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?

Thanks for explaining further.
I like the sound of more purposeful socialising rather than just spending money and doing things for the sake of it - actually really connecting with people.
Was just curious because many people seem to be less sociable (as oppose to differently sociable) since 2020.

'nor for denying them a proper funeral'

People had a proper funeral, just with reduced numbers. It was actually to protect people and prevent the spread as there was a pandemic.

Another poster said that not sure why you've @ me.

It was me who said that and, I know, I was being a bit tongue in cheek about that because of all the threads on here at the time where people asked if they were allowed to go for a second walk or wondering if they should report their neighbour for taking the dog out twice.

Personally, I share a lot of the frustrations that others do about lockdown. The way they were implemented, the timings, the ridiculousness of some of it - ok for me to go to work with a bubble of 120 people but not for me to see my son who didn't live with me.

But it happened. I was no stranger to a healthy dose of criticism of it at the time but 5 years on, what is the point?

And what's the alternative? Gripe about it for evermore or find the positives to focus on? Because I know which one makes for a more positive experience and more positive memories.

I could focus on the negatives, but what's the point? It won't change any of it and it wouldn't make me happier.

I'd just be one more person who was moaning about something that's over now.

Yes, that's exactly it. Properly connecting.

Are you the woman that wrote the fucking dreadful poem about people staying home?

Er nope.

But I do wonder what need is being met in the people who continue to dwell on it 5 years on.

I've already acknowledged that there are those who were significantly affected but otherwise... really? What is the point?

Those of us who are still dwelling on lockdown are worried they might happen again, possibly for a far lesser reason. I will never be “over” lockdown until lockdown’s biggest cheerleaders, including starmer, admit that lockdowns caused MASSIVE harms. Until this happens, lockdowns could easily happen again; the precedent has been set, and lockdown is still the “default” response to a pandemic, as is frightening the pants off the public. If another pandemic happens, I expect people will want the government to scare them shitless, like they did before; and now that the rubicon has been crossed, it might be acceptable to use lockdown for other emergencies, such as a war started by our own side, I could just imagine Blair saying “if only the pandemic had happened first: we could have had lockdown as well as invading Iraq, just in case the weapons of mass destruction were real, I’d have enjoyed appearing on TV to boss the little people around; nobody would vote me out, because I am God”. This is what worries me. That, and the way the government censored any lockdown discussions. Even now, the inquiry is on the dodgy PPE contracts, and are the mainstream media reporting this? Are they fuck. Will any politicians go to prison for it? Will pigs fly?

The government wants us to forget the unforgivably damaging lockdowns (and the party which is now in government didn’t want them to end). I refuse to forget them, because we must resist fiercely if there is so much as a hint of lockdowns again, not roll over and beg for more, as many people did last time.

And lockdown is NOT in the past. The consequences are very much in the HERE and NOW, for many people. As is the possibility that it might be used again. As far as I am concerned, lockdown will not be in the past until it has been roundly denounced, and the damage laid bare. We are very, very far off this yet.

Exactly. It reminds me of one of those "let's keep doing the right thing" adverts, of two smiling young people sitting on a bench facing each other, with a massive gap between them. Did anybody else notice how lots of the motivational slogans began with "let's..."? "Let's keep on social distancing." "Let's keep on keeping each other safe." "Let's keep on sleepwalking into tyranny."

Even now, the inquiry is on the dodgy PPE contracts, and are the mainstream media reporting this? Are they fuck. Will any politicians go to prison for it? Will pigs fly?

I agree with you in this completely but the worry about it happening again? Thank you for explaining that. I hadn't realised there were people who felt like that but worrying that it might happen again is absolutely futile.

You said it's now the default response to a pandemic. It always has been. Eg they encouraged social distancing and isolation during both the plague and again during the Spaniish flu pandemic. Businesses weren't officiallly locked down, but many business closed for months on end. People were still isolated and socially distanced and encouraged to practice good hygiene.

Even during the covid ckdowns, there were people who took it so much further than was ever intended, who made personal decisions to place even greater restrictions on themselves (and expected the same of others) than were required because they were so fearful of catching it and because they followed the governemnt rules unquestioningly.

There were people who eroneously reported neighbours. My ex husband's neighbour was reported for having a party. The police turned up and were invited in to search the house. There was no one else there.

