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)

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.

Absolutely. There was no way through this that didn't involve people dying and lots more struggling. It was essentially a question of which groups got prioritised.

In addition I think the UK was specifically fucked because of structural factors. We already had a lot of social inequality, hugely integrated supply chains that didn't have the slack for us to be able to impose much in the way of restrictions whilst still keeping goods on the shelves, fairly high obesity rates, lots of older people, a long dark winter that makes many people unable or unwilling to socialise outside for a lot of the year and virtually no slack in a lot of our systems due to a decade of austerity. Those things were always going to mean we struggled, whatever choices were made and whatever we decided to prioritise.

I agree that life has changed in so, so many ways in the last few years. The downward spiral started a long time ago for me but certainly the pandemic multiplied it. BUT looking at life now through this light isn’t helpful OP and I do think you need to try to find the positives in every day life, wherever you can. When you have terrible health, the only thing you ask for is for the illness to stop. That’s the only thing you ask for. Other times we ask for a hell of a lot more. Just try to be thankful for what you do have, whatever it is. Life is even harder when you’re a glass nearly empty type of person.

I also don’t agree with calling other people vile on this thread. You are lowering yourself to their standards and you don’t want to do that.

As with everything there are winners & losers and that’s the way life goes.

Yes a lot of businesses and individuals have suffered. But then other businesses have thrived. People have been able to work from home and continue to do so.

I still worked in the office every day as I was a ‘key worker’. However I can work from home if I need to and this just wasn’t an option before. The pandemic brought us closer together as a team and we supported each other through it. I’ve made lifelong friendships from this.

My DH has OCD and he recovered in the lockdowns! It was because everyone was being told to do the hand washing that he was already doing so he no longer felt different. It made him relax and accept his behaviour which allowed him to recover.

Thankfully we didn’t lose anyone and my DC loved online learning. We are introverts so hardly noticed tbh.

So no, it didn’t ruin everything and it was actually good for us. But we’ve had a terrible few years before that so it’s all swings and roundabouts imo.

I think personally I look around and so many relationships have changed - I mean within extended families and friend groups etc.

Not being able to interact properly for so long has put a real distance between my wider family that there has never been before, and it does make me sad to reflect on it. I don’t think anyone has done anything wrong, and we all did a LOT of keeping in touch during the pandemic and actually felt very emotionally close despite physical distance, but since the world going “back to normal” it’s been very hard and I can feel we’re all struggling to readjust. I think it’s hard to know how to reintegrate into normality again and everyone is trying their best right now. I’ve spoke about this a bit with friends and colleagues and they’re all finding the exact same thing, it’s quite strange and sad and not at all what we expected post-pandemic.

I think it will settle but I also expect that some relationships will never go back to what they were, particularly people who have undergone big life changes over the last few years.

It affected all but in many different ways.

for example homeschooling for me was bloody hard with both parents trying to work full time. My sil loved it and embraced it fully - her job enabled her to do that mine didn’t. Am I upset yes as I feel i failed as a parent but don’t hold it against my Sil - it is what it is.

I had hoped giving people space thing would stay but it hasn’t - everything back to normal (sadly) but again that’s what I would like, I guess not everyone else - so it is what it is.

I do feel that it’s impacted family relationships my children and nieces and nephews, we live a way from them but did see each other regularly & all very close. Now they all older haven’t really spent time together and now all seem so distance :( whether that would have happened naturally or not I don’t know. I can’t blame covid for everything as I just don’t know.

I think the Tories and Brexiteers will blame covid for the shitshow that is our cost of living crisis, but it's a crisis of their own making, in the main. Covid showed that they do have a "magic money tree", they just mostly choose not to spend it, and it's ideological.

Brexit was the result of a referendum where the Conservative Government were very much in favour of staying in the EU !!!!!. The 2019 election was a huge endorsement of the referendum and a landslide rejection of Labour. The current crisis is caused by the rise in energy prices across the globe and conflict in Ukraine, who , along with Russia, are a major producer of many food products. The Government does not control the International Energy market nor does it manage the pricing policy of the grocery trade. Government spending was enacted to try and protect the population in the face of a global pandemic. This included a world lead in the vaccine and supporting millions of households with the Furlough scheme. This debt will need to be repaid as was always the case. You cannot keep borrowing more and more without raising taxes to pay for it. That's not ideological, that's basic economics.

