It feels like the pandemic has ruined everything

[Triing]

It ruined friendships, driving people apart. It ruined this website with some of the terrible things that people wrote deliberately to upset others. The community in the place where I live has been torn asunder. Backbiting, sanctimoniousness, judgmentalism. People with 2.4 children and big gardens both ignoring and patronising those in different situations. British politics is ruined, awful untrustworthy governments, the economy is ruined and it just feels the world is going to hell in a handcart. I know there are bright spots too, but it really feels like a public reckoning and healing of all that has been said and done that is wrong is necessary, but no-one wants to do it, just carry on, pretend it never happened then use the war in Ukraine as a way to try to shut people up (you'd have something to complain about if you were in Mariupol etc, the 2022 software update of WW2, Blitz etc)

How did they ruin your lively hood? Is it no longer lively?

I didn't realise how much it bothered me until recently. I had my first baby at the start of the first lockdown. Alone in hospital until my husband was allowed for three hours. Difficult delivery and awful after effects. Discharged the day after after I had had surgery and a blood transfusion probably earlier than I should have been. No aftercare at all. Never saw a midwife or a HV. No family to help. No friends either. DH was a key worker so we had 10 days together and then it was just me (in a complete mess) and our baby alone in the living room.

I'm pregnant with baby number 2 and I honestly think I've got a bit of PTSD from that time. I have to keep reminding myself it won't be like that again.

It's mental to think what we went through.

Agree with this.

I also agree with @WinterDeWinter - the pandemic was very tough but it is the government that has the bigger share of blame for the structural issues the UK is facing.

And they are now going to fuck up Northern Ireland some more!

I think it’s certainly changed a lot of peoples outlook and attitudes. Some good, some bad. Most will be relatively ok long term.

For some people, it’s changed completely and life will never recover.

But you can’t generalise.

This is the crux of it. If you ignored your own family for two years because a government of incompetents as you put it told you to, that was your choice.

If you kept yourself and your family inside because you were that scared of a virus, that was your decision as well.

If you looked at the facts, that the death certificates named sarscov2 when it was not the cause of death, among many other things, you would see from the get-go we were not being presented with the truth, and the only option was to keep your wits about you and look for the truth yourself.

Then you would not have blindly followed restrictions, you would not have rubbed alcohol into porous children's skin three times a day, possibly ruined their liver and immune systems, and caused them and you untold mental anguish.

It's sad what's been done to people but it was all voluntary.

It's mental to think what we went through.

Agreed. I do think we need to debrief somehow- to be able to talk about the ways we were affected (such as your example above) that weren’t about dying of covid, however large or small.

The problem is when one tries, someone pops up to tell one off, as if acknowledging what we went through is the same as saying you’d rather more people had died of covid.

I do think that is really unfair. Most people were trying to do the right thing.

it really feels like a public reckoning and healing of all that has been said and done that is wrong is necessary, but no-one wants to do it

I don’t think people (collectively, including me) can do it. It requires more distance and objectivity than any of us are able to have at the moment.

But also, our children and grandchildren’s generations are going to be revisiting this period for many years to come, because it’s changed so much on a global level even if some individual people don’t feel long-term effects. So I don’t think everything’s going to get swept under the carpet for eternity, even if people who behaved badly aren’t all called to account in a way that feels satisfying. (“What did YOU do in the Great Pandemic, Granny?” “Well, I poured my heart and soul into timing how long my neighbours were out for exercise and telling people on the Internet that only lazy entitled parents want schools.” “😬”)

All of this is a massive exaggeration, we are just over two years into the pandemic and for nearly a year there have been very few if any restrictions,
During periods of time we had tight restrictions, but they certainly were not constant
Lots of people still managed to travel and enjoy holidays throughout the pandemic
And i really don't understand why they would massage the death figures from covid ,to make out they were worse than they actually were
What could the government possibly gain from doing that 🤔

It affected mine and I look back on it as a very bad nightmare. My Mum became ill literally overnight and I had to take her to a care home in July 2020. I said goodbye at the doorstep and never saw her again - she died in January 2021. I try and not dwell on it too much but it's hard. Friendships have changed, I only go into the office once a week now and although I'm lucky to have my job, I still don't feel the same as I did pre-pandemic. I feel so sorry for those who have lost their businesses, it must be bloody awful.