There were others who used a bit of common sense and interpreted the rules - working within them but also exercising a bit of critical thought.

And there were others who flouted it completely.

Many people continue to work throughout just as they had done before and since.

Another lockdown wouldn't have the public support the last one had because of the way many people feel the last government mishandled it.

I refuse to forget them, because we must resist fiercely if there is so much as a hint of lockdowns again, not roll over and beg for more, as many people did last time.

I think many people feel siimialrly. I certainly wouldn't argue with this.

But that's not the same as not being able to find personal positives in the experience.

If others can't, because the negatives outweighed any potential positives for them. Or if there weren't any because it was a traumatic time throughout. Then that is understandable.

And it wasn't brilliant for anyone. But not everyone's experience of it was the same and there can't be only one accepted narrative - that it was 100% terrible and every person's life was negatively impacted by it and we can't recover. Because that isn't true.

@BlueSlate You said it's now the default response to a pandemic. It always has been. Eg they encouraged social distancing and isolation during both the plague and again during the Spaniish flu pandemic. Businesses weren't officiallly locked down, but many business closed for months on end. People were still isolated and socially distanced and encouraged to practice good hygiene.
But it wasn't micromanaged like it was in 2020, and I bet there was nowhere near the same level of fearmongering (admittedly only possible with the mass media which we now have). The people and the government probably worked together, then. This time, the government ripped up their contract with the public, and spat on it.

If "lockdown" in 2020 had been "we strongly recommend keeping apart, we strongly recommend mask wearing, we strongly recommend suspending your business; we assure that these measures are temporary, we are aware that this will cause massive economic damage, we are aware that keeping children out of school will harm them, we will provide support to anybody who needs it, we (politicians) ourselves will follow these recommendations", I would have had far more respect for the government. But because the government effectively turned the country into a police state, silenced all debate, treated the public like naughty children, deliberately spread fear and panic, and made it appear as if it was going to become permanent by stealth ("this is the new normal"), and were ONE STEP away from turning us into a "papers, please" society, with vaxpasses to do ordinary things which very nearly became a reality, I and many others were on red alert; I was much more frightened by this than I was of any virus. The government have now driven a massive wedge between themselves and the people. That is the issue I am dealing with. Mind you, I have distrusted government in general since the day Tony Blair called his illegal war, and the expenses scandal, and 2020 has nailed my colours to the mast for me.

scalt

But your post is conjecture. "I bet..." and "probably.." you can't possibly.know because you weren't there.

There also wasn't TV or Internet when members of the public whipped themselves up into a frenzy over it.

Some people absolutely revelled in it!

It was obvious it was only going to be temporary. They weren't going to keep people in that position permanently. We just didn't know how long the temporary was going to last but, tbh, no one did. As for being a 'new normal' well it was for a while. It didn't mean that was going to become the new normal and it would never change.

Some people chose to tune into Boris's speech every day and allowed themselves to be terrified by it; looked on the internet and became terrfied by it. Others made sure they knew what the rules were so that they were broadly not going to fall foul of them and carried on.

We weren't the only country in lockdown and other countries went far further than ours.

Lockdown as practiced for covid 19 was brand new. We certainly have not always done it like that. There are some aspects of pandemic policy that are very old indeed. Humans have quarantined since ancient times, for example. But you will not find one single other example in history that contains all the same features as the covid 19 lockdowns. Spanish flu certainly isn't it!

That said, I also dispute that it's now the default response to a pandemic. If we had another one this year, for example, it's not happening.

I agree but then they didn't have TV or the Internet either, and when people were isolating, they couldn't doom monger with each other.

Just becaise this one looked different, doesn't mean the governemnt are champing at the bit to find another opportunity. They've already said, for example, that, if it happened again, schools wouldn’t close.

I still don't think that means people have to be worrying about it now or only.focusing on the negatives. I'd argue that continuing to have an indefinitely negative mindset about it is going to be far more damaging to people's MH than saying, "Well that was a shit time but at least it's over!"

Like I say, that doesn't apply to people who were significantly adversely affected and for whom the effects are genuinely ongoing.

'You said it's now the default response to a pandemic. It always has been. Eg they encouraged social distancing and isolation during both the plague and again during the Spaniish flu pandemic. Businesses weren't officiallly locked down, but many business closed for months on end. People were still isolated and socially distanced and encouraged to practice good hygiene.'

