I think I was naive.

[Gatorgator]

In my head - when this started - twelve weeks was worst case scenario. I knew the virus wouldn’t go away obviously, but I thought after twelve weeks the nhs would be better prepared, we’d know more about the virus and there would be a degree of acceptance that we just have to live alongside it and know there’s an elevated risk. I’m in an at risk category so I’m not just dismissing this risk.
However instead it seems that we are going to live like this indefinitely. I didn’t think theatres, sporting events etc would be open for a long time, nor did I think the travel industry would pick back up, but I did think I’d be able to visit my elderly parents who live two miles down the road.

Now it seems like this is the new normal. All meetings are going to be virtual. We are having (unsuccessful) virtual play dates with other children. The few friends I’m still communicating with I’m mainly messaging but really - if I’m never seeing them again then what’s the point?

There are a couple of big Christmas things nearby that are annual events and they are cancelled. More and more I’m coming to realise that this is it. This is in fact the new normal everyone keeps talking about. Only seeing the people you live with and being terrified to even leave the house to collect something essential like a prescription.

The NHS escaped being overwhelmed because

All services, bar emergencies were postponed

And

People who were very unwell with Covid, who would have been admitted under normal circumstances, weren't allowed to attend hospital.

Do any of you think.its a good thing for people to be made to stay at home until.they were blue? Really?

Do any of you think.its a good thing for people to be made to stay at home until.they were blue? Really?

Yes it’s a really good idea .

It’s obviously true that the criteria for admission were initially wrong and that there has been a lot cancelled. Horrific and scary stuff. But it is still better that hospitals weren’t overwhelmed and had people dying in corridors, that is a perfectly valid point to make.

@Givenupno I agree with all you said but bit perplexed at inclusion of healthcare workers in the following statement. We healthcare workers just got on with it, quite a lot of us caught the virus, some of us died, we carried on. An odd statement to make about us.

“you make a life decision to work in healthcare or teaching then you must have understood that you were putting yourself in a situation where you would be exposed to bugs and illness?”

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras Yes, it was horribly scary for my DH, when trying to answer questions from paramedics about how bad I actually was. At one point, he told them I was asleep when in fact I wasn't, I was struggling to breathe and stay conscious. He had been instructed on the position to put me in, but in every other way, he was left to cope in his own.

It was really scary for our DDs as well.

I am just as fed up as many of you on this thread. I want to get back to 'normal'. I want to get back to the gym and horse riding. I want to go to the pub with my friends. I'm sick of washing everything that comes into the house But, in the great scheme of things it is only a snapshot out of our lives.

This came up on my facebook feed this morning and it has really helped me put things into perspective. I hope it gives others some hope.

"For a small amount of perspective at this moment, imagine you were born in 1900. When you are 14, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday with 22 million people killed. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until you are 20. Fifty million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million. When you're 29, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, global GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet. When you're 41, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills six million. At 52, the Korean War starts and five million perish. At 64 the Vietnam War begins, and it doesn’t end for many years. Four million people die in that conflict. Approaching your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, could well have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening. As you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends. Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? A kid in 1985 didn’t think their 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. Yet those grandparents (and now great grandparents) survived through everything listed above.
Perspective is an amazing art. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Let’s be smart, help each other out, and we will get through all of this. In the history of the world, there has never been a storm that lasted. This too, shall pass."

No generation has been without its problems.

Stay safe everyone.

I predicted that it would the the same in Germany as in Italy. It has not.

Imagine the privilege of being able to ask why lockdown is so difficult.

It's not as simple as that. There's more than one reason someone might find lockdown less difficult.

One is as you say that they are more privileged during it (garden etc). There are lots of people unhappy in flats with no gardens, in situations of domestic abuse, financially screwed etc. The sooner it ends the better from that point of view, if it can be done safely so we don't get loads more infections.

