People's behaviour in London

[catandcandle]

NC for this, because I probably sound like a bit of a loon. We left London as the lockdown 2020 started and have been living in deep rural bliss in an EU country ever since. Here we still have social distancing, madatory masks indoors everywhere, sanitisers at every entrance. I have spent a lot of the pandemic not going anywhere much, I WFH and it has been possible to pretty much isolate throughout. I did get on a holiday to another European country in the summer (after being double vaccinated) but it was country with low rates, I wore an FFP3 on the plane, and because it was a hot country I spent nearly the whole time outdoors and only went to eat at outdoor places etc.

We decided (after DS aged 12 has now been double vaccinated), to come on a trip back to London (DH for various reasons including fetching things he had to leave behind, me and DS just to see London again and see some friends). DH has gone today, DS and I plan to join him on Friday, for the weekend.

DH has just arrived in London and he called me telling me I am going to freak out, there are people in the shops without masks, no sanitiser at the doors, and when he asked someone to please social distance in a shop they mocked him. He is right, this will be very difficult, I have not encountered these things through the whole pandemic!

I am not asking AIBU, I very possibly am, but this is how I feel, and I hve been managing the pandemic this way because I could. I still want to go to London, and I realise I can take my own sanitiser and keep myself away from people. There is no way I am going to go indoors or on public transport without a medical-grade (FFP3) mask. The rates are just too high for me.

So, I just wanted to ask, are there still people who are going to be as cautious as me there? Will I be stared at and mocked because I (and DS) are wearing masks, shy away from contact and sanitise our hands? I don't suppose I should really care what people think of me, but I would just like to be prepared. I feel incredibly nervous about this trip now.

@Rosehip10

Why the drama over sanitiser for an airborne virus?

Exactly this. Sanitiser is covid theatre.

And it is really annoying when ex-pats come onto MN to say the UK is doing it all wrong. You don't live here anymore so it doesn't affect you.

As for the "mocking" people are just rude. I dare say if you told someone in your current place of residence to give you more space there's a fair chance they'd be rude, too.

And loads of people are still wearing masks where I live.

Maybe you should go to Guernsey, OP. They have been careful about who they let in, but all I needed was to be vaccinated, no testing or quarantine, and once you're in, no masks and no social distancing. You would hate it. We embraced it after over a year of mask-wearing here. But now I am home, I am wearing masks in shops etc again.

I don't think you're ridiculous. Just that you have a lower risk tolerance than many people.

The alternative view is that we should make the most of the freedoms we have now in case we end up locked down again when winter gets going.

Neither view is wrong imo. We've most of us had or at least been offered the vaccines which is the best protection we're getting. Since Covid is here to stay, we all have some fairly unpalatable choices to make about how we live our lives going forward.

It's not just London it's everywhere. Dd works in a London theatre. She is mask exempt but wears one when she can when working. Elsewhere she doesn't unless she is somewhere particularly crowded.

I live up North and I wear a mask on the train but nowhere else. Most people are not bothering now.

If you feel anxious, then feel free to wear a mask.

I don't think you're being hysterical we all are just trying to do our best.
Masks will be fine only about 50% of people wear them but no one will think you're odd for doing so, sanitiser is about in some places but not everywhere and social distancing - forget it. Tube is packed as usual and London in general is back to normal.
I would say if no social distancing is going to make you very anxious for whatever reason then you had best leave it for now.

Some are more anxious than others, but hospitalisations do seem to be remaining stable, so for myself, that makes me worry less. I am however not in a vulnerable group, and fully understand and don't judge those who are and who are anxious.

Regardless of Covid, I think masks are a good idea in winter as I don't to pass on colds/flu/etc. to others. But I can't impose that view on others, many of whom are happy to hack away in crowded spaces at the best of times. And we live in quite an individualistic society anyway, where 'what I want' often trumps 'what is best for us all.'

So where you are, it seems easy for you to work from home, wear masks, sanitise, quarantine what you want to and when, use or not use transport for your activities and feel that you accept how that functions and the numbers using it, send your child to school with a very low case rate, and know roughly what that is among those in your community within a period of 6 months. Cool.

That was the case for my household in 2020, not by any means for all. Many of these options are now not open to the majority of people assuming they still want/need to work and have schooling outside the home with a group of 30 kids who will also have siblings at other schools and nurseries each day. Especially in those areas that you cannot control, which mean mixing with a lot of people with different demands and views, you can only make your choices about how much risk you want to take, and how helpful you think your own counter measures are. You can't really control whatever anyone else does. The evidence you give is interesting, thanks, but it can only be applied to my own perception of risk at the moment.

Are any of you CEV? Is there a reason you're so scared of COVID? The problem is your anxiety, not COVID.

I did not exactly say that the UK is "doing it wrong", I said that it is different from here, and given all the evidence and my specific personal situation, my risk assessment seems to be different from many people over there, so I need to be aware of that and allow for it.

