[SimonBMW1]

Originally Posted by JNW1

Despite an over-riding desire to protect the NHS, I think many of us have been long concerned about the consequential effects of restrictions - and especially lockdowns - and the article you've linked just illustrates one of the problems we're seeing.

Anyway, sounds like we're back to Plan A in England from next week with the decision to resist the calls to go beyond Plan B a few weeks ago thankfully looking vindicated. Hopefully we can progress to a stage where covid becomes "only" endemic by the end of the year although I suppose that will depend on whether further variants emerge.....

Megatron is the next variant.
I think staying on PLAN B throughout xmas and not introducing anymore restrictions was spot on. Best decision Boris has made.
Plan A is fine with me and come March live with it is fine too.

Let business get their money back and continue to run without restrictions or fear of restrictions. Let people live without fear too.
Party on people and enjoy life.

[JNW1]

Originally Posted by TodmordenLad

There's not a lot of "following the science" going on in Johnson's decision to lift health protection measures. Infection case rates are twice what they were when Plan B was introduced and there are around 2.5x as many people in hospital with C19. It was politically motivated. Watching his desperate behaviour over the past few weeks, it comes as no surprise.

There isn't one definitive version of "the science" though - different epidemiologists were saying and predicting quite different things in relation to omicron and the government had to make a choice in terms of which version of "the science" to believe.

Yes infections and hospitalisations are up compared to when Plan B was introduced but the judgement was the higher level of infection wouldn't create sufficient serious illness to overwhelm the NHS and justify the downsides associated with further restrictions or a lockdown. Based on where we are now I'd say it looks to have been the correct call and on this occasion they backed the right version of "the science".

[TodmordenLad]

Originally Posted by JNW1

There isn't one definitive version of "the science" though - different epidemiologists were saying and predicting quite different things in relation to omicron and the government had to make a choice in terms of which version of "the science" to believe.

Yes infections and hospitalisations are up compared to when Plan B was introduced but the judgement was the higher level of infection wouldn't create sufficient serious illness to overwhelm the NHS and justify the downsides associated with further restrictions or a lockdown. Based on where we are now I'd say it looks to have been the correct call and on this occasion they backed the right version of "the science".

Your opinion, obviously. I disagree. Nothing else to add.

[CajunBMW]

There is a very interesting article to read on covid-19 and pregnancy. This article came out on the 14th of January with data from Scotland.


https://www.science.org/content/arti...OAUT3c.twitter

There are reports of similar numbers across the country here too.

[TodmordenLad]

Originally Posted by SimonBMW1

Megatron is the next variant.
I think staying on PLAN B throughout xmas and not introducing anymore restrictions was spot on. Best decision Boris has made.
Plan A is fine with me and come March live with it is fine too.

Let business get their money back and continue to run without restrictions or fear of restrictions. Let people live without fear too.
Party on people and enjoy life.

Looking at your last sentence, Simon, I'm wondering whether you're a Daily Mail headline writer, by chance?

[JNW1]

Originally Posted by TodmordenLad

Your opinion, obviously. I disagree. Nothing else to add.

Yes of course, just my opinion. If your view is further restrictions were appropriate and justified then fair enough although I'd say that flies in the face of the evidence given where we are now - anyway, best to agree to differ and leave it there!

[bytejunkie]

Originally Posted by JNW1

Yes of course, just my opinion. If your view is further restrictions were appropriate and justified then fair enough although I'd say that flies in the face of the evidence given where we are now - anyway, best to agree to differ and leave it there!

that rather depends on whether or not you viewed the deaths over the last month or so as avoidable, or merely collateral.

[JNW1]

Originally Posted by bytejunkie

that rather depends on whether or not you viewed the deaths over the last month or so as avoidable, or merely collateral.

And what if a lot of any avoidable deaths were the result of people refusing to be vaccinated? Would it be acceptable to impose further restrictions - or ultimately a lockdown - on millions just because a hardcore thought they knew best and decided not to be jabbed?

And of course restrictions and lockdowns have adverse consequences - and potentially for a lot of people - as the article posted by Ennoch a day or two ago illustrated. That might be mere collateral to those quick to demand more restrictions but those consequences are very real for the people affected....

[Ennoch]

Originally Posted by bytejunkie

that rather depends on whether or not you viewed the deaths over the last month or so as avoidable, or merely collateral.