In one sense COVID dramatically changed my life....I have moved overseas to work, I was all set up in another country but COVID put paid to all that, everything folded and I came back. No chance of going back and restarting.

Yet....has it ruined everything? No and no. Changed some things I thought I would be doing over the last couple of years but I count myself very lucky. For instance, I managed to get back to the UK just in time before lockdown.

I really do sympathise with those who feel down about everything that's happened, and it must be/have been very difficult for those with families or school children, not to mention the front line staff who had to deal with it all (and still do).

Yes, I had COVID badly myself. Yes, I lost relatives and past work colleagues. But have I noticed people society becoming worse, or broken friendships and neighbourhoods? No, friends and family have pulled together. In fact, people have contacted me and resumed friendships from the distant past, I think because we have all seen how life can suddenly be turned upside down and there's no time like the present to reach out to others. And the rural community I moved into just as COVID/lockdown hit the UK couldn't have been more supportive and friendly, despite my not knowing anyone here. No divisiveness here at all.

Am I worried about the UK political situation? Well, no, Brexit would've happened anyway, it had nothing to do with COVID apart from the fact that we were freer to sort out vaccinations ourselves. I can't get overworked up about the Tories and I have no proof that any other party would've coped any better during a pandemic...they would have just made other, and different mistakes instead. Yes, the cost of living is now rocketing but that's down to many factors as well as COVID. And the war in Ukraine saddens me far for than COVID ever did.

I don't think it ruined everything, I think it highlighted all the problems we've been living with for a long time and like any crisis, there was opportunity for it to go either way. It could have been a chance for us to reassess what we value and the way we live and make our society and communities stronger. We could have admitted what a massive role nature and the environment has in our lives, and how much we have neglected our duties for selfish, short-term gains and really embrace what we need to do to make a real difference. But instead a combination of the vested interests who run the world and the feelings of powerlessness of so many people who are ground down by their daily existence means that nothing changes.

Ah you think this was bad - just wait for what's coming down the track with the whole climate change thing.

Life is somewhat normal again - time to move on and enjoy what's left of your life before it all goes to shit again.

It could have been a chance for us to reassess what we value and the way we live and make our society and communities stronger.

Could it, though? I know loads of people see it as a huge missed opportunity but I don’t think we were in the best place to fundamentally reconsider what we value and how we live while we were frantically trying to keep afloat. Surely we could do it now just as well (or even better)?

Covid has definately impacted my family and others around me. Family members with long covid left with ongoing symptoms which impact on their quality of life. DS has had a pretty shitty time at Uni with so little input. He's probably going to have to resit in order to come out with a degree. For DD who sat her GCSE's last year it probably created an advantage. She falls apart in exams despite being capable. The teacher assessments rewarded her hard work. In my work we have seen many charities and organisations not resuming. Many of them relied on retired people to volunteer who haven't wanted to return. I agree that the current situation is about more than Covid. Brexit, years of austerity, underfunding of the NHS and Social care and now the uncertainty that the war brings.

it really feels like a public reckoning and healing of all that has been said and done that is wrong is necessary, but no-one wants to do it

Honestly I don't want this. Resources and time poured into endless debate and rumination, and at the end of it, it would never be enough for the ones who can't move on.

