How long will people agree to make these sacrifices for?

[DappledOliveGroves]

Inspired by another thread here.

Let's assume the vaccines don't do what they should - either because the virus mutates so rapidly or because our government can't manage to adhere to Pfizer's protocol and a lone dose does nothing to protect people.

Then what?

For all those champing at the bit for curfews, harsher lockdowns, further restrictions on civil liberties - I'm genuinely curious - how long are you willing to maintain this status quo?

Would you be happy to still be in this lockdown in a year? Two years? Five years? Even if the lockdowns are eased and clamped down again, would you be willing to accept rolling lockdowns as a fact of life with no end in sight? At what point would those wanting tougher restrictions decide they can't live like this anymore?

@Lastbonestanding

I did not agree to make these sacrifices now. I will not agree in the future and I do not agree now.

Exactly Just what I said in March.

And there, op in a nutshell tells me everything I need to know about you.

You believe that your right to hug someone trumps all else.

There's nothing I can say or do that will change your self absorbed mind. You don't care how many die, or what wider consequences there are, as long as you can continue doing what you want to do.

I did not agree to living through a pandemic. Oh wait.. What a ridiculous argument that is. Am I 5 years old? Life's not fair etc etc.

How long the Spanish flu lasted
But why should the duration of the flu pandemic have any bearing on the duration of a coronavirus pandemic?
I can see that they are both respiratory viruses but is that grounds to make the assumption you appear to be making 🤔

@Perfect28

And there, op in a nutshell tells me everything I need to know about you.

You believe that your right to hug someone trumps all else.

There's nothing I can say or do that will change your self absorbed mind. You don't care how many die, or what wider consequences there are, as long as you can continue doing what you want to do.

Yep, you’ve got it in a nutshell

There you go..you’ve proved yourself right

Happy now? Or are you still suffering from a bad case of FOMO? 😂

@dowser. Your. Decisions. Are. Killing. People.

Would you like it any clearer? Nope, because you don't give a crap.

@DappledOliveGroves
@TiersBeforeBedtime

I totally agree with everything

There's a time to die ...

Do you think culture is obsessed with youth and a staying alive?
I do

Those moaning about lockdown do realise it’s a GLOBAL pandemic don’t they? There are certain pieces of information we won’t be told until they grapple with HOW to tell us.

Rioting is not the answer neither is mass rebellion because it simply spits in the face of those dealing with this VERY real virus as well as those who have lost family members to it. Some people need to grow up.

Think this is bad, try living in during the Blitz.

Oh don't worry I know full well that your arguments are crap and predicated on selfishness. You don't care if others die. I just want to expose them for everyone else to see 😉

@Perfect28
But I could just as easily say to you what if lockdown causes us to print money (which is basically our economic response) and that causes hyper inflation and then people can't buy food?

Or what if the economy is so decimated that we can't afford life saving cancer treatments any more (quite possible if the hyperinflation scenario comes to pass)?

This is the worst case scenario for the effects of lockdown. Not necessarily likely but definitely plausible.

You are looking at the worst case scenario for not locking down (lights going off and bodies in the streets) and comparing it with the best case scenario for lockdown (saving loads of lives with minimal long-term impact). That's not fair.

We have some real life data which suggests that society doesn't breakdown if you don't lockdown so we know that the worst case scenario for not locking down is unlikely to happen. We don't really know what the long term effects of lockdown will be but it could (at worst) be effective societal breakdown.

I wish people would stop framing this as "selfishness" v "empathy". If you believe (as I do) that lockdown is dramatically decreasing both the quality and quantity of millions of people's lives now and in the future and saving very few if any lives, you can't in good conscience support it.

It is hard right now. My father is 91 and desperately lonely. I am in a bubble with him and go to see him twice a week, do his shopping and try to keep him going. He talks about wishing he'd fall asleep and not wake up. Totally rational sentiments - it's a shit life for him even though other members of my family call him regularly.

My DC both uni students are struggling with their mental health and are not getting much for their loans.

A dear friend was diagnosed with cancer Jan 2020 - in July they confirmed she is terminal. She has seen no one except her husband - and her DC a couple of time (if they isolate for two weeks before seeing her). This is what the end of her life is like - being locked away from everyone.

I personally believe this lockdown will go on for quite a while - probably at least till May. Because the government knows they will be unlikely to get compliance for future further lockdowns. Let's just hope the vaccines work even with new mutations.

Peace and love mumsnetters.