What about the years of life lost due to stress as a result of businesses failing, or losing homes, or financial stress as a result of losing your job, or not knowing when you'll lose it? What about the kids losing their childhood and the behavioural issues and subsequent lack of opportunities that's going to cause long term? As humans we're very bad at engaging with the bigger picture, especially if it's something that's going to play out long term. In the Scottish ED's, despite huge case numbers, the actual hospital covid admissions are small now (from those actually on the ground) yet the admissions for teen self harm, suicide attempts and other things caused by everything being put on hold for the last period are rising exponentially. Yes, if covid was the only thing then fair enough, lockdowns may make sense. But there is a far bigger picture that now must be taken into account, Covid's hardly going to disappear and thus telling everyone to 'live with it' is about as pragmatic as you're going to get, otherwise we're going to be living with the permanent strain of 'when's the next lockdown?' which is going to cause far bigger issues IMO.

One of the issues on the go at the moment is that you've got the 'restrictions, restrictions, restrictions' being noisy on one side, seemingly oblivious to everything else that's trying to kill us off as humans. And then on the other side you have the anti-vaxxers, 'plandemic' nonsense being equally as loud. But the thing is, the grey in the middle is the reality, not these polarised loud voices. Masks and vaccinations and an end to restrictions seems a sensible middle ground because otherwise we're going to be in this loop forever. And while the entertainment restrictions don't really bother me, I totally appreciate the negative impact they have on those who are far more outgoing and socially active than me, as well as those whose livelihoods rely on this trade.

[bytejunkie]

Originally Posted by JNW1

And what if a lot of any avoidable deaths were the result of people refusing to be vaccinated? Would it be acceptable to impose further restrictions - or ultimately a lockdown - on millions just because a hardcore thought they knew best and decided not to be jabbed?

there are those who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons and those who wont be for supidity reasons. i wouldnt let the latter near the NHS if i were in charge.

Originally Posted by JNW1

And of course restrictions and lockdowns have adverse consequences - and potentially for a lot of people - as the article posted by Ennoch a day or two ago illustrated. That might be mere collateral to those quick to demand more restrictions but those consequences are very real for the people affected....

i understand there is a mental health timebomb ticking, but lets not pretend its due to lockdowns in its totality. the lockdowns were like 3 full months, then mostly off, then 3 more months, then off again. if you're telling me that those small periods of no restrictions then periods of following some common sense rules are wholly responsible for the mental health issues incoming (and therefore by correlation we shouldnt have locked down because its more important to preserve the mental health of the young than the lives of the elderly) then i'd ask you to find some empirical evidence. id point out that mental health would have suffered far greatly if a whole generation of parents and grandparents had just dropped dead. thanks to the NHS that this didnt happen as widescale as it did. I'd point out the sensationalist tabloids who shout everything at readers in the name of sales, instead of giving balanced viewpoints. id highlight the internet generation, those that get their news from facebook and twitter and youtube, who believe a video rant over a balanced scientist viewpoint. hell, there are people on here who still call out scientists worst case models as dangerous (or choose to use them to justify lockdowns being over zealous) when in reality, they were asked to produce worst case models if we did nothing.

yes mental health is important, but to try and argue its most important in the absence of a balanced approach, i just cant agree. life is full of rules, we managed to follow them for years for the most part. our grandparents who lived through a war (mine fought in it) would be distraught that we can't follow rules in a pandemic about meeting in a group, given the sacrifices they made both during the war and for years afterwards (ration books anyone).

[farrahlux21]

Could omicron mutate to become more deadly?
The variants that have risen to prominence have done so because they contain advantageous mutations for the coronavirus. We are essentially witnessing Darwinian evolution – survival of the fittest – in real time. Variants with beneficial mutations, such as those providing escape from antibodies or shorter incubation periods, are rapidly displacing their less fit predecessors. The most important thing to remember about virus evolution is that natural selection favors variants that spread better than other variants. how to telemedicine curogram.com/blog/how-does-telemedicine-work
The great news is that more pathogenic – or dangerous – variants are less likely to spread well. This is because individuals who feel particularly sick tend to naturally self-isolate, reducing the virus’s chance to transmit. Also good news is that, because infection with one variant provides partial immunity to others, omicron’s rapid spread has brought on delta’s swift decline. At this point it is expected that all new variants that spread widely – so-called variants of concern – will continue to be highly transmissible.

