To think people are deluded when they say ‘when this is all over’

[Lannaaa]

Not a conspiracy theorist! At all. But this is never going to be over. It really grates on me when people say this...like there’s a day where suddenly all is ok. This is going to go on for at least another year and will be here in some way or other indefinitely. It makes me sad that people seem to really believe that their freedoms will resume at some point. Maybe many many years down the line but not soon. Not sure where the ‘when this is all over’ even came from?!

@Lannaaa

Not a conspiracy theorist! At all. But this is never going to be over. It really grates on me when people say this...like there’s a day where suddenly all is ok. This is going to go on for at least another year and will be here in some way or other indefinitely. It makes me sad that people seem to really believe that their freedoms will resume at some point. Maybe many many years down the line but not soon. Not sure where the ‘when this is all over’ even came from?!

If my severely depressed daughter thought this I seriously dread to think what would happen. Positivity is everything. I don’t like War analogies but do you think people walked round in 1940 saying “When we lose the war”?

Lolz somebody has had a bad day 😂😂😂🎄 calm down love

How much of an impact does Polio make on your daily life? I'd say that the odds are it's just about fuck all. That's the affect Covid will be having on your life in the nearish future. And long before that life, the vast, vast majority of normality will have returned to our lives.

It's a hope thing OP. Nobody wants to imagine this will be for a long time, wny would they?

At some point the pandemic will become endemic, like the flu. It will be in society but lots of people would have built up some form of resistance to it, either due to Vaccine or having had it. Therefore less transferable and less deaths and life returns to some sort of normal.

The pace of the vaccine roll out and the way its ripping through school age children, this may be a lot sooner than we think, or it may not. But we need to have some hope

*Ffs - the 1918 flu pandemic only stopped because the virus mutated to be LESS harmful

Why do people keep quoting this ?!?*

I think there's every chance that an even milder (though very contagious) strain will become the predominant one. Millions of people have the virus at present and mutations happen all the time so that's millions of human sized petri dishes basically! (Yes I know viruses require cells to replicate in). The ideal virus (or parasite for that matter) is one that is very easily transmissible but mild, so the host can happily go about its business for as long as possible, shedding it to be picked up by new hosts, instead of lying in their bed feeling crap and being avoided by other people. So it's likely to evolve to be less severe.

This natural selection for milder strains may be aided by testing- ie people with symptoms test and isolate so they can't spread it around any more than they already did in the presymptom phase; people who have it so mildly they feel fine don't trigger a test and can presumably carry on transmitting their mild strain over a longer period to more people ..and so over time a mild strain should spread more successfully- possibly also acting as a form of natural vaccination should people who've had it then become exposed to any more severe strains that crop up, you'd hope there would be some degree of cross protection.

Part of me wonders if we will find lockdowns more socially acceptable in future, even for less mild diseases. Like how dangerous Swine flu was (was that 2009?) Will influential people campaign for and ultitmately politically achieve lots of authoritarianism again in response to a much lesser risk? I feel like this is quite possible. :(

@ragged

Part of me wonders if we will find lockdowns more socially acceptable in future, even for less mild diseases. Like how dangerous Swine flu was (was that 2009?) Will influential people campaign for and ultitmately politically achieve lots of authoritarianism again in response to a much lesser risk? I feel like this is quite possible. :(

This is the big worry.

I’ll be happy when this is all over, meaning the lockdowns, the struggles, the disruption.

This will end, even if Covid 19 is still out there, we will just find a different way to live with it after vaccination kicks in.

@ragged

Part of me wonders if we will find lockdowns more socially acceptable in future, even for less mild diseases. Like how dangerous Swine flu was (was that 2009?) Will influential people campaign for and ultitmately politically achieve lots of authoritarianism again in response to a much lesser risk? I feel like this is quite possible. :(

Destroy the economy and people's mental health unnecessarily? Let's hope not.

@Chersfrozenface

The World Health Organisation hope that the pandemic will be over by August 2022.

Provided we don't screw it up. They may not have used the exact words "screw it up" but that''s what they meant.

Its a shame its not a month earlier as my sons wedding is July 2022 :)

@ragged

Part of me wonders if we will find lockdowns more socially acceptable in future, even for less mild diseases. Like how dangerous Swine flu was (was that 2009?) Will influential people campaign for and ultitmately politically achieve lots of authoritarianism again in response to a much lesser risk? I feel like this is quite possible. :(

Not with the level of damage to the economy.

Masks might be more acceptable I guess. I won’t wear them, I’ve never worn one before to stop people getting bugs but my husband has said he’ll wear them when he has a cold etc in future. He doesn’t mind wearing them, I hate them.

"I don’t like War analogies but do you think people walked round in 1940 saying “When we lose the war”?"

Well with the Great War they expected it o be over very quickly and they were clearly over optimistic.

Will influential people campaign for and ultitmately politically achieve lots of authoritarianism again in response to a much lesser risk?

This argument makes no sense to me. The economy is in the toilet, the government is deeply in debt and will struggle to recoup the losses, will become more unpopular as they try to “austerity” their way out of it and will undoubtedly be kicked out because of that in the long run. What on earth would any government have to gain by locking down the country unless there was an actual risk?

