lockdowns.

Yes, there seems to be a tacit agreement of "Shh... we don't mention lockdown, it wasn't that bad, and it never really happened", especially among politicians. But we must talk about it. The damage caused was very, very real, will probably become even more apparent when the lockdown children become adults; and I expect the government will try to minimise it, and hope that people will forget how bad lockdown was, ready for the "next pandemic" which Bill Gates and other billionaires keep mentioning with a little too much certainty. At the moment, the default solution to any pandemic is lockdown, with no debate allowed. This narrative must change. This is why we must keep talking about the harms of lockdown, lest we forget.

Thank you everyone. My youngest dc was 5 and the eldest was 13 at the beginning. We had 2 dc in hospital at separate times during the lockdowns. Dh and I would normally swap over regularly but that wasn't allowed. Ds2 was in resus and then hdu in 2021 and I wasn't allowed to visit him. When I was in hospital with my youngest, the little boy in the next bed had just been diagnosed with epilepsy. The nurse was saying she would go into his nursery to train the staff there and the mum said she had never seen the inside of the nursery because of the lockdowns.

Schoolwork was a constant battle with my primary school aged dc. I would get one settled, start to sort out one of the others and the first child would wander off or close down the school website and put up YouTube instead. My 5 year old would cry every day because he didn't want to do school work. My 5 year old was offered a school place but we declined because I was scared he would catch covid from licking the walls etc at school, especially as one of the other dc in his class licked things as well. I was scared that if he didn't do the schoolwork at home we would be told he had to go to school.

We have a garden and the dc had each other to play with so we were better off than a lot of people.

How does "being more organised" mitigate an international pandemic? Is she always so tone deaf and thoughtless!?

Definitely the weather has brought it back.

I was on a walk earlier and had a flashback of those first few weeks. Very strange feeling.

IKR, maybe OP should've organised herself to monitor developments in all the wet markets and labs around Wuhan!

I will kill myself

Yes, with the weather, I remember the hope of coming out of winter, the start of spring... and then it was month upon month of fucking lockdown, dragged on and on by stealth, boiling frog style, looking as if there was no exit plan, and no end in sight, and the phrase "new normal" made it look as if lockdown was going to become very, very permanent.
"Reviewed in three weeks."
"Three more weeks."
"Three more weeks."
"We can turn this virus around in twelve weeks."
"One last push."
"Pleeeeeeeease don't throw it all away now." (Party in background)
"We need to squeeeeeeeeeeeeze the brakes on reopening."
"Normalish by Christmas."
"It would be inhumane to cancel Christmas... oops, I've just done it."
"Significant normality by Easter."
"Just until the over 70s are vaccinated."
"Just until the over 60s are vaccinated."
"Just until the over 50s are vaccinated."
"Irreversible roadmap to freedom in June."
"July."
And poor old Boris never got to have his big moment making an official heroic announcement ending restrictions, because it was all Ukraine.