[CajunBMW]

Originally Posted by farrahlux21

Could omicron mutate to become more deadly?
The variants that have risen to prominence have done so because they contain advantageous mutations for the coronavirus. We are essentially witnessing Darwinian evolution – survival of the fittest – in real time. Variants with beneficial mutations, such as those providing escape from antibodies or shorter incubation periods, are rapidly displacing their less fit predecessors. The most important thing to remember about virus evolution is that natural selection favors variants that spread better than other variants. how to telemedicine curogram.com/blog/how-does-telemedicine-work
The great news is that more pathogenic – or dangerous – variants are less likely to spread well. This is because individuals who feel particularly sick tend to naturally self-isolate, reducing the virus’s chance to transmit. Also good news is that, because infection with one variant provides partial immunity to others, omicron’s rapid spread has brought on delta’s swift decline. At this point it is expected that all new variants that spread widely – so-called variants of concern – will continue to be highly transmissible.

Good comments. Agree on all fronts. The first point you made is the only caveat to this Coronavirus that still worries me. We in the end will all have to find a way to live with this virus one way or another. I think that decision will be a societal decision based on our acceptable risk and what level of death is acceptable within each country. At least is the pragmatic side of my opinion.

There are certainly many scenarios for endemic nature of this SARSCOV2.

It could join the 4 benign CoVs as an annoying annual cause of the common cold. But how long it takes to get there is unclear, since there isn't a lot of modern history available for the CoVs. No one really knows how long OC43 took when it entered around 1890 to become benign. On the other hand these benign CoVs could actually be more deadly than we appreciate, but since we all are getting infected many times over our life, we may just be immunized from dozens and dozens of infections.

It could be like the flu and have up and down years based the virus' genome that year. This would mean that there could be some pandemic years again.

But I think what is worrying right now is that it has established infections in animals and thus will exit the human population from time to time and then reenter. What that new variant will look like is not always clear. But as you accurately point out viruses that have enhanced spread and immune evasion will be selected for. In many cases this lines up with being less deadly. But even our acceptable risk of the flu still results in more than 30,000 deaths a year in the US (not counting the masked Covid years). But whether it is less deadly or more, certainly remains unclear. History has certainly shown us that both futures are possible. Many viruses got less deadly over time, but there are plenty that remained deadly over their existence.


Let's hope vaccinations and omicron will allow us to have a pleasant and normal 2022.

[Blacktemplar]

In addition to the animal-human-animal-human pathway, I think one of the other concerns is long term chronic infections of Sars-Cov2 in immunocompromised populations, such as in sub-Saharan Africa where AIDS is rife. South Africa in particular has around 7.5M cases, almost 18% of its population.

There are drugs to control AIDS, but poverty & ignorance means that there will be substantial segments of the 38 million people thought to be infected worldwide will either have limited or irregular access to these drugs. Many of these countries also have lower vaccination rates, high levels of inequality and healthcare poverty so the chances of random mutations happening could be higher than in well-vaccinated western economies.

The expressions 'none of us are vaccinated until all of us are vaccinated' springs to mind.....

[Ennoch]

Originally Posted by bytejunkie

there are those who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons and those who wont be for supidity reasons. i wouldnt let the latter near the NHS if i were in charge.

I'm inclined to agree with you there. In a medical setting we expect the people to exhibit sound judgement and do what's right for the patient rather than themselves.

i understand there is a mental health timebomb ticking, but lets not pretend its due to lockdowns in its totality. the lockdowns were like 3 full months, then mostly off, then 3 more months, then off again. if you're telling me that those small periods of no restrictions then periods of following some common sense rules are wholly responsible for the mental health issues incoming (and therefore by correlation we shouldnt have locked down because its more important to preserve the mental health of the young than the lives of the elderly) then i'd ask you to find some empirical evidence.

No, I don't think anyone's suggesting that the only reason for someone having mental health issues coming to the fore and negatively impacting them is solely the result of telling everyone to stay inside. Instead, as I said above, the impact is caused by all those other things; risk of job loss, fear of the unknown etc etc. Similar to us locking down the NHS because Covid was pushing it over its limit, it wasn't solely Covid that was the cause of it being in the state it was in but rather decades of underinvestment and funds being wasted on the wrong things. Much like the chronic underfunding of the mental health services in the UK. You paint such a simplistic picture of lockdown when the reality is that it wasn't the lockdown itself that was stressful for many; When will it end? Will it ever end? When's the next one coming? That is a particularly stressful one for some people who's coping mechanism may well be directly linked to freedoms afforded during normal life. The thing with saying we follow laws and rules all the time is slightly disingenuous; yes, we follow rules and laws but generally they're simply reinforcing what society considers to be normal. Locking people in their houses and telling them they're not allowed to engage in normal human behaviour such as being social is not the same as a normal rule/law and thus shouldn't ever be considered as such. How do you punish a prisoner who is already suffering from their freedoms being removed? You put them in solitary confinement to remove their interaction with others. This is extreme and we've obviously moved away from that sort of lockdown but just because you're sitting in a position where you're not affected so strongly, don't assume that everyone else is being soft, or a snowflake who can't deal with a little hardship.