Regarding Covid. I think people have short memories. Labour and the SNP criticised the Government for not taking even more draconian measures.

I spent 2 years working 60 hour weeks in an ICU Red Zone. It was harrowing and life changing. I have little time for those who complain they lost money.

I have little time for those who complain they lost money.

For people who have lost their homes, life savings and are struggling to put food on the table? I think you need an empathy check.

Your own experience I'm sure was horrific, but you can't even open your mind a little to understand how people who now have no financial security for their family might feel?

The 2019 election was a huge endorsement of the referendum

It wasn't. The majority of those voting chose parties who did not want to leave with the Johnson deal in the near future, but first past the post created a majority where none existed amongst the electorate by late 2019. The rest is history. Had the seats been allocated in line with the way people voted, we might very well still be in the EU now.

The situation we're in currently has a mixture of causes. Brexit, covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine are all relevant factors, as are structural problems that were in existence before any of these things happened. The war and the pandemic do offer an opportunity for the extremely pro-Brexit current Tory leadership and parliamentary party to explain away the downsides of Brexit, though.

"Brexit was the result of a referendum where the Conservative Government were very much in favour of staying in the EU"

The Tory government called the referendum in the first place. They didn't have to. Brexit was their fault. Not just them; all the lying Brexit campaigners too, obviously. And the idiots who voted for it.

Well said.

Lockdown ruined things.

But it didn’t for everyone. You don’t want to hear this, but it didn’t. Of course it does not diminish your experience and I have every sympathy), but for many millions (yes millions), life continued.
I wish you all the best for the future.

I agree it's very hard not to look back and think that life was much more enjoyable before. All I seem to do now is work, come home, eat, sleep, repeat. Even going out is less enjoyable as everything is so much more expensive, and there is clearly a strain on the hospitality industry in terms of staffing whenever you do go out. What else do I find enjoyable? Ah yes, holidays. But if you go abroad then it's still not back to how it was, and may never be. Flights so much more expensive, worries about flights being cancelled, getting COVID and having to cancel the whole thing. Car hire has gone through the ROOF. It's bloody awful. Then the cost of petrol......

I'm finding this post difficult to relate to.

There is no doubt that the previous two years have been very challenging and some people have come out of it worse than others. Dh lost his business so it hasn't been easy for us. We lost two friends due to Covid.

However I'm not getting the work, home, eat, sleep repeat pattern you mention.
I don't think things are less enjoyable. I have been going to loads of gigs, we ate out twice last week and it wasn't that much more expensive than before.

Since restrictions have been lifted we are back to cycling, hill, fell and mountain walking, outdoor swimming, going to the gym, meeting with friends, having get togethers at each others houses with lovely food and drink. That has been so enjoyable.

Holidays have been fabulous. I paid £15 return to Spain two weeks ago and got a hotel on Booking. com at a very good price. This year I have been to France., Prague and Germany. Last year I had 4 long weekends in Scotland.
Car hire prices have shot up and airport car parking is expensive at the moment so this time I didn't bother hiring or pay for parking. Trains are reliable and cheap in many European countries.

I have had Covid and was quite poorly and it took a long time to recover but I'm determined to enjoy my life without having a air of doom about me.
I look for joy rather than seek gloom.

I think some people have more in the way of depression and feeling exhausted from the cumulative effects of the pandemic. I don't have those feelings, but I do think the whole experience has changed me as a person.

There will also be a cohort of people who could afford certain treats and experiences before March 2020 who aren't able to pay the mostly increased prices now, so that's going to have an impact. To a great extent that's a function of how much spare money you have.

There was no way through this that didn't involve people dying and lots more struggling. It was essentially a question of which groups got prioritised

exactly. The pandemic boiled down to the trolley problem en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem. If we expand on that we’re now at the point we can see who got run over and who needs an ambulance and that there are more trolley’s down the line. There was no winning strategy if you were in a group that had to shoulder an extraordinary burden just reasoning that this was balanced by deflecting from people less able to take a hit that wouldn’t wipe them out iyswim.

imho, at this point we can clearly see causes but there’s little value in ruminating on that if we don’t use that energy to look for what happens next. Hardships and trauma at all levels carries a danger of defining a person if there’s no nudge to look at what comes next.

