At my breaking point now. Don't see light at the end of the tunnel

[Valleydad99]

This is probably not going to sit well with people but I'm honestly at the point where I'm questioning what the fucking point of these virus measures are. All the masks/social distancing/lockdowns haven't worked in eliminating the virus & now apparently as cases rise it's back to lockdown again?

Am I the only one thinking maybe we need a plan B? Rather than being flamed for apparently trying to kill people for questioning it?

My 1 year old has been locked down for half her life. I can't take the kids to see sport or play inside for basically no reason.

My kids are no longer welcome at church because of SD & in case they wander around like kids do so now we have no spiritual guidance & anyone I express concerns to just say it's for the greater good & fuck you. "Suffer the little children" said Jesus except when they need god most I suppose.

We've been following all the fucking rules but now it's well if more people followed the rules this would all be over. But that's just not true is it. There's no magic bullet & a vaccine doesn't cause it all to go away so I guess we'll just stay in our bunkers shouting wear a mask at people until we're all dead.

I'm not sure what the point of this post is, guess I just want to shout into the void but I'm mentally at my breaking point & don't see a future for my children & me.

GetOffYourHighHorse

The reason it's spreading in certain areas is because of social deprivation. People from multiple generations living in cramped conditions. (Dominic Harrison, director of public health Blackburn on r4 yesterday). It's not because mumsnet posters are sick of the rules.

'Yep. I'm not prepared to listen to harping on about how nobody moaned during the war by anyone who wasn't an adult during the war'

Oh. So we aren't allowed to quote our grandparents and parents who have said yes life was hard but they pulled together and got on with it as you've decided it's irrelevant.

That generation should serve as a lesson to us all. Missed playdates and not being allowed to socialise aren't great but it is temporary. School's still open (for now) so come on mumsnetters, try to be positive!

GetOf what I suggest is that we have an adult discussion that acknowledges that people have already sacrificed a lot and that civil liberties and the rule of law actually have value.

Then we can work out how to proceed.

But people minimising what is happening as mere inconvenience and shrugging off the erosion of the rule of law are not people who are offering much frankly.

GetOffYourHighHorse my granny lived in extreme poverty most of her life and survived the war. The most important thing to her was spending time with family. The “blitz spirit” which got them through the war was family and community pulling together and supporting each other and spending time with each other. That’s precisely what people are unable to do at the moment.

You can’t simultaneously argue that we need to learn from that generation (who got through hard times with the support of friends, family and community) and also that people need to stop whinging about not being able to socialise (when socialising means getting through hard times with the support of friends, family and community).

The “blitz spirit” which got them through the war was family and community pulling together and supporting each other and spending time with each other. That’s precisely what people are unable to do at the moment.

A million times this

The support of family/friends is crucial in hard times and this is exactly what’s being denied to people. There is nothing reasonable about that.

Oh. So we aren't allowed to quote our grandparents and parents who have said yes life was hard but they pulled together and got on with it as you've decided it's irrelevant.

Yes, I have decided that second or third hand anecdotes are pretty irrelevant compared to the actual historical evidence. I'm really unreasonable like that. But actually, more importantly, I think using other people's difficult experiences that you didn't actually live through to berate people for not coping better here and now is both unkind and actually quite distasteful.

'The reason it's spreading in certain areas is because of social deprivation. People from multiple generations living in cramped conditions. (Dominic Harrison, director of public health Blackburn on r4 yesterday)'

I'd be interested to see his evidence for this claim. It's as if some people think the whole of the North are deprived and live in slums. Perhaps they all have whippets and wear flat caps too. It's spreading because poeple are mixing households and obviously, because it is highly infectious.

'I think using other people's difficult experiences that you didn't actually live through to berate people for not coping better here and now is both unkind and actually quite distasteful.'

It's true and relevant. Inconvenient for the wallowers though.

The “blitz spirit” which got them through the war was family and community pulling together and supporting each other and spending time with each other. That’s precisely what people are unable to do at the moment

Absolutely this. War is a horrible thing, but the tribal behaviour and camaraderie associated with wartime are much more natural human urges than living in socially isolated silos, as we are being asked to do now. There is nothing natural or humane about social distancing, and the only methods governments can get the population to comply with such measures are first appealing to abstract moral ideals such as altruism, and then through disseminating fear (or brute force, for those living under more authoritarian regimes than ours).

Also of course people complained during the war, and of course people broke the rules - there was an extensive black market in rationed goods, for example. So sick of all this rose-tinted nostalgia for some idealised version of Britain that never truly existed (see also Brexit). Anyway this is nothing like a war - we don’t even have a tangible enemy to unite against.

