I, along with many of the people I know, am at much higher risk of serious health problems due to isolation and mental health issues than I am of dying from covid. I suffered from a psychiatric condition for many years that caused me to do a lot of harm to myself, including at one point starving myself until I weighed six stone (that's a BMI of 14.5 at my height, if anyone's interested). Right around the time covid hit I was starting to become genuinely well again for the first time in a long time. Unfortunately isolation is a particular risk factor for me, and seeing friends is the most effective way to improve my own health when I hit a rough patch. Shame about that, I guess.
During the last lockdown I didn't see a single person I knew for nine weeks. I was genuinely too afraid to post on here for support because of the sheer level of vitriol being directed at anyone who dared admit to struggling for reasons other than being hospitalised or bereaved due to covid. I fell out badly with a good friend because, after six weeks of total isolation, I went for a longer walk than she thought was 'necessary; which she claimed was putting the NHS at risk. Apart from a two week period in July where I visited my parents, who live on the other side of the country, and one time when I hugged my best friend whom I hadn't seen for months (and haven't since), I haven't touched another person since March 21st. I don't know when I will next, nor do I know when I will next see my family or closest friends, and I fully expect to spend Christmas alone. I have no intention of going against any of the rules or guidance, unless it's genuinely an emergency.
But that doesn't matter to a lot of people, because it's not enough just to follow the guidance. We have to stay positive, be 'resilient', bake banana bread and shut up about our problems, otherwise we have the wrong attitude. God forbid.
I have been very, very lucky in that I have good friends at my work, which is in a school and reasonably secure, and as such I'm more or less okay now. This lockdown won't really affect me. Many people aren't in such a fortunate position and have posted on here about their mental health, financial problems or inability to access treatment for other conditions - only to get told that others have it worse, this isn't the Black Death, they're not really isolated because Zoom, British people are whingers, or some random person's granny lived through the Second World War, so no-one else is allowed to have a single negative feeling about their own life being turned upside down in the space of a year. Never mind that suicide is killing people RIGHT NOW, or that people are facing homelessness RIGHT NOW. Never mind that, like covid, poverty and mental health crises can have long term repercussions that go way beyond whether or not you survive the immediate event. And it's not enough to say that not locking down would lead to more problems in the future, because for the people who are already dying or dead, there is no future. For the people who are on the brink of destitution now, "but otherwise you'd be poor later" doesn't look like a worse option.
For years I've been seeing people make cute little posts on facebook about the importance of mental health, and listened to friends talk about the terrible effects of austerity and child poverty under the Tory government. Well, turns out everyone wants to look like they care, right up to the point where other people's efforts to avoid either of those things might actually affect their own lives. Now, suddenly, the people suffering are idiots who don't care about anyone else, and the whole reason why we got into this state in the first place. Funny, that.
Luckily for the rest of you, you don't need to worry about poverty and suicide because they're not contagious. You can carry on putting the boot into people who are suffering because it makes you feel good, or maybe helps you to convince yourself that they're different from you, and you'll never find yourself in their shoes. And people like me will have to put up with being told, repeatedly, that we're acceptable collateral damage of lockdowns and restrictions, even if we're at risk of dying from them, because what can we do about it? But don't then act shocked when we 'selfishly' decide to value our own immediate needs above sacrificing our health further than we already have for your sake.
So all that to say, you're right, OP. I don't feel particularly inclined to care about anyone beyond my own friends and family. Because why the fuck should I, when others have made it perfectly clear that they've got theirs, and they don't give a damn about people like me?