Sad that the pandemic didn't make us better

[Pennyforyourthoughtsplease]

Those first few weeks were terrifying, but we made it through. Many worse off. Isn't it sad that coming through a global pandemic, we didn't become kinder, more appreciative and less materialistic; realising what really matters. If anything, I've noticed a significant shift these last few years where people have become more selfish and entitled. What happened?!

I never for a second thought any of this was going to happen, so don't feel particularly sad about it no. I do feel sad about some of the entirely foreseeable downstream effects of a pandemic and lockdown, which is not the same thing.

Same.

I was annoyed the moment the distancing rule was dropped and people went back to being so unnecessarily close in shops. Groups still went back to taking up the pavements and pretending they’re the only people walking about. People still coughing and sneezing into their hands as if a pandemic didn’t happen.

An excuse for what?

A cultural expectation of mask wearing, which is what would happen if it caught on sufficiently, fucks over people who struggle to wear them. This is neither smart nor considerate. It's not morally better to prioritise people who benefit from more mask wearing than it is to prioritise those who are fucked over by it, or vice versa. It's simply a personal preference.

Also not a great idea to make it public business what other people wear on their faces. That's one reason people now think they're entitled to comment on someone else's personal choice to wear a mask. That sort of attitude, once switched on, doesn't necessarily switch off when we want it to. Naturally, the sort of people who think it's their business what other people wear on their faces are more likely to focus on the easier targets.

A lot of people suffered trauma, loss and ill-health. Young people missed out on education and formative experiences. The economic consequences - combined with Brexit, etc - have made life a lot worse for large sections of the population. Crime has increased as a result.

It was overall a very negative event and expecting a very negative event to have a positive impact on our society as a whole is a bit naive. I know there were some people who enjoyed the lockdowns and love to witter on about birdsong and so on, which tends to obscure the reality - which is that there was a huge amount of suffering, loss, expense and social damage, and we will pay the price for generations.

For being shit and expensive.

@LlynTegid but he didn't soley order that did he.

But I'd love to know who did

People seemed to lse their ability to think for themselves.
And other people wearing masks was hell for those of us who can't hear properly and need to lipread a bit.

There's a lot of me me me these days, but there are plenty of good people still here. Love is often quiet little acts of kindness in the every day but hate is loud so we hear more about it.

We weren’t “a bit duped” by lockdown.
We were TOTALLY FUCKING CONNED, and they laughed at us for good measure.

I think even without Partygate, people had had enough by the second and third lockdowns, as they kept moving the goalposts and screaming about “variants”, and bullying people into taking the vaccine, by strongly hinting that those who refused would be societal outcasts. And yes, I do think it was bullying.

I sometimes wonder how different things might have been if they had stopped at one lockdown, and if Partygate hadn’t happened. peopWe might still be having seasonal mask mandates.

As for who was in government: if it had been someone who looked and sounded “sensible” than the clown Boris, such as Theresa May, it might have been different. (Yes I know, her decisions were questionable, but she didn’t clown around.) However, if it had been Sir Tony Bliar telling us what to do, grinning like a snake and making himself even richer than he did under the Blair Rich project, I think I would have disobeyed him on principle from the very start.

Also, people become weary of the “nanny state” if it is overdone. Tony Blair’s government brought in vast reams of health and safety legislation, and was always preaching and moralising about something or other, such as using cars less (while he was chauffeured everywhere, and two Jags Prescott), so Boris’s briefings reminded some of us about this.

No.

The Conservative Party was our government. It was their job to manage the pandemic in accordance with their information and their emergency planning. They made the rules. They gave the police authority to enforce the rules.

But instead of leading us through this, they fleeced us, lined the pockets of their friends and families and repeatedly broke the laws they made. Ultimately, they broke the social contract.😟

This lockdowns were the result of public demand nonsense is yet another attempt to shift the blame and gaslight the country. Again!🤨

The Tory government ballsed up the UKs Covid response because they were lazy, ineffectual liars and shysters. Not because of anything the public demanded🙄 or needed.

I have noticed this too. Post-COVID19 era SUCKS. Everyone is even more out for themselves, absolutely no sense of community, patience or compassion for others. It is rather bleak. On top of that, I still feel a lot of businesses even are blaming COVID (still) for shoddy or limited service.

I think it’s because everything is a bit rubbish for so many people at the moment. People are working hard and scraping by. Employers are squeezing the life out of staff. The 9 to 5 with an hour for lunch has morphed into 8.30 to 6 with 10 minutes to shovel in a sandwich if you’re lucky.