id point out that mental health would have suffered far greatly if a whole generation of parents and grandparents had just dropped dead. thanks to the NHS that this didnt happen as widescale as it did.

Except they sent all the older people in hospitals back to care homes. Lockdown to start with absolutely wasn't about protecting that generation but trying to protect the NHS. My ex's gran was miserable as she viewed it as months of her life (she's well into her nineties) she would never get back, and for what? What's the point of saving several months of life if you're miserable for all of it. That's the selfish side of the argument, but trying to protect people's lives all while making their lives miserable doesn't seem like the only solution, or even the best one.

I'd point out the sensationalist tabloids who shout everything at readers in the name of sales, instead of giving balanced viewpoints. id highlight the internet generation, those that get their news from facebook and twitter and youtube, who believe a video rant over a balanced scientist viewpoint. hell, there are people on here who still call out scientists worst case models as dangerous (or choose to use them to justify lockdowns being over zealous) when in reality, they were asked to produce worst case models if we did nothing.

In total agreement with you; both polarised responses were using the extreme ends of the modelling to suit their own arguments and the media were parasites, as they have been for a long, long time.

yes mental health is important, but to try and argue its most important in the absence of a balanced approach, i just cant agree. life is full of rules, we managed to follow them for years for the most part. our grandparents who lived through a war (mine fought in it) would be distraught that we can't follow rules in a pandemic about meeting in a group, given the sacrifices they made both during the war and for years afterwards (ration books anyone).

So did mine. My grandfather on my dad's side was torpedoed twice during the war and was one of very few survivors after bobbing about in the Atlantic on a lifeboat for days while all those around him died in the lifeboats from exposure. My grandfather on my mum's side was in Burma. Both of them were clearly suffering from PTSD, the same thing some soldiers were shot for during The Great War (ironically they also now think Spanish flu accounted for a huge number of the deaths recorded in the trenches). I wouldn't like to put words in either of their mouths over what they would or wouldn't have said. What I will say is that yes, families were torn apart, millions lost their lives and kids were sent to the country to be safe from the bombing, but the difference is that they weren't locked up. Being in something together while still having people around you while rallying against a visible enemy is a very different situation to being isolated and not having anything visible to rally against. I also suspect that their judgement of risk might be slightly different to the average person alive now for reasons I've mentioned previously. They grew up in a different environment and so their view of the world is different to ours. As I have said here many, many times; knowing somebody else is suffering more doesn't make your suffering feel any less painful.

[CajunBMW]

Originally Posted by Blacktemplar

In addition to the animal-human-animal-human pathway, I think one of the other concerns is long term chronic infections of Sars-Cov2 in immunocompromised populations, such as in sub-Saharan Africa where AIDS is rife. South Africa in particular has around 7.5M cases, almost 18% of its population.

There are drugs to control AIDS, but poverty & ignorance means that there will be substantial segments of the 38 million people thought to be infected worldwide will either have limited or irregular access to these drugs. Many of these countries also have lower vaccination rates, high levels of inequality and healthcare poverty so the chances of random mutations happening could be higher than in well-vaccinated western economies.

The expressions 'none of us are vaccinated until all of us are vaccinated' springs to mind.....

That is also an issue and certainly one that is disconcerting as viral recombination could certainly occur in a host that can be infected long term with one or more viruses. As you point out HIV remains a significant global health issue. By recombination I do mean with the same virus. So someone infected with multiple variants of a CoV could have a heightened chance of a recombination event, such that a novel variant could arise.

But as of now the animal host is the big worry, as that is where omicron is really thought to have came from. In the US we see the virus in deer and one can imagine what happens if it spreads to live stock for example. I'm not in anyway saying that live stock would get sick from this human Coronavirus as there are plenty of CoVs that infect cattle for example, it would just mean that the current SARSCOV2 would have additional hosts to spread to and hide out. On the other hand we know of several big cats in zoo that did die of SARSCOV2 so it can be dealt in some species.