Another reason someone might be coping better though is that they might have been less privileged before lockdown, so they're not missing things as much because they had less of them before, without being utterly miserable as a result.

I sympathise a great deal with people who are finding the sudden and miserable change to their normal life depressing and strange.

But I do think that some of the things people are missing are quite privileged in themselves (holidays, spontaneous trips out to see friends and family, casual spending on experiences, children's activities and so on). They depend on money, health, family circumstances that bit everyone has. Temporarily not having some of these things isn't going to ruin anyone's life or permanently harm their children.

If you're used to managing without all those freedoms, it can sometimes seem hard to understand why it's so awful for others to do so temporarily.

It’s obviously true that the criteria for admission were initially wrong and that there has been a lot cancelled. Horrific and scary stuff. But it is still better that hospitals weren’t overwhelmed and had people dying in corridors, that is a perfectly valid point to make.

How can it be good that patients who needed hospital treatment were denied it? The fact that they weren't allowed into hospitals isn't proof that the NHS wasn't overwhelmed, it's proof that it actually wasn't able to cope and in order to hide that people were left to die at home and many others suffered more than they needed to.

@hearhooves that isn't remotely what I was saying.

But I do think that some of the things people are missing are quite privileged in themselves (holidays, spontaneous trips out to see friends and family, casual spending on experiences, children's activities and so on). They depend on money, health, family circumstances that bit everyone has. Temporarily not having some of these things isn't going to ruin anyone's life or permanently harm their children.

^^ I think there is some truth to this. However, I try to do a lot better for my children than I can deliver right now. It’s not a race to the bottom. We also don’t know how long it will last

are they social distancing in danish schools? if not and the R hasnt gone up surely thats a good sign

@GabsAlot

are they social distancing in danish schools? if not and the R hasnt gone up surely thats a good sign

They're certainly trying. However, in my 1yr old's daycare and 5 year old's um... kind of like a kindergarten but not quite thing.. they technically are but it's obviously not possible. I've seen the kids jumping on each other and all sorts when I've dropped them off and picked them up. There's plenty of contact. Additionally the staff were instructed very plainly that they must comfort children who are sad or distressed, if that means hugging three at once than that's that.

This week kids are allowed playdates again, including sleepovers!

Today we had the first day with zero deaths in the last 24 hours since mid-March. It's not making things worse. They just don't seem to spreading it.

I don't think you're naive OP. I think it's just that this is a new virus and so is still being researched. We don't know exactly how it behaves or how it will behave in the future

There was an article, in Bloomberg I think. Scientists in China were interviewed and I remember they said "the virus is stealthy and robust". I think that sums it up, unfortunately

Thats really positive New i wonder if anyone will pick up on that or just carry on with the doom and gloom reoprts

everyone adamant here schools shouldnt reopen and that theyre all on danger

@NewLevelsOfTiredness thank you for your post, I found it really heartening. I think us in the UK are despairing a little - the government locked down what, 2-3 weeks after the rest of Europe, and now we feel we’re months and months behind everywhere else in our recovery. “Well on the way to normal for Europe and we’re all isolated for Christmas” type of catastrophic thinking (I include myself in that).

The comforting belief that our government / nhs are there and will sort it has been ripped away too. The initial advice that “you are not at risk from catching the virus unless you’ve been in contact with someone who you know has just returned from Italy or China”, looking back that’s quite staggering .

@Goatymcgoaty

I'm glad it helped a little. I'm British and emigrated here a while ago so I have a close eye on the news - all my extended family is there including my 89 year old Nan in a care home (that has thankfully remained virus free so far.) Plus the UK situation gets a lot of coverage in the media here - probably force of habit after Brexit!

I do agree that those extra two or free weeks meant several more weeks on the other side, sadly.

However I hope that when some kids go back in June, that the result is the same - no consequential surge at the same time, with the conclusion that kids are not big spreaders.

English is obviously my first language, and I'm only really only conversational in Danish and yet I'm far, far more clear on what is happening after listing to the government announcements here than I am when listing to the UK ones!