Customer service has nose dived. It’s very difficult to get health appointments and when you do, so many services treat you like an inconvenience.

I do my best to go above and beyond for customers because I know how rubbish it is to go into a shop and get grunted at. I offered to help an old lady with her shopping bags yesterday on the way home. It’s not hard. It can be done but there are a lot of selfish idiots out there.

Found the strength to get up during Covid 19 un’furloughed’ for a 16k job 2020 so kept going. Never got Covid 19 myself but experienced worse, medically, in the intervening years.

Remain angry for the people lost.

I'm no fan whatsoever of the government but I was also there at the time and felt the response was far too slow, too little, too late. We have different memories of what went on. I honestly can't make myself care about those parties. Perhaps because I was already innured by the contempt in which I know we're held. But its their least crime from where I'm standing.

I’m divided on “did the public demand lockdowns?”. Certainly, the government was reluctant to lock down, especially Boris. It looks as if the government decided that once lockdown seemed inevitable, they’d really go for it, even though they knew it was too late.

I do think the public demanded lockdowns going on and on and on, once they’d started. They’d got used to the idea, and the lovely cuddly trustable Boris 😇had sold them the idea of “people will die”, “furlough for as long as necessary”, “we will do whatever it takes to keep you safe”, “stay at home, don’t kill granny”, “the police will come after those who break lockdown” (even the police didn’t know this until he said it), “no need to worry about an exit plan, this is the new normal”, it was then politically impossible to ease lockdown. We could have let the virus rip in summer 2020 and lessened the autumn impact, but the government medicine of fear had worked too well, and the public were baying for more and more lockdown. It might have been a form of Stockholm syndrome.

I’m not saying this is the right way, but let’s say Thatcher had been in charge instead. She would probably have openly said that it would be best to let the virus rip, and a good thing for the elderly to die off: in her time, it was more acceptable for politicians to tell the blunt economic truth. Then if she’d had to lock down under duress, she would have laid it on thick about the economic damage lockdowns would cause, while barely mentioning the virus at all. Lockdown would have been much shorter. She would probably have gone the other way with manipulating death figures: pretending that fewer people were dying, rather than more. And maybe she would have been pilloried in the same way Boris was for partygate, but we would thane had fewer deaths, and much less damage in out her ways.

Lockdown was a joke. It was nothing for most people, yet the effects of lockdown were atrocious on mental health, money, business. And the scientists knew, they lied.

Trust is gone. I’ll definitely do what I want now.

I saw entitled people during covid, those who thought the rules didn’t apply to them.

it made me see people for what they are. Entirely selfish, only interested in their own wants/needs, wasteful and idle creatures. My opinion hasn’t changed.

What did you think was going to change?

I don't think stopping to reflect on your current life and whether or not it works for you is a bad thing. And a lot of people (particularly on MN) found that their lives weren't working for them. A lot of people discovered their relationships were unequal and that's not ok either. But that doesn't excuse bad customer service and rudeness and absolute selfishness.

This is intrinsically who humans are, we have survived by being selfish.
Personally I feel that the world would be a better place without us. What we need is a deadly virus sweeping the planet and killing us all off.

It did the opposite didn't it? You can even see it in this thread.

It brought out of the worse in people, the pandemic followed the ridiculous Brexit, and showed we are a nation of entitled, selfish people.

The lockdown was necessary to protect the heathcare system, yet people moaned about wearing masks, not being able to go to the pub, and for some reason thought they were clever for not believing scientists.

Our own Government ignored their own rules, thinking they were exempt and used the situation to line theirs and their mates pockets .

What should have made us stronger and more caring did completely the opposite.

Isn't the reason that we admire and celebrate someone who becomes a better person through adversity rather than becoming bitter and changing for the worse because it's so unusual?

Things have got significantly worse in the Uk and I think the pandemic created a lot of additional problems and since then there has been what I can only describe as a stagnant decline on the streets. People have become less tolerant and more selfish - and angrier. I think people realise they were sold a lie by the Government during the pandemic.

We became more divided because there was a certain element who revelled in it - working from and ordering in their Amazon deliveries not really worrying about the people in supermarkets and other jobs which couldn’t be done from home. WFH has also contributed to a decline in city centres, shops and services going out of business because there is not the foot traffic.

It fucked the NHS even more, it has screwed over generations of kids who lost out academically and socially and we paid for millions to sit idle on furlough which gave a lot of people the taste for benefits which has resulted in part of the problems we have with benefits now.