Just hit me everything has changed.

[Iwannatellyouastory]

At home in UK, self isolating as I have been in close contact with someone now showing symptoms.
Listening to local radio and adverts, obviously planned/ paid for a while ago coming on in between the records.

Win tickets for a music festival in the summer, promoting test drives special deal if you book before end of March, special finance package for start up businesses, some electrical firm promoting it’s services etc

It’s like a glimpse into the past, festivals are going to be cancelled, nobody is going to book a test drive are they? Start up businesses are likely to go to the wall, unless they sell hand gel or toilet paper. Will anyone want to book electrical work unless it’s essential of course.
Big job losses already announced at airlines, mobile phone companies etc, the company that both my sons work at is unlikely to survive a downturn in business.
Me and my DH are in our sixties so not so worried for our future, healthy so unlikely to be too ill if we do get the virus. What about our kids, grandchildren and the rest of society though.

This too shall pass folks.

It would be good if this leads to the NHS being valued more.
I'm all for investing in prevention and preventing rather than treating many diseases but this is a sobering reminder that can only go so far.

I keep thinking of those post apocalyptic films where you see deserted street scenes of places usually teeming with people. It still seems unreal, like something from a movie. We went to VENICE a few years ago and could. not. move for sheer number of people. Seeing an empty St Marks Square in TV is doing strange things to my Aspergic brain.

Yes, it will come and go. Life will go in. But none of us fully know in what form. We have a small pet food delivery business and are being asked rightly, to “just leave it at the gate/in the shed/on the drive”. Surreal.

With air lines going under I think it might be the end of the cheap air travel we have enjoyed which will be a bonus for the planet but put thousands (millions?) out of work in the travel industry. I know someone who is a travel agent specialising in cruises, existing customers have cancelled and literally no one is booking. She is very worried.

@StealthPolarBear, would be nice but I doubt it. I was a health worker (hospital and community based) for three decades. How this govt. has depleted our NHS and left us wide open to an inability to cope with everyday health needs, is unbelievable and appalling. It’s the same story we’ve seen over and over “thank you to our amazing NHS and ambulance staff for going above and beyond”. Well, this time, it might not work out so well.

I saw Jeremy Hunt being asked if he felt responsible for the state our nhs was in now, in this crisis and he just kept banging on about the need for certain measures in times of austerity. Well, here we are, Mr Hunt. Desperately trying to delay the Covid 19 impact because our services will not be able to cope. Could barely cope pre-Covid with winter flu and the rise in fractured hips seen in winter.

I’ve never experienced anything like this in my lifetime and it’s very surreal.

A usually bustling town centre almost empty but supermarkets full to the brim. People literally running from their spots at the tills to grab more toilet rolls that staff are trying to stock up. Snatching them from the staff before they can even put them on the shelves. Having to clamber over tonnes of people just to get a single can of Heinz. Elderly buying baby formula as a replacement for powdered milk because it’s all sold out.

All festivals and music events cancelled. All sporting events cancelled. Small/independent businesses shut down indefinitely. Almost everyone out of 5000 people on my Facebook are out of work and struggling.

You are all expressing grief at how things are changing. We will all adapt, however tough that is.
And in a year, things will be getting back to normal. New businesses being started, unemployment going down, people gout out having a good time. I know this is going to be tough. But it does also help to think about when this is all over.
There will be a vaccine. There will be treatment. Once we have these, things will slowly return get going again.
Of course our economy will be affected and lots of people will have suffered financially. So we will be a poorer country for a few years. But we will still be one of the richer countries in the world.

I lived near an area with high levels of AIDS cases, before anyone knew anything about it and there were fears it could be spread by cutlery and plates. I know someone who died of it when it was still being called the "gay disease". No one knew exactly how it could be transmitted, there was no treatment, and very young healthy men were dying very quickly. Gay men were terrified.
Years on we have treatments, HIV is a chronic disease like many others, and nowhere near the number of people died that the government was then estimating would.
Okay there was not a run on toilet paper, and it was a particular section of the community that was most affected, but my point is that things do go back to normal. It will be okay again.
Yes it is shit if you lose your job or business. But there will be more help than at any other time. And there will be jobs and opportunities for new businesses once this is all over.

I'm not sure. I've been involved in community groups and local government for some years now, and I'm having to face some unpleasant realisations about some of the people in my sphere.

They say a crisis shows you a person's true self. Well, over the last few months, I've seen that and am really quite shocked. After Coronavirus, I don't know whether I want to carry on with my roles; I just don't want to be near these people anymore.

I knew Covid-19 would be a problem. I tried to put in place contingencies over a month ago, but was shut down and ridiculed for it. "It's only flu" etc.