I haven’t met any of the generation of 80+ who are telling the younger generations to suck it up.
They seem pragmatic about Covid and want only to see their families.

A lot of people seem to think they somehow speak for this generation by calling sacrifices made now irrelevant etc
As my old dad used to say ‘who put you in fucking charge’

Being told that we are 'letting down' our grandparents by feeling isolated and unable to cope in lockdown is complete revisionist history. Things were awful during the war, and not everyone survived happily.

Let's not forget the huge black market that developed through the war and beyond.

Houses were looted after being bombed, and there was so little investment in recovery that my parents were still playing on bomb sites in the late sixties. It was actually air raid wardens and people who pretended to be them that would often be the perpetrators.
It wasn't really until the post Olympic boom that the last war sites were cleared and rebuilt.

I feel like the government's planning and response is along the same lines. No one has learnt from the past, they are just barking out jingoistic messages about us betraying the nation.

'There is nothing natural or humane about social distancing'

True, but we have face time, emails, texts, zoom calls, WhatsApp groups. A whole myriad of ways to stay in touch. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

What would you suggest? I asked a pp but got a very vague 'Then we can work out how to proceed' answer.

This is a highly contagious virus, killing thousands and many more will end up in ICU and have protracted recoveries which will of course impact on their livelihoods. What should they do if not limit social contact? Just let it rip, is that really your solution?!

I can remember playing on a bombsite in the fifties.

True, but we have face time, emails, texts, zoom calls, WhatsApp groups. A whole myriad of ways to stay in touch. Not ideal, but better than nothing

But children, especially tiny ones like my toddler DD, can’t access any of these. Throughout this crisis we’ve centred the needs of adults with barely a thought for the problems we are storing up for future generations. Developmentally children need contact with real people and exposure to real world situations. So many young children won’t be getting the socialisation they need at the moment and this will soon manifest itself in behavioural, speech and language and mental health difficulties - flying under the radar at the moment, but I’m looking forward to the handwringing Guardian headlines on all this in a few years’ time.

In answer to your question, the first thing I’d like is for people to stop demanding that people who are struggling ‘suck it up’; to acknowledge that this is not a level playing field; we are not, as many still claim, ‘all in the same boat’, and that the impact of lockdown is disproportionately being felt by the young and the poor. Giving young people and those in struggling industries some hope for the future and concrete financial help rather than shitting on them and then blaming them for spreading the virus.

The second thing I’d like is more anger directed at our pathologically incompetent government rather than at students, vulnerable families in multigenerational households, pub goers or whichever group the government has selected as the scapegoat for its failures this week. A proper, functioning track and trace system would be nice extra - other countries seem to have managed it.

@Welshmum1986

Hi. Stuck at home with a very demanding and time consuming 2 year old. 8 year old's in school and partner works away Mon to Fri. Feel like I'm trapped in my own home. Anyone else feeling totally fed up frustrated and like they're going bonkers with only 4 walls to talk to. I am honestly at bursting point.

You are choosing that! Go out. Think outside of the box. There's a million and 1 things you COULD do with your child. Woman up Fgs.

'In answer to your question, the first thing I’d like is for people to stop demanding that people who are struggling ‘suck it up'

OK so we stop telling people to toughen up, you want people to get angry at the government (which they already are) and you want a better track and trace.

Then what, how then do we stop the spread though if not by restricting socialising?? Scotland has apparently got a better track and trace but look what's going on up there.

People have to find a way to live with the restrictions. Our older and vulnerable people need the younger ones to realise not going to the pub won't kill them, but being a super spreader will kill others. I of course have sympathy for people's livelihoods but I don't have any sympathy for those missing going out or going on playdates. It is temporary.

Go out. Think outside of the box.

You don't think that the OP has thought of just 'going out' @SoloMummy
In 7 months of lockdown she hasn't thought 'I'll go out and all my problems will disappear'.

Are you so devoid of empathy that you can't think that maybe other people are actually as intelligent as you, but still find themselves in difficult positions?

@GetOffYourHighHorse

But you still haven’t addressed any of my concerns (and those of many other posters on this thread) about the impact of ongoing social isolation on young children who need real world socialisation and have a limited developmental time frame in which to do it. It’s not ‘temporary’ for them, in that failure to facilitate normal development in the early years will have a permanent knock-on effect on their future prospects.

Also, you have immediately reverted back to stating what sacrifices the older people need from the young, which is exactly the point I was making. I thought we were all ‘pulling together’, but expecting younger generations to sacrifice education, relationships and in many cases their own livelihoods, to watch entire sectors of our economy and cultural life disappear, for a virus that in most cases barely affects them, and against which they are unlikely to be vaccinated any time soon - and then scapegoating them for the spread of said virus - well, that doesn’t sound much like pulling together to me.

