Has covid swung the balance of living abroad for you?

[vivaespagne]

Just wondering whether it's tipped you one way or the other. The whole situation with the changing rules and not being able to see our families as regularly as we'd like is just making me feel so hopeless and sad.

My DH on the other hand thinks we're better off abroad because our country is handling the pandemic better than the U.K. (who isn't) and we're safer there.

Just wondering how others are feeling.

Yeah, totally true. You're right at least it has been possible. Shit either way isn't it

I’m from abroad, husband is British, but I’ve lived in the UK for 10 years now. The covid pandemic and Brexit have tipped the scales for us. We’re moving to my home country in a couple of weeks. I work in healthcare and this isn’t what I signed up for.

Out of interest, what's the healthcare system, Covid management system and vaccination rate like in your home country?

I think another factor re HK is that the city is also effectively the country as there's a de facto international border between HK and China which is closed - therefore it's like being confined to Greater London (actually Greater London is about 1/3 bigger) for two years and counting. There's nowhere I can go where I couldn't be home within an hour or so. At least if you're confined to a big, diverse country, like say, the US, you can actually go on a proper holiday in that country and see things you haven't seen.

It’s Australia, so over 90% of 16+ fully vaccinated. My home state has only had 9 covid deaths. They are preparing for their first wave by increasing staffing budget by 25% at the moment. I don’t really like drawing direct comparisons though, there are so many differences between the two places.

But I will say I’m an ITU specialist, which I used to love, but the past 2 years have been traumatic. If I was to stay here I wouldn’t stay in healthcare. I just can’t do it anymore. It was a huge impetus to us leaving.

It's yet another thing that's confirmed to me what a shite country the UK is, and how happy I am to have left it behind.

My kids' schools and colleges continued to teach them fully, even when all online. Devices were provided by the schools.

When they returned to school, they weren't in freezing crowded classrooms filled with kids not wearing masks - hence Covid transmission in schools here has stayed low.

Healthcare has remained accessible - although it's getting a bit tight now as we're hitting a winter surge, and we have a bunch of dumb-ass unvaccinated twats filling up hospital beds.

It feels like we have grown-ups in charge.

The volunteerism has been incredible. No one's sitting around waiting for the gubment to provide testing and vaccination and instructions on what to do next. We run testing clinics every week, and just did a huge vaccination clinic yesterday, so all our students have now had their boosters.

Colleges have required vaccination, which means they have been able to fully reopen. Schools have heavily favoured vaccination and also provided pooled testing, so Covid rates have remained low.

Yes I miss my family but the idea of returning to the UK to live fills me with horror.

Tbh I still love London

Still has community and excellent attributes

This period has been very hard though for many

I’m in the US (west coast) so quick trips home were never really logistically possible due to the distance. I do get 5 weeks of annual leave but I don’t want to spend a good chunk of that visiting family in the UK. So I go back every 2 or 3 years. Brexit hasn’t affected anything here either. So not much has changed. My mum is retired and she comes here more than I go to the UK. She couldn’t visit for over 18 months and that was hard but we got through it.

No plans to return to the UK ever. My husband was born here and has always lived here and the plan was always that I would move here when we got engaged and that it would be a permanent move. Just s skim read through the COVID board here makes me so glad I’m not in the UK. The constant needing to be told what to do, the obsession with testing, the paranoia, checking if the “rules” allow people to see their children, etc just makes me feel that the UK is not the country I left.

We moved abroad just before Covid hit. We haven't been to the UK in two years and we're meant to go back this Christmas. Now, we cannot go after all and I've had to move stuff to Easter. Travel as such isn't really the issue. We could go there and we'd be allowed back without too many problems. It's the quarantine on return here from the UK that's the problem.
We had hoped to move back at some point. It probably won't happen anytime soon. DH believes we are better off here. It feels safer. There's some really annoying stuff going on as well, but on the whole it seems better managed than the UK.
The healthcare system is better than in the UK (i.e. I am able to do ivf without delays, I can get GP appointments without any issue, I've had my booster over a month ago and DS5 has his appointment in January). We are more prosperous here (large house, big garden, DS attends an independent school) and work is a lot less stressful and more enjoyable for both of us (we are both teachers). I miss the UK but we are better off here for the time being.