You need to go back and read my comments re societal collapse and how I have not argued that it is inevitable.

Also, ever heard of quantitive easing..?

I will keep going for as long as it takes. NHS staff have made huge sacrifices, sometimes with their own lives, to save lives over this. The least I can do is stay on my sofa watching telly until it’s all over. It’s hardly a great hardship. It’s not like I’m fighting in the trenches.

@Lalliella

I will keep going for as long as it takes. NHS staff have made huge sacrifices, sometimes with their own lives, to save lives over this. The least I can do is stay on my sofa watching telly until it’s all over. It’s hardly a great hardship. It’s not like I’m fighting in the trenches

Because you can. I can too. Perfectly fine to stay like this for months. However, not everyone can. People in one bed flats with 2 kids and no respite and no money, people losing jobs and homes, people who need outside support due to abuse, people with disabled kids, people with terminal illness, people on the edge of breakdowns, people not paid if they don’t go to insecure minimum wage jobs, people who no longer find any reason to get up every day and are not as resilient as us, for whatever reason. Maybe they can’t, and it’s not for me to judge them.

Yohoheaveho - I deliberately chose to just buy in to my Dad's googling and go with it. Because it gives me something to aim for and optimism feels nicer than pessimism.

I can make this time feel worse for myself by thinking doomy thoughts about how it'll never end, or I can think nicer thoughts like 'this will probably end by 3 years', and 'life will go back to normal, humans will cope and keep going like they have through history.'

The nicer thoughts make my life better so I'm sticking with them.

Not RTFT but just responding to the OP.

The NHS being overwhelmed, losing loved ones to covid or other illnesses that they weren't able to be treated for, death rates going through the roof - these are nightmare scenarios. I remember the reports from Italy early last year and how chilling they were. It's bloody scary.

But that's only one side of the scales. On the other, we have children missing out on education and the simple childhood happiness of playing with their friends. Some of them stuck with abusive families. New mums isolated, young kids missing crucial developmental experiences and not knowing their wider family. Elderly people, some with dementia, unable to see or hug family members. Businesses collapsing, cultural life confined to a computer screen. The right to see close friends and family, gone. The joyful bits of life, the things we look forward to, essentially gone (and I say that as a pretty unsociable person who enjoys walking, the one and only available activity). Christmas, weddings, funerals, birthday parties, all those things which bring us together and are rites of passage, gone or heavily curtailed. Young people unable to spread their wings and do the things we all did at their age. It's literally illegal to hug your loved ones at the moment, unless you're in the same household or some variety of bubble.

Basically what I'm saying is that at some point those scales tip. I don't know when that is, for me personally or society as a whole. I'm following the rules, I'm very cautious, I want my family to be safe and I don't want to be 'part of the problem'. But that other stuff, that is life. It cannot just be put aside indefinitely. I think the vaccine will change things a lot, and maybe sooner than we think. Pandemics don't last forever. But in the meantime, while I'm personally coping ok, I could cry when I think of how much we're asking young people to give up in particular.

In a war you can still see friends and family, go out to the pub (albeit with a blackout). You can meet and go to dinner, though the food choices may be limited by rationing. You can go to work and not have to work from home. Schools were open. You could travel to other areas of the country.

Yes, you might get killed. You might lose loved ones. But I'd take that over this pandemic.

You really have no idea have you - I almost feel sorry for you. Maybe you should read a few accounts of what life really was like in war, especially in areas which suffered frequent bombings.

Yours was a very good post @Bumpsadaisie. Just a shame you seem to be in the minority on MN, so many selfish entitled people on here who think of nothing beyond their own wants.

@eaglejulesk

Yours was a very good post *@Bumpsadaisie*. Just a shame you seem to be in the minority on MN, so many selfish entitled people on here who think of nothing beyond their own wants.

Nope. Some of us are just able to acknowledge that there are far worse things in life than death. You live a charmed life if you've never had cause to realise that.

I won't do it forever, I understand why we need to lockdown - but it's not a long term solution. Why should COVID take priority over other illnesses that need urgent surgery, for example. A 30 year old cancer patient waits for an op while a 94 year old with multiple health conditions receives treatment for COVID...I'm not sure that's right.