Incidentally, I fully recognise that it isn’t just young people who are suffering as a result of lockdowns and social distancing. The plight of the isolated elderly in care homes strikes me as particularly tragic and inhumane. But, much closer to home, while I still know no one who has tested positive for Covid, my own MIL is currently on a ventilator in hospital after overdosing on antidepressants. We can’t see her and have no idea what the prognosis is. She had suffered from MH issues for some time, but lockdown was the final straw as it took away everything - travel, social groups, church - that she did (and indeed had been advised by her doctors to do) to mitigate her condition. She will be the tip of a very large iceberg; these measures are damaging many, many people, only the numbers suffering aren’t released to the media every day or tracked obsessively by people on Mumsnet.

So what would I do? As I said, sort track and trace, devolve decisions on any local lockdowns/further measures to regional leaders rather than having a corrupt and blundering central government making policies up on the back of an envelope them leaking them to the pro-government press. Keep schools open as far as humanly possible but stop fining/threatening to deregister children who are clinically vulnerable/living with vulnerable family members. Keep restrictions on large gatherings, but otherwise recognise that humans are ultimately social animals and largely let them make their own choices. Most certainly no further full scale lockdowns.

People have to find a way to live with the restrictions. Our older and vulnerable people need the younger ones to realise not going to the pub won't kill them, but being a super spreader will kill others. I of course have sympathy for people's livelihoods but I don't have any sympathy for those missing going out or going on playdates. It is temporary.

People are living with the restrictions, they're just not pretending they like it - and why should they? Did you know that sympathy isn't actually a finite resource? Being kind to others won't actually do you any harm, you know.

Hear hear @TempsPerdu I hope your relative pulls through.

I am so so sick if people saying other people should "suck it up". Really callous.

You are choosing that!
Go out. Think outside of the box. There's a million and 1 things you COULD do with your child. Woman up Fgs

Christ. Do you have a toddler @SoloMummy?

@Hardbackwriter

People have to find a way to live with the restrictions. Our older and vulnerable people need the younger ones to realise not going to the pub won't kill them, but being a super spreader will kill others. I of course have sympathy for people's livelihoods but I don't have any sympathy for those missing going out or going on playdates. It is temporary.

People are living with the restrictions, they're just not pretending they like it - and why should they? Did you know that sympathy isn't actually a finite resource? Being kind to others won't actually do you any harm, you know.

@Hardbackwriter absolutely this. We’re very keen to talk about the importance of getting out and seeing other mums at baby groups etc when we have young children, of not isolating ourselves, of remembering that our own mental health as mothers is as important as our children’s wellbeing. Until that’s no longer possible and the response isn’t sympathy or understanding but ‘suck it up.’ I don’t give a fuck about going to the pub. I haven’t been in a pub in 3 years as my toddler still won’t go to sleep without me and doesn’t sleep through most nights. But I’m not going to act like I’m happy about every opportunity to get out of the house with him except the park being taken away.

@AgentCooper

*You are choosing that! Go out. Think outside of the box. There's a million and 1 things you COULD do with your child. Woman up Fgs*

Christ. Do you have a toddler @SoloMummy?

I'd much rather a toddler in a pandemic than a school age child. Theres plenty that you can do that's safe with a toddler. A lot harder to protect your child and family if having to go to school. There are so many potential activities that can still happen currently. Rather than focus on what can't be done, but focus on what can do!

'But you still haven’t addressed any of my concerns (and those of many other posters on this thread) about the impact of ongoing social isolation on young children who need real world socialisation and have a limited developmental time frame in which to do it. It’s not ‘temporary’ for them, in that failure to facilitate normal development in the early years will have a permanent knock-on effect on their future prospects.'

Nurseries, preschools and primary schools are all open so I think you're flapping prematurely about 'facilitating normal development'. If you're talking about babies and toddlers they are very easily entertained at home and while it is of course hard work as I keep saying it is temporary. With over 17000 new cases playdates should be the least of your worries.

People with actual mental health problems have my sympathy. This situation will be a nightmare for them but many, many others are just jumping on the 'poor me' bandwagon instead of finding strategies to cope. It isn't great, have a moan then get on with it.

I don’t get the comparison to the war, the war must have been awful to live through but at least people could still get comfort and support from others. Social distancing goes against all human nature and it’s not good for people to do it for too long, we are not lone animals. Of course people are struggling, be kind!