Exactly. Social distancing and isolation hardly new inventions and it will happen again with the next pandemic.

We were lucky really that we had facetime, zoom etc. Imagine if it'd happend 30yrs ago when all we had were letters and landlines, then people really would have felt isolated.

Many kids wouldn't have even noticed the difference as they all spend their time online talking to friends, not like they all play out like they used to.

For most people life has gone back to normal. Even if a relative died from covid life has to go on just like if they died from anything else. There are people suffering from long covid but there have always been people suffering from things like ME/CFS that are fatigue based and probably caused by a virus. Financially people are probably right now more impacted by the COL crisis than by covid.

I look back on lockdown very fondly though, the beautiful weather, how peaceful it was with no traffic, the time to spend with DS (14) and in the garden. It was great for DS too as he had time to develop his interests which has had a hugely positive impact on his life.

Why do you want to talk about it though OP? Are you one of the people who has been traumatised by it?

Yes absolutely, the existence of the internet in particular is one of the things that made the covid 19 policy response different to what went before. Lockdown as we've done it in the 2020s couldn't possibly have happened during, say the 1665 plague. It's odd to me how resistant some people are to that not even remotely debatable fact. Lockdown was brand new, and there's no reason to think it will ever happen again. It might, I'm not saying it's impossible, but people don't necessarily comprehend that actually it can only happen for a disease that fits quite narrow parameters.

However, I think it's completely pointless theorising on the internet about whether people one doesn't know and whose experiences one isn't fully aware of are benefitting from the discussion or not. Especially when the people you're talking at demonstrably place no value on what you think.

The following is why some of us steadfastly refuse to "move on and forget". These are not my words, but a reminder of what the government did, and are hoping that we will forget. While I don't think that the pandemic was somehow "brought about" to test public obedience, and maybe some action by government was necessary (assuming the virus was genuine), I am sure that once they had decided that lockdown was inevitable, the government leapt at the opportunity to experiment with exactly how much they could test public obedience, and manipulate them with fear. I will never forgive. I will never forget.

Five years ago, the entire nation, near the entire world - was put under lockdown. Not for an influenza-like illness, but for something far more dangerous.
We lived through a pandemic, yes - but not of a virus. This was a pandemic of media manipulation, government propaganda, corporate corruption and psychological warfare on humanity. And now, five years on, we have to ask…what have we actually learned?
We’ve learned that they hold total control. That they can rewrite the rules of society overnight, based on “emergency powers” that were never legally binding, yet still somehow dictated every aspect of our lives. This wasn’t about public health - this was a global obedience test. A live experiment to see how quickly they could get people to comply, how easily neighbours could be turned against each other and how rapidly fear could be weaponised into control.
We saw friends reporting each other for breaking rules that changed by the week. We watched as “key workers” were exalted, while others were shamed or discarded entirely. They restructured society into tiers of importance. They elevated some, silenced others and broke apart the very fabric of community.
They purposely divided us…masked vs unmasked, jabbed vs unjabbed, compliant vs defiant. While they preached about unity, they embedded division into everything they did. And in the background, they passed protest laws that stripped away our fundamental human rights. They didn’t just remove freedoms, they acted as though we had to earn them back. Every rule they introduced was just another move in a prolonged psychological game of gaslighting and coercion.
They played the public like puppets… “Eat Out to Help Out” one minute, locked inside again the next. Go out, spend money, support the economy - only to be blamed for the next “wave” and punished with tighter restrictions. It wasn’t public safety. It was a three-year training programme in emotional abuse and compliance.
All the while, real lives were being lost in the most horrific, inhumane ways. People died alone in hospitals, without comfort or final goodbyes. Family members were denied the right to sit beside their dying loved ones. Care homes were locked down like prisons. And behind the scenes, the government authorised blanket Do Not Resuscitate orders - without consent, without discussion…sentencing tens of thousands of elderly people to death.
Midazolam was pushed into the care system in bulk (a powerful sedative used to hasten the end) and those deaths were added straight to the Covid death count. They murdered our elderly while we were told to “protect the NHS”. “Protect Granny” was engrained in us by the very system that was being used to implement silent euthanasia…And while all this was happening, they did exactly what they liked.
They had parties. They flew around the world. They sat shoulder to shoulder at wine and cheese gatherings. They laughed in our faces while we were told to stand on our doorsteps and clap. Behind the scenes, they handed out billion-pound contracts to their friends and donors. They made themselves richer than ever.
FACT - The largest surge in people becoming billionaires in UK history happened during the Covid years
While small businesses were shut down, families relied on food banks and mental health spiralled out of control, the elite class doubled their profits. They dangled Bounce Back Loans in front of struggling business owners, knowing full well the repayment terms and interest rates would destroy them later. It wasn’t support - it was bait….And as per usual, the banks cleaned up.
Those contracts? Many were awarded to companies with zero experience - just the right political connections. PPE deals worth millions vanished into thin air. Some of the kit never arrived. Some of it was unusable. But the money was spent and no one was held accountable. They got away with daylight robbery, while the rest of the country struggled to breathe under the weight of restrictions. Test and trace cost £37 BILLION pounds of tax payers money, only to merely exist 3 years later… this was nothing short of money laundering.
Then, let’s not forget the damage done to our children - the most innocent victims of all. Two years of stolen education. Playground tape. Zoom classrooms. Fear. Isolation. Confusion. A spike in youth mental health crises. A rise in self-harm, suicide and eating disorders. They say it was for their safety, but nothing about it was safe. It was trauma, inflicted by policy.
This wasn’t just incompetence. This was narcissistic, state-sanctioned abuse. It was calculated. It was deliberate. It was control - and it was murder. Genocide.
We must not forget. We must not “move on” like they want us to. We must not let them rewrite the narrative. Because next time - and there will be a next time - they’ll be faster. More efficient. More ruthless.
Let this be the lesson…your government cannot be trusted. They will never be for the people. They will always be for themselves. They will use your empathy against you. They will use fear to control you. And they will smile while they do it.
Never forget what they did.

