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.

London is still quieter than normal and you will be absolutely fine wearing a mask. You won’t get mocked! There is still a lot of hand sanitiser around as well.
I was on a busy tube at the weekend and most of the people not wearing masks seemed to be tourists! Lots speaking French, Spanish and Italian!

In the nicest possible way OP - get a grip.

I suggest you stay in your EU countryside bubble for the next year whilst the rest of the World carries on with life.

I wouldn't believe the UK statistics on coronavirus, they are calculated differently from other countries and in my opinion are distorted and are an inaccurate portrayal of COVID in this country.

Wear a mask and sanitise your hands and go about your life. You cannot preach to people unfortunately about social distancing. And you will not be able to social distance in London - especially on the tube.

I have travelled to work everyday throughout the pandemic on packed tubes and worked in a busy work environment with hundreds of people and haven't yet caught COVID.

You can either shy away from the world until there are zero cases (there won't be!) or take precautions and go about life.

I can see that you'd be nervous if you've been hidden away somewhere rural and out of the UK.

It would be a real shock coming here now. I can imagine. Like when we just came out of lockdown - if most of us had been plunged into the way things are now in the UK we'd be terrified too.

The mentality here, now, I think is that we just have to live with it. Most of us will get it at some point ... it's impossible to avoid etc

But as someone else said the beauty of London is you can do what you like and no one cares. So just be as careful as you wish OP. You can't expect people around you to be though, as they have moved on from that now. If they hadn't they'd live every day terrified.

If you are that nervous around such a wide spectrum of how people are reacting/conforming, and your journey abroad is not essential, a trip to London is probably not for you right now.

On the one hand: it's quieter but public transport of all kinds is building back up to normal numbers, so no distancing really possible at busy times of day. In the last week I have been commuting on the mainline and a lot of coughs are going round the carriage, which is 'new' but not unusual for October. Test and trace QR codes are mostly in evidence but very few people now use them routinely. Nobody's really mocking masks, but if you were to query someone not wearing one or being too close, you'd probably not get a nice and accommodating response.

My guess is that we're going to get a couple of waves going up and down quite fast among schoolchildren and university students. I can speak for primary school (on a sample of 1) - about 5 in a class of 10 year olds are out each week, so far, with confirmed infection.

On the other, I think most people are more on edge (in London). I was in an unusually emptyish tube carriage recently standing by the doors as I was only going 1 stop. There was 1 person sitting the other side of a glass partition with no mask (maybe 3 or 4 others in the space) and they asked me to move somewhere away from them because I had the choice of the whole carriage. I didn't mind doing this but I was the other side of a glass panel, for about 97 seconds, which I sometimes count when I'm bored on that journey...

I think you’re getting a bit of a hard time OP. My parents ( aged 80, live v rurally albeit in the UK) came up to visit us in London last week. They were very apprehensive but in the end loved it and enjoyed everything feeling a bit more ‘normal’.
They are now in France and said where they are there isn’t much social distancing or mask wearing going on either.

I think you are best staying at home. You are far too anxious and you probably need some CBT to undo all of the scaremongering and fear the government has put into people.

@JassyRadlett
Possibly this could be an explanation of your cross carrier?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrim_Cross
(Lent and having a pint might not always fit, but from reports from those who have done it, it's bloody hard!)

@Remmy123

I think you are best staying at home. You are far too anxious and you probably need some CBT to undo all of the scaremongering and fear the government has put into people.

CBT for any anxious over feeding kids due to cut in universal credit CBT for farmers as pigs were going to die anyway CBT for not normalising high case and death rates of covid No CBT available for those that really need it.

[quote Ormally]@JassyRadlett
Possibly this could be an explanation of your cross carrier?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrim_Cross
(Lent and having a pint might not always fit, but from reports from those who have done it, it's bloody hard!)[/quote]
That looks epic!

I don't need any bloody CBT! A degree of anxiety is completely rational and functional given my situation, past and present, and it is not preventing me from doing things I need or want to do. I am still going! People need to stop pathologising understandable anxiety and caution! I don't want or need therapy, I just wanted some information so I was prepared, in going into a situation which is different from my current experience . It is frankly patronising to suggest psychotherapy because I want to follow some sensible health guidelines given my particular personal circumstances.

No one will care what you do in London.