@Dizzyhedgehog @ZZTopGuitarSolo would love to know where you are atm please? We’re thinking of moving abroad and looking at options!

@CantHaveTooMuchChocolate We live in Germany.

DBro lives in the US and is desperate to move home. If he has to be off work due to Covid, it comes out of his sick days allowance or if you don't have enough allowance you have to take unpaid leave. Who can afford that? It costs a fortune whenever one of the family gets sick and needs the doctor.
I don't think any country has handled Covid perfectly and personally I'm grateful to live in the UK, where vaccinations aren't compulsory and where we allowed our own citizens to return home and didn't close our borders to them during the worst of it. I really felt for the people who had to fill out forms to go to the supermarket or the ones not allowed out at all.

Which countries didn't allow their own citizens to return home?

Australia and NZ maybe?

Australia and NZ allows citizens home but you have to quarantine at a special facility which, due to restricted supply, you have to book well in advance (using a lottery system).

At the moment, I don’t think the grass is greener anywhere

Ahem, NZ had 34 community cases today. Total.

Well, I've had friends back in the UK with appalling maternity care "due to Covid". People, who waited ages to see their GP "due to Covid". I've not had any of those issues here. We are also no paying huge amounts of money like they do in the US.
As a parent, my number of paid child sick days here has increased to 20 (and DH gets the same). It means that one of us can stay home with DS when nursery closes due to any positive cases. If I get ill, I remain on full pay and I don't have a limited number of sick days. (Unlike in the UK...and that was before Covid...my employer also doesn't threaten me with capability procedures should I get sick again within the next six months after returning to work).
We have no travel restrictions regarding returning to Germany. Citizens and residents are allowed to travel back. The quarantine would have been done in your own home, not in a hotel. If you are vaccinated, you can get out of quarantine quickly in most cases.

I don't think the situation is the same everywhere in the UK. I've not had to wait to see my GP, for example. Even during lockdown mine were available and would see you if they felt it was necessary. But I gather that's not the same across the whole of the UK. I'm sure in other countries, some hcp have been better than others. Same with lots of things - the DM is complaining about rubbish not being collected due to staff shortages today and while I'm sure that's the case in some places, it's not the universal experience - rubbish certainly isn't piling up in the streets where I live!
I think there's a tendency to view everything the UK does critically, while being kinder in our view of other nations. But nowhere is perfect or has handled covid perfectly.
I do think Aus and NZ did very well to hold it at bay for as long as they did, but that included measure which didn't sit well with me.

Short term yes, it's been very distressing for me not knowing when we can see family or visit. The longer it goes on the worse it gets. The difficulty in regularly seeing family has always been the hardest part about living abroad for me, but previously it was due to financial constraints. At the start of 2019 I actually made a pledge to myself to get our finances to the point of being able to visit home twice a year :( We have not been since September 2019. Now at the moment it's not a crazy long time since we have visited, we've had a 2 year gap before, but we did generally have a trip on the horizon or a visit from family in the interim.

But that said, I don't expect covid restrictions to last forever, I really hope they won't continue into next year for example, and I think it's highly unlikely there will be another pandemic in the next ~50 years so I don't think that the pandemic would make me move back home, unless maybe it does seem to still be going on over next Autumn/Winter - that would probably be my tipping point.

I do agree with the points about healthcare - that's pretty scary in the UK whereas it has been mostly normal here, just restrictions like only one person at appointments.

In terms of health care in the UK, we’ve been trying to help MIL get care for her dementia, and many other health conditions. We’ve given up on the NHS and are now entirely going private. It’s appalling how impossible it’s been to get the care she needs. Endless waiting lists, inaccessible GPs, no joined up care. Awful.

[quote Dizzyhedgehog]@CantHaveTooMuchChocolate We live in Germany.[/quote]
Thanks @Dizzyhedgehog!

The UK is 30th in the list of deaths per million so depends where you want to live.

We were thinking of moving back to the UK but changed our mind due to the pandemic.

I love the UK but only if I can leave it several times a year, I’d go mad if I had to be there all the time.

Pandemic made hopping back and forth too difficult so we’re staying out.

Miss it though.