It is time to let it go. People reacted so unlike themselves during lockdown - it was bizarre.

I know quiet law abiding people who were fed up by lockdown 3 who broke rules. I know confident party people who locked themselves away for the whole duration and moved to the middle of nowhere for complete peace (I’m jealous)

I know sensible people who believed in conspiracies and thought helicopters were flying over to monitor their garden usage!

It was bonkers. Hated seeing it in the news last week and but need to learn to see it neutrally without emotion / reaction. I’m guessing it’ll be in the news every few years from now on

The whole thing makes me shudder

'While I don't think that the pandemic was somehow "brought about" to test public obedience, and maybe some action by government was necessary (assuming the virus was genuine), I am sure that once they had decided that lockdown was inevitable, the government leapt at the opportunity to experiment with exactly how much they could test public obedience, and manipulate them with fear. I will never forgive. I will never forget.'

Assuming the virus was genuine? You think we imagined the whole thing?

The government didn't want to lockdown to 'test obedience'. Why would they want to pay millions in furlough and batter the economy? They, like every other country were acting on the advice of medical experts.

yep.
I will never trust any government again.

@Jade520
Why do you want to talk about it though OP? Are you one of the people who has been traumatised by it?

I can't answer for the OP, but I'm glad people are talking about it. I notice it still comes up in conversations, someone mentions something that relates to lockdown (eg. mentions "we moved to this house just as the first lockdown happened) and the conversation turns to people sharing their experiences and reflecting on that time. It was a huge thing in our lives, it's normal to talk about it.

I was traumatised by the first lockdown, although recovered from it whilst lockdowns were still going, largely because I had a couple of friends who decided after the first month that it was inhumane to isolate people who happen to live alone, so we got to have some of the lovely (illegal) quality times together that many families enjoyed. (Though this was the first year I didn't find the anniversary 23rd March deeply unsettling.)

I think it's important to talk about it, partly to help people deal with their experiences, but also to inform the response to a future pandemic. Which rules created the most hardship? What could be done differently?

I don't think the government were deliberately experimenting to try and see how far the public could be pushed. That sort of strategy takes a greater level of competence than that possessed by the government we had in 2020-1.

To me, it looks more like people are noting the problems we experienced with state overreach, corruption and obviously Partygate, but attributing more of a coherent narrative to them than there actually was. But the impact is probably the same, in that trust in government and authority has been further eroded.

@scalt where did you get that highlighted passage from? It's spot on 👌🏻