Pros and cons for you

[Solodreamer]

I've been a bit miserable about Covid this week. Feel like I want my life back (most people do eh!) I've been trying to remind myself that Covid has had some positives. What have the pros and cons been for you?

For me the pros were:

1. I absolutely loved the quiet of lockdown one, particularly the lack of traffic and the amount of wildlife I saw having a ball .
2. Lockdown 1 helped me survive a very, very tough job as my workload completely changed.
3. I learnt to love walking.
4. I got a dog which I don't think I ever would have done otherwise.
5. I learnt to cook some different things.
6. It felt like the planet got to breathe even just for a short time.
7. The pressure of social things lifted for a while.

Cons:

1. I'm even lonelier than I was before it.
2. My job got even harder than pre Covid.
3. I miss travelling.
4. I need sun.
5. I haven't seen some friends who live further away for 2 years.
6. The constant monotony of life is draining 7. I miss the cinema (no good films seemed to be released anymore).
7. I'm sick of the constant concern that I'll pass Covid onto vulnerable relatives/friends.
8. The amount of waste caused by Covid is sickening (disposable masks, LFTs, PPE etc).

10. I just want things to be like they used to be but I can't see that happening.

There have been no pros for me. I had my second baby just before the first lockdown so the past two years have been spent trying to juggle a toddler and a newborn in lockdowns with limited help, no baby groups, not seeing family & friends etc. DH mega stressed in busy job. I haven't lost my baby weight almost two years on because gyms have been closed, WFH means I don't cycle into the office like I used to (my main form of exercise), numerous bugs for the DC probably because they spent the whole of 2020 away from everyone else!

I've hated every minute of the Covid restrictions. They have impacted my life enormously the past two years. I'll never get that precious year of maternity leave back and I spent it mainly stressed and miserable.

(That's just on a personal level! There are so many more wider implications...)

Big Pro... the break from school in LD1, and the calmer 6 months, really helped with DD1s confidence and anxiety. We were nearly on the verge of considering removing her from school as she was so unhappy and stressed and worried everyday. In the September, she bounced in with a massive smile on her face.

Absolutely no pros. At all.

The opportunity for a social detox. Having everything taken away made us realise what, as a family and as individuals, we really missed and valued and what we didn't really get much out of and were doing out of habit, which is causing a bit of a less stressful, frantic round of activities now life is starting to become more normal.

On a personal level for me it was all pros. Though not for others around me which was awful to see.

My daughter took to it like duck to water. Her (private) school provided excellent online tuition and she managed to do extremely well in her GCSEs last year. It had no affect on her friendship group (though she's now at a different school for sixth form). Was worried she'd get rickets though!!
My son suffered much more - he goes to the gym daily and found not being able to extremely hard. He also found his new connections at college difficult to maintain. He is really social and got quite frustrated and angry, but did stick to the rules.
I didn't mind lock down that much. However I gained two stone! That was the only real major negative for me. And maybe the property market - I moved over the summer and it was pretty hellish the way the market was (is). And not being able to travel - not a huge downer, but my closest family live abroad and I haven't seen them in a couple years (luckily had visited them a couple months before first lockdown).

I think it's really hard to remember but the first few weeks of lockdown around the time of the first nhs clap and after the panic buying had calmed down there was a real feeling of unity and it was all very new and different (a bit like a very unpredictable snow day) and 'living through history' now we are nearly two years it's also hard to remember that we didn't think it would all last very long (I assumed I'd still have a foreign holiday in June 2020)
Initially once I'd stopped freaking out about thinking it was the apocalypse I remember feeling that having to stop and take each day as it comes was really good for my well-being and the weather was amazing - hearing the birds etc etc
Of course by autumn 2020 it became pretty bleak and grey. Also it became so divisive.
I'm reading a book about World War Two and the descriptions of life being relentless and rationing etc yet many people years later remembered that period fondly yet there was so much death and destruction and mental health impact etc must have been much more than now - we worry about the impact of school closures etc but you had kids being shipped off to the country for years, losing there homes, not seeing their dads for years on end etc I think the pandemic in comparison has been far less traumatic.

@KurtWildesChristmasNamechange

Absolutely no pros. At all.

Same.

And in many cases, when I hear people talking about the 'pros', as in 'Enjoying the quieter pace of life', 'not feeling the pressure to socialise', these were things they could have chosen to do all along. They didn't need a lockdown to tell them they don't have to accept every invitation. I've known that for 40 years.

Absolutely no pros either personally or for society. There are over 100,000 children missing who never returned to school. Domestic abuse and child abuse soared. Businesses ruined. Children’s mental health problems sky rocketing. Children’s educational attainment far behind what it should be. The economic costs will last a generation and fall on the children and young people who sacrificed so much.

I hope they can forgive us.

@HermioneWeasley

Absolutely no pros either personally or for society. There are over 100,000 children missing who never returned to school. Domestic abuse and child abuse soared. Businesses ruined. Children’s mental health problems sky rocketing. Children’s educational attainment far behind what it should be. The economic costs will last a generation and fall on the children and young people who sacrificed so much.

I hope they can forgive us.

Anecdotally, I know of several children who haven't returned to school because their mental health and/or educational achievement improved when they were out of school. If covid manages to hammer home to the government that children are being failed by the school system, lack of SEN provisions and lack of CAMHS provision and they do something about it, that will be a massive pro to covid. Sadly, I suspect they will just hand out non-attendance fines and nothing will be changed.

No pros at all.
All cons.

I was musing on the 100,000 missing children and my suspicion, based on no evidence at all is that a good proportion of them have returned "home" and it is as much a brexit issue as a covid issue and it reminded me that one of the biggest cons is the fact that the utter shitshow that is brexit is now being masked by covid. Economy completely fucked? Ah, that will be covid, nothing to do with brexit, nothing to see here, move along.