But people are getting back to normal and getting on with their lives. And that includes commuting to work, shopping and going out to bars and cafes. Things aren't as busy as they were pre-pandemic but they are busy.

I am always reminded on reading these posts how wildly divergent people's experiences of the past 18 months or so have been. Most of the people I know have grabbed at every bit of 'freedom' they have been offered and have made the most of it. This is not a criticism or mockery of you, OP, but it is strange to read of people still hiding away (assuming not CV) as if society and social contact are unnecessary 'extras' in people's lives as opposed to an fulfilling an essential need.

@catandcandle

I don't need any bloody CBT! A degree of anxiety is completely rational and functional given my situation, past and present, and it is not preventing me from doing things I need or want to do. I am still going! People need to stop pathologising understandable anxiety and caution! I don't want or need therapy, I just wanted some information so I was prepared, in going into a situation which is different from my current experience . It is frankly patronising to suggest psychotherapy because I want to follow some sensible health guidelines given my particular personal circumstances.

I agree 100%. I was trying to use other scenarios to highlight this. Sorry if it didn't come across that way.

@catandcandle - but you knew what was happening here, right? There are no restrictions.

I am not really hiding away. We purposefully retired to the country to pursue a different kind of life from that we had in London. We meant this to be a quiet rural life, interspersed by frequent enjoyable trips elsewhere for both work and leisure, that was delayed for obvious reasons. The very day that my EU Covid passport came into force i on was on a Ryanair plane heading to my holiday home in southern Europe. I now want to go and see friends in London and start planning to to get back to the UK regularly for face to face work. I wanted to ask what London is like now because I have not been there in the pandemic, and can see on my television screen that things are different there from my current reality here. Oh, and there are still significant amounts of people falling ill in the UK, and my own previous workplace is certainly not acting anything like the pandemic is over. So, some understandable anxiety about the unknown, and hence seeking info to help mitigate this anxiety. Not a case for "CBT". Sorry, rant over, thanks for all the valuable contributions and now, having packed a wide array of masks, I am off to pack my hazmat suit clothes.

@beentoldcomputersaysno that was not directed at you, it was for Remmy123!

Op I totally understand what you are saying and I would be a bit off about what you have described also. To each their own but I will still be masking on the tube a while yet. I also still try to keep my distance although am not verbal about it to anyone. To be fair I never liked people breathing down my neck anyway long before this 😂

I live in London and agree with you OP. I find it appalling that all the restrictions are gone and everything is basically back to pre-covid ways. Let people mock OP, I think you're right.

It can be a bit of a culture shock. It was for me the first time I went into a city. Not so much the sanitiser and masks, but how relaxed it was! However it's nice to move around in an environment that feels so much more normal, while remembering to give those in masks a little extra space.

In hindsight I should have titled the thread "People's behaviour in London?".

It has been interpreted by some, incorrectly, as "People's behaviour in London!".

A degree of anxiety might be rational. Stripping off your kids and quarantined furniture for days - not rational. But until you accept that your perspective is not normal and is not rational...

@KingsleyShacklebolt the furniture quarantine was in March 2020! At that time fomites were being mooted as a possible significant transmission method. There were studies showing 7 days virus survival on metal surfaces. (and I did frame it part-humourously, even at the time seemed like some sort of theatre of the absurd, but everything back then was so uncertain and frightening, we lurched from real fear to dark humour and self-parody all the time).

We weren't the only ones here to quarantine objects by any means. The charity shop here, when they started a accepting clothing donations again, were quarantining them for 2 weeks in a locked room before sorting them! When we had food delivered, as we had to for the first 2 weeks after getting here, the shop promised everything had been cleaned with antiviral spray! We were by no means outliers!

@LalalalalalaLand123

I live in London and agree with you OP. I find it appalling that all the restrictions are gone and everything is basically back to pre-covid ways. Let people mock OP, I think you're right.

haven't read the full thread

you are very reasonable OP

elsewhere in the UK we are still (most of us) wearing masks and being careful (at least where I live)

I am not comfortable being exposed to needless risk either

For those who label me ridiculous and in need of psychotherapy for feeling that people should continue to wear masks and being anxious about being around loads of unmasked people, what about this (including yesterday's case level, quoted in the article, and the case trend, which is plain for anyone to see).

www.theguardian.com/education/2021/oct/07/nadhim-zahawi-school-pupils-may-have-to-wear-masks-again-if-covid-cases-rise?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other