I'm tired of seeing people like @sadpapercourtesan saying that ending lockdown at some point would be risking her dad's life in order to 'sit with their toddler at a soft play'. That is an exceptionally privileged view. Over 700,000 in the UK have been pushed into poverty by covid (including 120,000 children) and the WHO estimates 88-115 MILLION worldwide. That's not even including the lifelong impacts on learning, mental health, DV or more. I'm one of those who has lost their job, and as a single mum with 3 DCs homeschooling, there's no other job available that I could realistically even start - I'm one of the lucky ones, at least I have savings, but like many others that won't last too long.

Of course, it is no better for individuals or society if we open up while covid is endemic. But as numbers go down, and vaccines are rolled out, we need to be able to accept some risk, just as we do with driving or the flu.

I'm glad I'm not alone in beginning to feel differently about lockdown and following the rules.

I'm not saying I'm going to ride roughshod over them. But I am saying my family and I are broken and we can't continue like this much longer, those feeling the same have my absolute sympathy, and those who understand have my respect.

As the unfairness becomes more apparent and we slip through more and more cracks my conscience begins to stop telling me to continue ruining our lives for the sake of others, and to point out that this is too much, that many others have had financial help, have living circumstances that make this bearable, have been able to get on a plane full of hundreds of people and take a holiday. Whilst we have been forced to live differently for almost a year especially given that we are in Leicester.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want a holiday, I want a life that isn't a living hell. My husband and I have worked hard since leaving uni over 25 years ago and paid higher rate tax every single year- but our work is decimated, we have limped along with no financial help, no furlough, no help, just the usual tax bill needing to be paid to fund public services, other people's furlough etc.- If we are evicted do we still follow the rules?

If this thread has shown anything, it's that people are capable of judgement and hatred of others who are simply trying to live. I dont believe there ate many people who wake up in the morning and think 'screw everyone. I will just do what I want even if it kills someone'. At the end of this pandemic we may be facing an even worse situation where many have lost their capacity for understanding of others' choices. So many people now are at the end of their tether, but misery is now being treated as a competition ('it doesnt matter that you have no money and cant see your kids. You could have coronavirus! Count yourself lucky'), or something many believe we should all just live with. For those who dont want to live in indefinite misery they will be judged my some. Our humanity had taken a serious hit over the past year.

I'll be honest I'm totally fed up of it. My husband said he was lying in bed thinking what's the point of life when you can't do anything that made you happy and well. That made me really sad, cause he's sort of right..

We don't have kids so are not able to use the excuse and cover of childcare bubbles to see family like my brother and work colleagues are doing. I've been made to work from home as my company has now decided we are all remote workers so I'm isolated that way and stuck in my home all day everyday.

The gym has been closed which has been my sanity during the tiers, I can't go anywhere to get out the house bar a walk - which yesterday was in the snow! It's dark it's miserable... everything I've booked has been cancelled, I'm not even allowed to go food shopping with my husband now ... we are back where we were in March having made no progress ...it just feels bleak.

The whole point of March was to give the NHS Time to get ready, near year on it still isn't able to cope, despite millions spent on super hospitals.

I don't know how it will change rioting or protesting but life needs to restart. We need to put the money and resources into supporting the vulnerable and get life running again.

Ifeelso sorry for my friends (well anyone) who are juggling jobs and home learning, children for the fact they can't go to school learn and socialise, elderly people in care homes who can't see their loved ones, anyone who's lost their job or business, people who are stressed and struggling with financial pressures, mental health and isolation, those who see the only way out of this is suicide, anyone who needs care right now who can't access it or have early diagnosis, people who haven't seen family because of distance or health conditions, the NHS staff dealing with this all, the shop and security staff who receive abuse for doing their job.... the list is endless, the damage and fall out unknown right now

@CommonFishDiseases

Is anyone else considering emigration, if that's an option for you? I am British, but DH and I are thinking that if we have another year of this, we will seriously consider emigrating for the sake of our DC - to give them a better life in a country where this has been infinitely better managed. I am a rule-follower in general, but I am so angry at this government for what they've done to our children, and I don't know how much longer I can watch friends and family in other countries getting on with their lives.

Yes we did just that, the first lockdown was so awful (we were in Spain), we were determined not to hang around waiting for the next one - we moved to Sweden as soon as we could. We just left a friend with the instructions to sell our house. We lost some money but that's ok. Moving here was best thing we could have done for our happiness, I have been living free from masks and hysteria since August. The restrictions here are so tiny we hardly notice them. I just feel happy to see people and mostly children having fun out and about - life goes on without OTT rules. Still some people believe lockdowns are the only way, it's like in some countries you have a cult of masks and lockdowns.