my best friend is a bachlor , hardly goes out except to buy food or when really bored the odd walk , tight a ducks butt with money so never spends it unless its on food or some other essential , im his only friend , hes doesnt work except for the odd bit of cash in hand stuff he can do from home via his pc and he has freely admitted the pandemic hardly affected his lifestyle whatsoever . he seems largely unbothered by the closure of the various shops and businesses in the town local to him cos he never used them anyway

my life as an essential key worker didnt change much either as i had to work through it all , my dd went into school throughout it . but i am bothered by the loss of so many businesses , the closure of shops and chains , politics , brexit its just a depressing state of affairs , but as winter has said a lot of this was already happening or in the pipeline before covid came anyway . covid just made it all worse and magnified

I think this is a bit much. I became non-compliant pretty early on, but part of the reason I could do that was living in a community where people also saw which way the wind was blowing and weren't trying to police others, and having people to break them with. It was easy for me to walk to my friend's round the corner, not even having to go on a main road to do it. There are people whose loved ones were at the other end of the country, which made it much harder to maintain relationships during restrictions.

It was also much easier to do this if you weren't suffering from any kind of pre-existing health anxiety. People in that position were subjected to deliberate attempts to exacerbate their problem, from the state. It's not so easy to simply opt out of that.

@CabbageBabbage

"WinterDeWinter
Honestly - I think it was already ruined. Brexit, austerity, the Tories' habitual encouragement of a culture in which everyone's checking that others don't have what they don't 'deserve', impossible competition for housing, a general running down of the country and especially the NHS. I think that those are the cumulative impacts of many years of Tory economic policy but also the outlook that they encourage in us all - and this isn't shorthand for 'vote Labour', I promise. Agree with this."

I also agree with this but in defence of Boris and the Tories, the majority of voters supported Brexit, voters also knowingly chose to vote for an known liar and chancer with Boris and the Tories in Dec 2019, the majority of the population supported the Tories with their Covid packages.

Many people happily enjoyed and supported Sunak's "eat out to help out" but at £600 million it has to be paid for somehow. It's seems insane that 18 months ago people were being subsidised to eat out in restaurants and now the poorer are either eating from food banks or not eating at all!!

Wow. And aren't you a perfect example of the sanctimoniousness that the OP was referring to.

I don't think that was ever going to happen either. Whatever one's view on lockdown and the severest restrictions, one thing that was always inevitable is that they'd exacerbate existing inequalities. That was unavoidable when a public health issue was turned into a legal one, because the state always exercises power more harshly against those who have least of it themselves. It was also the case that lockdown protected certain classes of people and not others, with the protected group requiring the less protected group to take risks in order for that protection to exist, so again that couldn't be anything other than divisive.

I just don't see how a pandemic on top of a decade of austerity could ever have improved society, at least in the short term.

I agree we’re experiencing a particularly bad period of leadership and it’s very hard to untangle the effects of the pandemic from other politically triggered hardships (or as is known colloquially in my house - headfucks).

pandemic specific, I don’t think it’s fully comprehended yet that we’ve experienced a disaster, and on a global scale. Whether your concerns are around the actual virus or the societal and psycological aspects, there is no perspective that doesn’t show negative impacts in some way or another. These shouldn’t be competing or vying for some sort of ‘top spot’, they need to be valued equally and addressed realistically.

Pandemics are draining on peoples stamina and multiple areas of resource, there’s no immediate consequence to bare and short term rebuild like a series of earthquakes, tsunami, or volcanos, but it’s no less of a disaster.

Hindsight needs to remember perspective which brings us back to leadership and this countrys lack of

It does seem that way sometimes for sure .However the damage takes time to repair .Many of us took what we had for granted .It has made us think again .Cost of living has risen sharply ,we have more Travel restrictions in place as well. Our friends mum died in her 50s of Covid .Absolutely awful .We need to count our blessings now

In the few years before covid I lost my Mum (60s), Cousin (40s suicide) and 4 aunts and uncles.
Those were the hard years, and in comparison covid did little damage to my life.
I do worry about my teenagers though they seem ok.
It is important to recognise for some people life was shit before covid.