In the end this ability to infect everyone and go back and forth in rodents, deer, live stock is why our grandkids will still be messing with this virus. It is mostly likely already a truly endemic agent.

[bytejunkie]

Originally Posted by Ennoch

but the difference is that they weren't locked up.

i didnt think we're a great distance apart, until you said this. you werent locked up in lockdown. you were just being asked not to do the things you loved, to do some less risky things.

the number of people who've come out and said they did more walking during lockdown etc etc and you reference being locked up. its as sensationalist as the tabloids already mentioned.

[Ennoch]

Originally Posted by bytejunkie

i didnt think we're a great distance apart, until you said this. you werent locked up in lockdown. you were just being asked not to do the things you loved, to do some less risky things.

the number of people who've come out and said they did more walking during lockdown etc etc and you reference being locked up. its as sensationalist as the tabloids already mentioned.

We maybe aren't that dissimilar, it's very difficult to tell online given how much of language is done through tone and body language etc.

Your second point though highlights why it's so easy to judge others by your own benchmarks. How dare you suggest that expressing how I felt at the time was 'sensationalist'. How dare you. I hate living in a city and I'm doing what I can to get out of said city. My coping mechanism for stress has always been to escape the city and get away from people; lockdown prevented that. Sure, I was lucky that I could still get out running etc but that is not the same and didn't come close to filling the gap that mountains and sea fill. For other people who were inactive even just walking 1/4 of the trails that I was running was a massive improvement for them. Knowing other people were coping well, or that I was 'lucky' I still had farmland nearby to run through, didn't help one iota. Sure, it would have been worse to be stuck in a high rise city centre tower block but I wasn't. I was where I was and I was having to cope with the hand I was dealt, and it was shit. Ergo, it felt like being locked up to me as that is the way my brain was reacting, no matter how much happy go lucky positivity someone tried to direct at me. It seems you really don't understand the impact of mental health issues, either how they can manifest themselves or how they can impact us despite everything appearing 'okay' from the outside.

[JNW1]

Originally Posted by bytejunkie

there are those who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons and those who wont be for stupidity reasons.

Of course. But I did say "refusing to be vaccinated' which I think makes it clear I was referring to people who are choosing not to be vaccinated rather than those who are unable to be vaccinated.

Originally Posted by bytejunkie

i understand there is a mental health timebomb ticking, but lets not pretend its due to lockdowns in its totality. the lockdowns were like 3 full months, then mostly off, then 3 more months, then off again. if you're telling me that those small periods of no restrictions then periods of following some common sense rules are wholly responsible for the mental health issues incoming (and therefore by correlation we shouldnt have locked down because its more important to preserve the mental health of the young than the lives of the elderly) then i'd ask you to find some empirical evidence.

I'm not trying to tell you anything of the sort! The mental health aspect just happened to be the subject of the article Ennoch linked but that's not the only adverse impact of lockdowns and restrictions, there are others as well (such as the economic harm caused to countries, businesses and individuals alike). So for that reason my personal view is restrictions and lockdowns should be a last resort - say if the NHS is about to fall apart - but by default they should be avoided or at least minimised where possible. However, unfortunately some - and I'm not necessarily aiming this at you - are IMO too keen to want to impose restrictions and/or too reluctant to relax them and then label anyone who disagrees with them as uncaring or reckless.

As I've said before, I don't want to see unnecessary deaths but IMO there's a balance to be struck. I can't remember the name of the author but an article I read recently summed-up my own thoughts quite well: "we all have lives to lead and there's more to life than simply avoiding death".

[G50]

Originally Posted by JNW1

"we all have lives to lead and there's more to life than simply avoiding death".

[bytejunkie]

Originally Posted by Ennoch

We maybe aren't that dissimilar, it's very difficult to tell online given how much of language is done through tone and body language etc.

Your second point though highlights why it's so easy to judge others by your own benchmarks. How dare you suggest that expressing how I felt at the time was 'sensationalist'.

This is still a discussion forum? am i not allowed to say i think you're being sensationalist when you say being asked to stay local, to take less risks, to meet with fewer people is the same as being "locked up".

