Is this all life will be from now onwards?

[Tartan333]

I have lost hope of things getting back to normal and I mean normal not the awful phrase "new normal".
This feels like existence, all the fun has gone from life, we are all ruled by covid now. Is this it now for the long term? Will it be years before we can do normal things again without masks, distancing, threat of covid etc?

It seems like a very dark future at the moment.

Oh, and Japan's non lockdown figures, please?!

For starters they're pretending 3 months of covid19 deaths is suddenly a year of covid19 deaths, nice try but sadly there's even more deaths to come.

It's a projected total - they've based it on the fact that rates are declining, not that they've stopped entirely?

Most of the dead would have died this year anyway apparently?

I assumed that he's saying this because the vast majority of deaths are amongst the old with co-morbidities though?

Highest risk factor? Dementia.

Get a grip you doom mongers. Ffs get a grip
It's not genocide its not death on all. The minute anyone suggests any hope or advice you're all over it, like miserably fuckers who want to remain miserable. Misery loves company.

Then I look at MN and it's full of whiny people.
Well, yes, that's pretty much the definition of MN.

What if your mother, your sibling, your child is dying of a terminal illness and you cant see them for the last 2 years of their life? That is clearly shit although the terminally ill have been advised to cinsider quality over quantity.
What if you've looked forward to going to a specific university for years and years, to study your dream subject and you were due to start in September and now universities are closed, possibly for years, and your stuck in your childhood bedroom watching lectures on a laptop and paying £9000 a year for it. Who on earth have suggested universities will be closed for years ?
What if you've been saving 2 years for a wedding and now it doesnt look like it could happen for years and years. You're throwing away child bearing years waiting until it can happen. Then you really need to give your head a wobble. If you want to get married, get married, if you want to have a baby, have a baby you don't need to spend £9,000 or have an enormous wedding to do either. You are not wasting your child bearing years unless you choose to.

@Burnout101

[b]I so completely agree with this, it amazed me how many people just accepted their freedom being taken away, being told you can only go out for food and one form of exercise. [/b]

For anyone like me, it was nothing to do with 'accepting' freedoms being taken away, the government haven't invented coronavirus and introduced lockdown for shits and giggles (even if that is what they happen to think of it!). Coronavirus is genuinely killing people, even if they are mainly older people who don't matter to some! It's killed as many people as about 4 years of flu in a matter of months already and that's WITH lockdown. Disliking the rules won't make covid19 magically go away.

Why do people always say that to people who don't agree with lockdown like we are thick. My uncle in his 70s(so classed as old and someone I care about) and high risk has it, he caught it after going in to hospital for heart surgery after a heart attack not from going to the shops or the beach. We know he caught it in hospital because he was tested before the op and didn't have it and then had to go back in a week later to a different hospital after being discharged (and not seeing anyone or going anywhere) and they tested him again and he was diagnosed. So how many caught it in hospital or from an NHS worker? How many caught it from going to the shops?

@TrustTheGeneGenie

It will pass. In five years' time, we will look back and wonder why we thought it was so bad

I disagree. In five years time well look back and think it was all a huge over reaction and we'll be thoroughly ashamed of all the unnecessary consequences lockdown had.

I think you're right.

hopefulhal did you actually read what the £9000 in the post was about. Clue: not a wedding.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

OP completely understand where you are coming from. I remember when the kids were little and the job I did didn't even exist when I was a child (IT related) and we always tried to prepared the kids to be adaptable and to look at the positives on change because you can always find some. I was so depressed at the start of this because all the things I enjoy were forbidden (sports travel related) However in fi f h other things (gardening etc) and seeing which friends were not Dementors was quite liberating. I'd still prefer nothing to have changed, but anything could strike you and change your life at anytime. I am definitely changing my priorities/the friends I will keep will be the one who still hugged when we met because we loved each /those who were paranoid and hunkered down with their own perfect cosy families and took the Stasi approach to others I just don't want to see now. One ex friend keeps saying we can now meet up at 2m distance and do our old hobby soon. Fuck that - I needed her two months ago. The people O was there for (works both ways) and who were therefor me are the ones I wantto be my friends.

I'm amazed - truly gobsmacked actually- that anyone can look at somewhere like Brazil (cv allowed to run its course), or Italy or Spzin before they locked down and think "oh that doesnt look too bad, I wish we'd done it like that."

I hope not

I look at Sweden and wish we were more phlegmatic. That's the path we set off down then bottled it halfway and decided to try to eradicate it instead. Too late.

Sweden's health service has not come close to being overwhelmed. Ours was already turning people away in early April - that's the difference.

I wish we'd followed Sweden. They've not fucked over their children, they've not fucked over their economy and their death rate isn't horrendous.

It's baffling why we're aiming for the virus not to kill anyone at all ever. That's what virus' do. Even norovirus kills fgs.

We have to live with it and unfortunately with that, accept that a very small % of people will die. But then, people die every single day and that seems to be a really alien concept for some people.

@Porcupineinwaiting

Sweden's health service has not come close to being overwhelmed. Ours was already turning people away in early April - that's the difference.

Not because they didn't have capacity. Because they thought they'd need it for worse cases, but then they didn't. The nightingales have been sat empty.

I wish we'd followed Sweden.

When people say this do they mean that we whole have had less deaths if we had, or the same number (that we have in the uk I mean)?

How do you know we wouldn’t have had more deaths?

Genuinely asking because I don’t understand the comparisons with Sweden.

Surely what we needed was fantastic test track and trace as well as closed borders right from the start and we could have avoided lockdown that way?

Bold fail sorry I wish we'd followed Sweden.

We aren't Swedish. We don't behave the way they do.

We don't have their small population density or their sense of communal responsibility.

We don't have their health service which is funded by much higher taxes than we pay so works more efficiently.

We wouldn't have had the same outcome.

@Endless11

I wish we'd followed Sweden.

When people say this do they mean that we whole have had less deaths if we had, or the same number (that we have in the uk I mean)?

How do you know we wouldn’t have had more deaths?

Genuinely asking because I don’t understand the comparisons with Sweden.

Surely what we needed was fantastic test track and trace as well as closed borders right from the start and we could have avoided lockdown that way?

We might have had more deaths. We might have been able to protect education, business and the economy. We might have been able to stop the impending mental health crisis that is about to happen.

The deaths arent the be all and end all. They're not the only people who matter.

@CarlaH

We aren't Swedish. We don't behave the way they do.

We don't have their small population density or their sense of communal responsibility.

We don't have their health service which is funded by much higher taxes than we pay so works more efficiently.

We wouldn't have had the same outcome.

You can't possibly know what the outcome would have been.

One lockdown I can handle, bought us time and changed behaviour for many. But the thought of local lock downs and another announcement from Sunak (probably more stimulus) makes me feel depressed.

Local lockdown will further decimate businesses. With no furlough by then it will be harder.

Fingers crossed for vaccine to get out of this quagmire.

Sorry @TrustTheGeneGenie but that's not true. Quite a few people were "left at home to manage" at the beginning of April who would normally have been admitted to hospital. Some of them died there.

@Porcupineinwaiting

Sorry *@TrustTheGeneGenie* but that's not true. Quite a few people were "left at home to manage" at the beginning of April who would normally have been admitted to hospital. Some of them died there.

Not because there wasn't capacity.