Unfortunately it’s not just the pandemic we have to deal with, these are chaotic times on large scales which muddies reactions and comprehensions.

Similar here with extended family relationships. Our parents are elderly and have accelerated in age massively in the past two years because of isolation and dire access to healthcare. Distance and worse than average restrictions (another country and other counties that hit stricter measures very early autumn 2020) hit us hard.

The last time we saw MiL was in autumn 2019. We were prohibited from visiting her last summer due to carehome restrictions. She's in and out of hospital constantly as she is to put it bluntly, slowly dying of old age. I don't think the DCs will see her again. It's now not worth family travel arrangements because her health is so frail and the chances of being banned from seeing her are too high.

DM has become too institutionalised in being alone and CBA with the bother of having grandchildren visit her. She's not cared about seeing them in two years and despite 4 vaccines doesn't think they're worth the health risk. I don't know how to even rescue that relationship.

At present wider family is either busying around as the backlog from 2020/21 cancellations continues, or still indoctinated into thinking that visiting people is a major health risk (low risk, good health too 🙄)

Restoring relationships after so long is a two-way process and there's a limit to how much one-way care you can have over so long. I'd have happily seen family at any point over the past two years.

I don't regret the choices I've made for myself in the past 2+ years, just the ones that other people/ institutions controlled and that's a lot.

I think it has for some and not for others. It hasn’t for me - yes some friendships have disappeared but these were choices by me or them. A lot of my friendships are stronger now as we focussed on each other and found different ways to communicate. My job hasn’t suffered - I’m really sorry to those that has. I love now being able to work from home and it’s enabled me to go from part time to full time again.
The way we use tech for work and socialising has changed - we do online calls, locked rooms, quizzes now with friends that we never saw due to kids.
The school my kids go to has improved as they got more organised in lockdown. My kids are thriving.
My health has improved - mentally and physically. I’ve done more walking, did couch to 5k, cut out people that were bringing me down.

It ruined my business which still hasn't recovered and both of my children's education. I will genuinely never forgive anyone who supported the absolute fucking madness of it all after the initial 6 weeks of panic. There was absolutely nothing to worry about for the vast, VAST majority of people and yet so many of us were absolutely fucked over for a virus that is in common circulation and is never going away.

Glad it didn't bother you too much. I presume you were one of the lucky families where no one died.

Are you confident that you didn't pass COVID on to someone who died? My Dad died of COVID

@severrely same 💔

I'm really sorry your business was ruined. But never forgive? All the people who did die got it from people for whom there was nothing to worry about - they had lives and businesses and families too. And understanding the virus took much much longer than six weeks.

I understand that you must be angry, but these weren't insane decisions made for no reason.

I dislike people more than I did pre covid. The judgement I saw for example on here with the mask and vaccination threads.
Still terrified to spend much money after our household income dried up.
Getting called tax dodgers while that was happening was a nice touch.
So yes, people. Shower of wankers in the main.

I agree with this. Our lives haven't changed as a result of the pandemic. Thankfully we didn't lose anybody, our children's education is fine, we both continued working, we got to spend lots of time together that we wouldn't usually have had, everyone I know is just continuing on their lives. We had much longer and harsher lockdowns than Englad did too.

Education ruined, lives ruined, ptsd, people changed etc isn't the case in my circle at all. And before I get accused of being 'middle class' and out of touch we are all what I presume people in the UK would describe as working class with jobs in customer service, secretaries, factories etc.

I think it's really not fair to say that. I'm just grateful we got through. But there are so many people who have died, or left with long term damages. So, never forgive people who supported? Common virus won't kill so many in a short period. You can only say that because you haven't lost anyone, or you have no one who is suffering long term?

🤷‍♀️ my life was already trashed back in 2013 when my DH was diagnosed with terminal cancer. But yeah, covid times made being a widowed parent trying to hold down a job and bring up DC, one with additional needs, even worse. I’m so tired now and just wish I could give up.