And I may not live there, but it affects me massively, my entire business/client base is in the UK and the way things are done there affect my way of doing my work, including the fact that clients are clearly soon going to start saying they want face to face meetings because that is becoming much more the norm there. It appears, including from what people have said here, they are going to become less accepting much sooner than Irish people of endless Zooms and Teams meetings. This affects me a lot, obviously. Not in the having to travel back and forth, that was always part of the plan, it has just been delayed by the pandemic, but in the fact that I am going to have to manage my risks in a way that I am comfortable with. So all information about how things are "over there" and how people are thinking is actually very helpful to me. I have no doubt that my clients will have a similar mix of approaches, which I need to cater for if I am to remain in business!

Not CEV , no, but not exactly young, and I have six people completely dependent on my income (which, as I am self-employed, does not continue if I cannot work, so sick pay etc). These facts do factor in to my risk assessment, yes.

That is seven people, if you include myself

@Miseryl

Are any of you CEV? Is there a reason you're so scared of COVID? The problem is your anxiety, not COVID.

1 yes

2 but taking reasonable precautions in a pandemic is not anxiety it is common sense. Hope that helps.

@lockdownmadnessdotcom the place I went on holiday in the summer was pretty much like you described Guernsey being. Just show EU Covid pass and come in. No tests or quarantine, and then we did not wear masks anywhere except in the supermarket, behaved totally normally apart from that. No social distancing etc. It was heaven and I was not anxious for a moment. I am sure I would feel the same in Guernsey. You imply that my anxiety/concern/wanting more information about London is generalised (unrasonable) anxiety which I apply to everywhere. I do not. It is the result of risk assessment, whether correct by other people's reckoning/perception or not.

Since this thread and seeing the pic I have spotted about three of the white masks

People looked fine! And no issue

Mind you people where crazy masks that are more likely to be noticed and no one really cares

I do find it hilarious that you actually think lots of people are going to mock you. Honestly noone gives a shit about you and what your doing.

I've been out and about in London for various events and travelled by tube, noone cares! Noone is pointing, laughing or openly making comments about other people and their masks or using hand sanitiser.

And honestly I don't even get the point of this post, its pretty obvious different countries have different rules or at different stages, if your comfortable with some being more relaxed then you just do what you need to do to stay safe or reduce your anxiety.

Hardly worth getting so angst over.

And to the core of the post - nobody's going to laugh and people sanitising and distancing and wearing masks in London. Because in London, anything goes and nobody cares.

But people might think "that person obviously has issues with anxiety" and they'd be right.

The biggest positive takeaway from this thread I think is the reassuring thought that I will not be stared at or ridiculed for wearing a mask or being generally more careful than it seems a lot of people are being. Yes I know London, lived in Zones 1-3 for literally decades, but I know it as it was before the pandemic, and things change (and so do I of course, eighteen months in the countryside does change you! I am longing to see London again, miss it terribly, but I know it will be a bit odd, not just because of the pandemic but because I have been away a while, in a place where there are mostly sheep).

Let’s face it no one is going to give a shit they’ll just stroll past you, assume you have anxiety issues and carry on their day.

@Treblebass how does wearing a mask mean you have anxiety issues? Its something simple I do just to protect the people around me. I don't find it a chore and I will probably continue to wear masks on public transport for the rest of my life.

I am a Londoner who wears a mask indoors and on public transport. also sanitize hands if i see a dispenser. Also in my 20s with no health issues and healthy BMI.

@Treblebass also wear medical grade masks!

@onlychildhamster That is helpful. I also don't see why a mask should be a signal that you suffer from anxiety, especially in the current situation. You can't infer that from the mask.

@catandcandle I can tell you that before the pandemic, people stared if you wore a mask. I used to live in a polluted part of London- Hendon, and I wore a N95 mask when walking to the tube station. That was what we wore in Singapore during smog season. People stared then so I stopped wearing them (other asians are less self conscious though and continued to wear them). But now since the pandemic, no one bats an eyelid. The area I live in London now has good air so I don't really need to wear for environmental reasons, but wearing it more to protect other people.

Near enough everyone in London has had covid by now. So rates there now are actually lower than most of the rest of the country because immunity there is higher. Obviously for someone like yourself who's avoided covid so far, that's not much consolation. But uk govt strategy has been to go for herd immunity for sometime - I guess their thinking is that everyone has had (or at least been offered) the vaccine, it's not stopping people from catching covid, so there's nowhere else left to turn but to work towards the population building up immunity by letting it spread to everyone at a controlled rate (to avoid hospitals overflowing).

It's been shambles from the govt from start to now, but we're at where we're at, and there's no alternative at this stage.

If it bothers you that much, stay out of London (and cities in general), but mask wearing and social distancing is probably similar all over the uk now.

That was my experience too. Well, not me, but my brother. He was visiting me from a place where they often wore masks if they hd a cough or cold. He was wearing one (back in 2019) when he walked into a pharmacist in London, to ask for some cold and flu meds, and before he could even speak he was shouted at and threatened by other customers and told to leave. i think they thought he was a robber or a junkie or something. I don't suppose that would happen now, of course, but it does make you wonder about people's attitudes to masks.

The masks in schools wouod be to avoid disruption / absences as opppsed to worry about people becoming seriously ill.

Near enough everyone in London has had covid by now.

That's so not true. I live and work in central London and I know only 2 people (one of which is me!) who have had Covid. 98% of my work/gym/social circle hasn't had Covid at all.