To think many people are still dealing with the trauma of COVID, but we just don’t talk about it?

[BluntLilacGuide]

It feels like everyone wants to act as if life has completely gone back to normal, but I don’t think that’s true for a lot of people. The pandemic disrupted lives in ways we still haven’t fully processed - whether it’s grief, anxiety, financial struggles, or just a lingering sense of uncertainty.

I see people who still struggle with social anxiety, who haven’t fully recovered financially, or who feel like they lost years of their lives. But because everything has “moved on,” there’s no space to acknowledge it anymore.

AIBU to think that COVID left a lasting impact on people’s mental health and general outlook on life, even if no one really talks about it?

Who are you talking to? Op? Those that are still traumatised? Or the universe? If you were truly ‘over it’ then why the anger? Empathy would be a more fitting.

I don’t know anyone who is struggling like this, but I’m sure it’s very real for you and the others you mention.

I hardly think of it unless something comes up on the news and me and dh are like ‘omg yeah, do you remember the pandemic - that was mad wasn’t it?!”

I've never met anyone who had it and right from the start we didn't fall for stupid lies being peddled and pretty much carried on as we were, the only stupid restriction in place being a five mile radius to exercise when they had a lockdown.

My husband was able to work mostly from home and didn't fly as he usually would because he wouldn't get the jabs.

We were no worse off.

I see a lady in one of the groups I go to who still insists on wearing a mask. She was not shielding back at the time of Covid.
Another person I know lives in a cul-de-sac, and the residents have a weekly meet up in the road. They are still too scared to go into eachother's houses.

I agree with you op.

I lost my father to covid in 2020 . Hospital acquired. It was very sad , and we were unable to be with him. My mother had a phone call to inform her he had died. I fought for 2 years to get answers.

People can have opinions , everyone is entitles to them. But to me it doesn't matter . I still lost my dad in terrible circumstances no matter what was going on in the world . He died alone in a side room and was only found after a nurse went to check on him. The sad thing is. He didn't even have covid when he was admitted . I could go on , but it won't help.

I hope anyone who lost a loved one during that time , are doing OK.

Similar here. Dd is a lot better than she was 3 years ago, but not back to 2019 levels.

I know someone with LDs whose life was upended due to Covid and it’s fundamentally changed them and subsequently their family. They would like to move on and “get back to normal” but can’t. Like you say OP there’s a lot of people still struggling in one way or another.

My husband also died of Covid and the circumstances re hospital visiting etc. were very difficult and distressing at the time..
I agree that I can't see what I'm supposed to do but get on with things.
Before that happened lockdown wasn't difficult for us but I understand that people in different circumstances found it very difficult.
I can't see the advantage of it being talked about constantly ,it happened and it's over now.

I think this often but I’m afraid I clicked the wrong button, as I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think this.

Do you seriously not remember the death rates and the overwhelmed hospitals? It would have been unthinkably worse if we had not have isolated.

What? Do you not remember the awful graphs of the number of deaths?

Yes, but that a price worth paying for basic freedom.

I mean, it wasn't great for me, I was hospitalised with a complication of covid, but recovered within a few weeks and was back to work - frontline healthcare worker.

If I'm really honest? My main feeling is bitterness and envy that I didn't have the option to be furloughed and stay at home baking and having lie ins.

I do feel for people who had their life course altered by the lockdowns, and there are lots of them. But I think the majority of people were not traumatised by it, many even enjoyed it and miss those days. There's a whole range of feelings and everyone will be slightly different.

But yes, it would have been so nice to have stayed at home.

It's a fact that for some people, lockdown was worse than covid, and indeed some people were made vulnerable by restrictions rather than the disease itself. The inability to protect everyone, requirement to throw some under the bus for the benefit of others is part of the reason why the trauma from this is going to be here for a loooooong while.

Discussion about the wider impacts of the political choices of managing the pandemic was heavily policed at the time, and that's affected society's ability to begin to heal and move on. Many people couldn't begin to process it at the time because they were prohibited from having a network to support them. It was incredibly difficult to discuss online without being shut down (often quite visciously) about people "sadly" dying and not being allowed to care about anything less than that (it was usually virtue signalling not people actually going through grief doing it). With such a huge proportion of society being put through a range of difficult times simultaneously people also didn't have the capacity to share the load with each other.

It's 5 years since the start of it, but it's only just past 3 years since official restrictions ended. Then there were additional restrictions that limped on well through 2022 for the sake of it (particularly in care settings)

People are at different stages of healing/ grieving for what happened. I hit anger by summer 2020, which turned to depression in 2021. Sometimes it took different lengths of time for the impacts to really show up. Because of the length of the restriction, it's often difficult to disentangle what was directly Covid/ lockdown related and what is life related. Was my child behind because they lost so much schooling, or are there SENs involved (it was SENs, diagnosed later than his sibling "coz Covid" delays). Was it depression because of the uncertainly of the potential return of restrictions in winter 2021, or a series of unrelated bereavements in 2022. Life kept happening and it's hard to separate things out. Covid wasn't a neat little box of spring 2020. In our case MiL died summer 2022, but despite it being an inevitable death from chronic illness, it was still tangled up with the Covid era because the carehome restrictions were not eased until shortly before her death when she was no longer recognising family, and it was getting too late to arrange the logistics of family travel. We had travelled over in 2021 but only DH was allowed to see her. The head-banging frustration for 2 years was that restrictions were not going to save her from chronic illness and we were prohibited from seeing her in her final years and being powerless to do anything about that.

The other thing that's hindered personal recoveries is the general state of the world. By the end of 2019 there was a quiet sense of optomism brewing, but lockdowns cost the economy dear, then Ukraine inflating living costs, effects of Brexit coming into effect and the general toll of a society being battered by austerity and the general social fallout of the Covid years (e.g. young men getting disengaged from real life society and getting sucked into Andrew Tate ideology). Sometimes 2020 is a widespread sliding doors moment.

It’s important that we reflect on it, if only to better manage a future pandemic.

My daughter has ended up in a wheelchair due to covid.
She's only 32.

To anyone bereaved or disabled because of Covid this is an extremely annoying remark. I really don’t see the point in discussing all this at length and reigniting strong feelings.

Same

I literally haven’t given Covid a thought in the last 3 years. I am not aware of anyone who has

Yanbu I nearly died was in hospital over a month and still haven't fully recovered

It depends, it was a great relief for many, giving them the time to spend with family and friends.

I'm still pissed off that my kind sweet gentle mother had to die alone.

Otherwise I am over it.

I think some people are still dealing with the trauma. Others are resilient enough to acknowledge it was an awful time but make the best of the life they have now.

There will always be people who hark back to what a terrible time they had and tell us how their life just didn’t go back to normal.

I lost my husband to a horrible disease during lockdown and was his carer with very little help while he was dying. I had to bounce back and get on with my life because I’m self employed and had to earn money. It would’ve been so easy to pander to myself but I chose not to - because few people are interested.

We’re now talking five years ago - when will enough be enough? We all had to go through it - why do some people insist on boring the arse off the rest of us with their woe is me stories. If they don’t have long covid they need to give themselves a shake and not waste any more of their lives.

We have moved on. It was not particularly traumatic for us.

150 years ago few children reached the age of 5. Society handled it and without too much hand wringing.