Concerned auntie,
My grandmother was born in1896 and had all of that and more. Like her father of 8 dying aged 40 of pneumonia in 1901 and her and her younger siblings all Being sent to an orphanage.
Her husband being a gambler. During the depression Of the 30s he was rarely in work But when he was, she had to meet him on a Friday to get his wages so the 6 of them ( 4 children) didn’t starve the rest of the week.
Him dying aged 53 of cancer in 1951
She had a really hard life but she never lost her humanity or her resilience and never , ever in all of this was she or anyone else locked away from loved ones.

That’s what people are finding it so hard to grapple with .
I can’t imagine anyone from her generation would’ve put up with what we are meant to.
My own parents certainly wouldn’t had they been here.

It’s easy to want say we need to get on and live with the risk now that the lockdown has stopped a catastrophic number of deaths. I wonder how many people would be saying we need to live with the risk if the virus was being allowed to run riot through our population, with between 10-14% or everyone we know hospitalised, and hundreds of thousands dying. It’s easy to believe now that there is little risk attached to the virus. I predicted it when we first went into lockdown. That people would be clamouring to come back out saying the risk just didn’t justify the response.

The way it is being handled in this country means that once we start trying to loosen restrictions and get children to school and adults back to work, we will be back in lockdown before we know it.

It will get back to normal when we do what other countries are doing to get there. When we gave up contact tracing and testing in the community we sacrificed any chance of keeping control of the virus. Now we have a very long road ahead to regain control. First they need to recruit 18,000 contact tracers. Then we need to expand testing massively so it’s generally available. Then we have the long slog of getting numbers down to something manageable. If 400 people died yesterday that means that approximately 40,000 people became infected about 2 weeks ago. In countries where the virus is under control they have new cases numbers in the tens or hundreds. Not in the tens of thousands. We couldn’t possibly ever contact trace when numbers are that high, and that is what this government, like every other, is going to be relying on to lift restrictions. Hoping and wishing is just pseudo positive nonsense. It’s clear how we’re going to get out of lockdown and we’re a million miles away at the moment. And the new easing of restrictions is just going to make the job infinitely harder.

It is really hard and I'm getting seriously fed up. I wasn't naive, I knew it would be ages before things turned around but I hoped that I would be able to see my family by now. I hoped we would have a plan and I hoped we would be able to book an air BnB or equivalent for the summer even if just for 4 nights.

Like I said I've had enough and I want to visit my family, in their house and have a cuppa with them. That's all! But it seems like a lifetime away 😔

@Dowser 228,000 people died in Britain during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Britain was globally criticised for its response and prioritising the war effort and subsequent lack of restrictions in work places and public transport (which other countries implemented with varying degrees of success); point being these measures are not cruel or unusual and have proven successes over centuries.

I can’t imagine my own grandmother (born 1920, contracted TB in the 1940’s and subsequently spent months in a TB sanatorium then lost her husband to TB not long before the birth of their daughter) not getting on with what needed to be done. She wasn’t just locked away from her loved ones but taken from her home.

People have endured what we’re being asked to and more.

People have endured what we’re being asked to and more.

And this helps how? The past was utterly shit as Dowser has alluded to above.

I don’t think lockdown was wrong, there was community transmission of a new disease that we didn’t know about. We needed to work out a plan, the best way of treating it. But we need to also be brave and get on with it over the next few months as the plan falls into place. Keep long harping on about the worse hardships people faced in the past is totally irrelevant to where we are now.

But I do think that some of the things people are missing are quite privileged in themselves (holidays, spontaneous trips out to see friends and family, casual spending on experiences, children's activities and so on). They depend on money, health, family circumstances that bit everyone has. Temporarily not having some of these things isn't going to ruin anyone's life or permanently harm their children.

Is this intended as a rationalisation of the lockdown collateral damage?