Will life ever go back to normal?

[freddotalks]

I'm really struggling to deal with this anxiety. I just keep looking at my gorgeous baby and thinking what will his life look like. I just want to wake up from this bad dream and do normal things with him. I keep crying.

freddotalks I'm glad it helped. It made me feel a better writing it too.

I also agree it was a bit like this after 9/11, it was a moment in time then but we had no idea what world we were heading into, but life, and happiness, has gone on.

Life always returns to normal, it's human nature. My DS was born in the throes of the ebola crisis and ISIS beheading, I had to stop watching the news because I was so stressed by it. Don't underestimate hormones and sleep deprivation either!

I was talking to someone about this earlier. In my lifetime we’ve had the panic about foot and mouth, bird flu, swine flu, ebola

We survived it all. Life has carried on.

Humans have survived plagues, wars, all sorts. We’re surprisingly resilient!

Of course it will! It might be a new kind of normal, but this wont last forever.

Its interesting that someone has mentioned 9/11 as that's the only event in my lifetime that I can compare this to. I remember wondering if the world would ever return to 'normal' and of course it did, but it was new normal.

If anything I hope it makes people less selfish, because I think we have become very selfish as a society.

MN has become a place I really don't recognise tbh.

I know this is a serious situation and I'm as worried as the next person but the catastrophising is ludicrous.

In the space of just 5 minutes I've read schools will be closed until Xmas, millions of people in the UK will die and one poster who was so disturbed by what she'd read she was almost suicidal.

How the utter fuck have we got to this point? This isn't World War Z ffs.

@tootyfruitypickle I hope you are well recovered now. I've just been diagnosed with breast cancer and have an 11 month old. So its safe to say, life is very shit right now.

I don't remember travel been stopped, European countries on lockdown or the UK facing school closures & self isolation of the over 70s during swine flu? Was it similar?

In the space of just 5 minutes I've read schools will be closed until Xmas, millions of people in the UK will die and one poster who was so disturbed by what she'd read she was almost suicidal.

The above is ridiculous but I do think the economic ramifications are going to be serious & it's not like we can slash interest rates. Apparently swine flu cost us 1.24 billion.

Agree @dozywozy. Not sure current situation is comparable to previous diseases (of recent generations). Uk will almost certainly enter lockdown at one point same as other European countries. Football and sporting leagues abandoned, half the country forced to work at home, unable to visit elderly visitors, social gatherings cancelled (or will be). Flights to Spain turned around mid-air and borders closed across Europe. This will have profound effects, good and bad.

Look how many threads there are about lock down.

People are chomping at the bit wanting the drama and hoping it happens

You can lock yourselves down if you wish, you do not have to wait for the govt to tell you to do it.

I think it's important to stay calm but some of the news reporting is very irresponsible.

I agree that people seem desperate for lockdown & the schools to close.

some people

Yes I totally agree, the economic fallout from this is going to very grave but we know this is likely to be the case. What doesn't helps is thread after thread after thread spouting more and more hysterical bullshit.

MN really will become a case study in what happens during a global crisis when stats and figures are bandied around with no concrete evidence.

I don't remember travel been stopped, European countries on lockdown or the UK facing school closures & self isolation of the over 70s during swine flu? Was it similar?

No it wasnt. I dont know why people are comparing it to swine flu when the response is vastly different.

I think we will see massive ramifications economically but life will of course return to normality.

I'm not sure how many people do recognise the economic fallout. I've seen dozens of posts where people say they are happy to have kids out of school for 4 months & they/dh can just wfh & get weekly Amazon deliveries as if nothing will change. Dh & I can wfh but only if there is work to do because the businesses are trading as normal.

Plus have we actually recovered from the 2008 financial crash? And the areas that were strong eg "experiences" are directly impacted by Corona.

I don't even buy all this 'new normal' stuff. In due course, it will all blow over, and the vast majority of people will return to the same normal as before.

I was wondering about the swine flu stats, too. I think social media is amplifying concern to a degree in a way which didn't happen with swine flu in quite the same way.

This time next year, all of this will be a meme.

I think things like not shaking hands, and wearing face masks when ill like in Asia will become more common place.

I expect more people will start keeping their cupboards stocked as well, i.e prepping in general but they won't think of it like that.

Plus have we actually recovered from the 2008 financial crash? And the areas that were strong eg "experiences" are directly impacted by Corona.

No, the response to the 2008 crash was kicking the problem into the long grass. The inherent problems still persist. We should have been moving the economy back towards manufacturing and away from service industries/import & export, but we havn't, so we're going to be very badly hit. Probably another 10 years of so-called austerity.

I think things like not shaking hands, and wearing face masks when ill like in Asia will become more common place.

I hope you're right. Shaking hands is pointless and I hope this outbreak breaks the habit - just no need for it. I also hope that better hygiene also becomes the norm - but probably not, even today, dirty beggars were still leaving a public loo without washing their hands. As for public tranport, restaurants etc making a song and dance and expecting credit for wiping handrails, tables etc more often - they should have been doing it anyway. We really had become a dirty nation and we must hope a legacy of this is better cleanliness and hygiene.

Glad to read some sense on this thread. MN has become the internet equivalent of the loo roll aisle in Sainsbury's when they are down to their last few packets of Andrex.

We all need to get a fucking grip. It's a serious situation (very serious for some, I know) but it's being made a million times worse by folk running around like Chicken Licken, screeching that the sky is falling in. It will pass. Everything does.

If you want cheering up, have a look for footage of people applauding health workers, as happened in locked down Spain recently, or Italian people singing together from their balconies. It's a good reminder that even when things seem very dark, people find hope and strength in each other and create their own light, which is much more reassuring than reading post after post of hysterical babblings about fights in car parks over Imperial Leather soap.