Now we are a long way behind organising welfare checks for our elderly and vulnerable, and circumstances now dictate that we can't do much anyway... all because some pompous, arrogant wanker pulled rank and shut me down whenever I tried to mention it.

I'm pretty sickened by how things have gone.

Packing so sorry to hear that. Yes I was enraged about all those saying it was only flu. There should have been lots of planning going on. It was obvious what was coming.

Yes me too. I sat in a corona meeting last Thursday (planning for my care services) and was told to 'hope it doesn't happen' when I raised concerns about cases in my homes, staff being told to self isolate and no contingency etc.
Was shut down and dismissed. The end of the meeting was the head of care breezily saying 'we shouldn't need to meet about this again'.

I've just spent the last 48 hours dealing with a suspected case in a service user, resulting in all staff being told to self isolate, a severe staffing crisis, an online meeting to decide to pay those staff that will come in and stay there for 7 days 24/7 double their normal pay, and a lot of panic.

And I seem to be getting blamed for not somehow forcing staff to come in against the advice they were given by PHE.

I'm really pissed off and there is going to be months of this.

What hasn't changed is the amount of natural resources available in the world that provide the food we eat, the water we drink and the other things we need to survive.

What will change due to this virus is the distribution of money that enables people to purchase these things. So many people will lose the ability to pay for their own and their family's survival.

Humanity will have to change our ways in response to this. We will have to share out our resources.

We all need to start agitating for national citizen incomes, for a fairer distribution of wealth.

We still have everything we need for people to survive we just need to change how we enable people to access those things.

We survived war (not personally, I wasn't born) and we will survive this. Keep calm and don't panic.

@cloudydays2020 There were people losing jobs and businesses before this virus. The difference now is that because of the numbers affected there will be more help than before Do you think we got a 3 mortgage holiday when my company suddenly closed 2 years ago? No, we got nothing.

By my company I mean the company that employed me.

The virus is awful and some people will not come through it, that is true, just as of many other diseases we barely think about.
I think the social and financial implications will have a very long lasting effect. Some bad but I think some good will come of this eventually, albeit at a price.

Alloutoffucks - no I don't suppose you did:-(. I think you should have. Every human has equal value and should have what they need to survive.

We should be sharing resources out, we should help people who need help, no one should go without food or a home. Not now, not last year, not next year, not ever.

I agree cloudydays.
But I do think most people who survive this will be okay.

Oh, Murray, so you experienced the same?

What I feel so despondent about is that it turned out, after the first meeting where I was shut down, that some of my fellow colleagues had already started to personally prepare for a quarantine scenario. They admitted they'd bought extra medicines and dried goods.

So they were worried about it personally, but just sat there meekly while Pompous Wanker unilaterally decided we weren't going to even make initial enquiries into some basic legal questions.

Now it's practically too late.

I read the government Coronavirus guidelines today. Made for grim reading.
My dads care home is in lockdown now. I can't see him at all. They haven't got it at the care home apparently which is good news. How they have kept it out I don't know!
Life won't be the same it's true.
We have to hope they find a cure.
People adapt though. We will come through this.

Yes I feel there will be bay suicides because of this. Men unable to provide particularly.

I went to see a play last week. Come from Away. Lovely little musical about the events immediately after 9/11 in a small place in Canada called Newfoundland. It was very inspiring, if you haven;t seen it maybe you should.

As I watched the play I remembered what it was like, I was pregnant with my DS at the time and the emotional fall out and the despair. But I can barely remember what it was like to travel before 9/11, taking shoes off and full body scans is the norm now, but it wasn't always like that.

I imagine it will be teh same, we will come out of the other side.

When people talk about the Blitz they're not talking about jitterbugging with Yanks, and everyone huddled in the underground. They're talking about the spirit of the Blitz. The can do, able to cope attitude. Yes times are different, then they had eachother in close contact, now we have eachother remotely, technology connects us all.

We were supposed to be having my Granddad's 90th birthday party next month. Obviously, that's not going to happen now. Such is life, let's move on. We can celebrate when he's 90 and 6 months or maybe 91. Keep calm and carry on. Your worry is valid, but at this stgae it's a little out of proportion.

I went to see a play last week. Come from Away. Lovely little musical about the events immediately after 9/11 in a small place in Canada called Newfoundland. It was very inspiring, if you haven;t seen it maybe you should

Unfortunately all of the theatres have closed indefinitely.

Unfortunately all of the theatres have closed indefinitely.

For now. No reason to think we won't get West End or broadway back again ever. After all this we will still need live entertainment.

I think you missed the point ultimate point.

Exactly that packingsoap...