Trump has shown it’s actually pretty easy to slide a nation in to authoritarianism without locking it down, and were it not for Covid-19, he would undoubtedly have fully succeeded. In fact, it was his failure to lockdown that was his undoing.

Of course it will be over soon. The virus is becoming like flu. It will be fine, people have short memories.

There is a school of thought that the Spanish flu of 1918 was the flu strain H1N1 also known as swine flu.

Previous pandemics spread slower as people travelled slower, they took weeks rather than hours to cross the Atlantic.

Spanish flu was right on the back of WW1.

This will come to an end but Covid19 will come another virus that eventually will be added to childhood vaccine.

We will not live with lockdowns and social distancing forever. The economy can't afford it. Furlough isn't going to last forever.
It might be that we'll have a look at NHS funding and the training of medical staff. It wouldn't surprise me if this becomes the turning point for nursing homes to come under a part of the NHS.

This is a classic "bubble bursting" post. The OP makes a dramatic and very general statement about people using the future tense in relation to, for example, social mixing. The key ingredient without which the Bubble Burster cannot function is, of course, the bubble. This is why I have learned when speaking over the phone to certain people and in certain parts of this website not to use the word "when" if talking about aspirations that cannot be realised under current restrictions.
Rewind 9 months or so. There would have been some people during the first lockdown who thought that restrictions would permanently end by early summer 2020. This hope, while it did not turn out to reflect reality, may well have sustained these people through that first lockdown, after which they will have recalibrated their expectations. Nobody can say to anyone now "if you think restrictions will not be in place at the end of 2020, you are being deluded" because that point is 4 days away, and nobody now thinks that. So in order to sustain their joy in puncturing others' hopes for an unknown future, the BB has to continually seek out threads expressing these hopes. Holiday ones are a favourite. So, if you want to stop the bubble busters engaging in this destructive behaviour, keep your hopes warm glows inside your head and avoid vocalising them.

It will be with us but in a lesser less deadly form and we will learn to live with it. People will be vaccinated or have caught it unknowingly and achieved the same effect. Every time I go out and get exposed, it is a mini-vaccination. My immunity is built up and I no longer am a host and become part of the herd. This takes time to move across the population but it will happen because it is what viruses do and it what humans develop in response to viruses.

Remember that this is the first time in human history of a pandemic where we have such technology at our disposal and the brightest brains across the globe working towards the same goal and throwing resources at eradicating it. I feel very optimistic.

Or the human race dies out, which is far less likely.

Minty "Trump has shown it’s actually pretty easy to slide a nation in to authoritarianism without locking it down, and were it not for Covid-19, he would undoubtedly have fully succeeded. In fact, it was his failure to lockdown that was his undoing."

How did Trump create authoritarianism please?

Note - No vested interest, just interested to hear your thoughts.

Blue "Every time I go out and get exposed, it is a mini-vaccination. My immunity is built up and I no longer am a host and become part of the herd. This takes time to move across the population but it will happen because it is what viruses do and it what humans develop in response to viruses."

Don't tell that to the WHO, that viewpoint is banned now!

Not a conspiracy theorist! At all. But this is never going to be over. It really grates on me when people say this...like there’s a day where suddenly all is ok

Never is a really long time.

Are you saying we will never ever go to the theatre again, never go to a gig or to a restaurant or have large weddings.

Never be able to get on a plane to go on holiday for a couple of weeks

Are you saying that anything to do with hospitality will be a redundant career. No pubs, no cafes because you can’t meet up with anyone.

No more shopping in the high street or in a mall then going for lunch.

If this is never going to be over I suspect that the suicide rate would be worse than the disease

North Korea is highly totalitarian with an economy in the toilet.

Somehow they have a political power structure that manages to perpetuate that situation. Russia, Turkey, Philippines all have populist authoritarian type leaders who persuade their populaces to prioritise a kind of "our country first" narrative as more desirable than economic & social liberalism.. Bolsonaro & Maduro both try to be that kind of leader, too.

damn this is uncomfortable, I've always thought the Libertarians were nutjobs until now.

As for the economy being f_cked, yes it is. Then again, there are economic theories out there such as the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT or "Magic Money Tree") which theorises that nations can freely create their own money - yes, print money - which does not devalue the currency, lead to inflation or lead to economic meltdown.

As a country, the UK is billions worse off in debt but so are Europe and US. There won't be a loss of confidence in our currency (think Wiemar Venezuela or Argentina hyperinflation) because the UK economy is sound and will recover and our rich neighbours equally f_cked anyway so we are all in the same boat.

Just hope Rishi does not raise taxes to soon or too quickly. Every year he staves this off is a bonus year.

Every day is a day closer to the end.

There is a lot of pent up demand for gigs, theatre, museums, hospitality, travel. Once we are out of this, I believe these areas will explode with fresh blood and new ideas.

Itll be over. It might take the best part of next year, but we will learn to live with the risk once the most vulnerable are vaccinated. Like we do with many many diseases.
There will be changes, eg I'm sure there will be less commuting and much more working from home, the economy is going to be difficult for a while, but lime all other pandemics this one will end. You're not doing your own mental health any good by catastrophising.