Originally Posted by Ennoch

It seems you really don't understand the impact of mental health issues, either how they can manifest themselves or how they can impact us despite everything appearing 'okay' from the outside.

it seems that everyone around me is taking pills for depression, has some clinical diagnosis or has attempted suicide. i'm the last in a long line in my close family to seek/need counselling. i definitely understand it, more than im willing to open up to on here.

the point is, i chose to take the mental health hit at the time knowing there would be a time where it wouldnt be as hard. i do understand not everyone can do that and the reality is, its not gone well for me. I'd be in a far better place right now if I hadn't missed a holiday in the alps, if I'd ridden the bike a lot more, if I hadn't had months go by where the only time i left the house was the school run, but that is what i read into what we were being asked to do. So i did it.

[Ennoch]

Originally Posted by bytejunkie

This is still a discussion forum? am i not allowed to say i think you're being sensationalist when you say being asked to stay local, to take less risks, to meet with fewer people is the same as being "locked up".

Of course it's a discussion forum, but trying to tell someone that the way their own mind felt during a pretty major thing was 'sensationalist' isn't helpful and goes a long way to showing why the attitude towards poor mental health is in so many occasions, terrible. Was it physically/in reality the same as being locked up? No. Did it make me feel like that. Yes. Did it cause me massive stress, even though I knew that it wouldn't go on forever? Yes. Therefore it is not sensationalist but a realistic and truthful representation of how I felt. It also didn't help that as a result of PTSD I have (or had, before I got control of it) a very heightened risk response. Therefore everyone running around saying 'stay safe' and all the headlines etc, which did sensationalise the risk, made me profoundly uncomfortable. However, having got on top of that, I have been able to manage those feelings a lot better subsequently. It doesn't change the personal impact I felt at the time though, whether you perceive it to be sensationalist or not.

it seems that everyone around me is taking pills for depression, has some clinical diagnosis or has attempted suicide. i'm the last in a long line in my close family to seek/need counselling. i definitely understand it, more than im willing to open up to on here.

the point is, i chose to take the mental health hit at the time knowing there would be a time where it wouldnt be as hard. i do understand not everyone can do that and the reality is, its not gone well for me. I'd be in a far better place right now if I hadn't missed a holiday in the alps, if I'd ridden the bike a lot more, if I hadn't had months go by where the only time i left the house was the school run, but that is what i read into what we were being asked to do. So i did it.

I'm sorry to hear you've had your own battles, but again, your battles are not my battles and that's the thing that seems to be such a struggle for some to get their head around. Just because I have issues doesn't mean I can totally understand what someone else is going through, or feeling, although it can help with empathy towards that person's choices or behaviours. As individual as our personalities are, our mental health struggles are just as unique, with their own triggers and responses in our minds. You may have had the mental bandwidth to cope with the hit on your mental health even if it did put you into a worse place. With PTSD, depression and anxiety (which I've talked about before) and the break up of a relationship I thought would be 'the one', I didn't. Therefore going back to my point; I already feel like a caged animal in a city but unfortunately I have to be here for work for a bit longer yet. In the past I'd made peace with that because I had the freedom to get out and escape the place I don't really want to be, but when that avenue was removed, I felt like a prisoner in my own home. If my mental health had been in a good place I'd have maybe had more bandwidth to cope with the situation we all found ourselves in, but I didn't.

I'm reminded of my old boss with my previous company a number of years ago. I'd explained that I wasn't in a good place, yet she said to me 'we all have our struggles, you just need to leave them at the door of the office when you come in in the morning. I have things going on and while I'm in work I just park them and don't let them impact me or my work'. There was zero empathy for my situation because she believed that everyone should be able to block stuff out at will. Then her primary school age son started having panic attacks and she could no longer do that. It took her a while but she did actually apologise because for her it had been an awakening as to how other people struggled once the straw was applied to the back of her camel. Everyone has different breaking points and thresholds, but once the threshold has been crossed it's very difficult to then go back to your old way of ignoring stresses once the dam has been burst once.

Several of my close friends ended up in similar situations to me mentally. I have friends who are seriously struggling because they own businesses and were at risk of losing them etc etc. I've got other friends who got furloughed and found it great because they had time and energy to direct towards finding other jobs, or learning new skills etc etc. At the start of lockdown v1 I was at home working 10hr days while my now ex was able to go out and sunbathe and work her way through a big pile of books she'd not had time to read, or go for long runs every day. Very different experiences even in the same household. Conversely I didn't actually have much issue with the first phase of the initial lockdown because it was such an unknown that it was the prudent choice. However, continued lockdowns and threats of lockdown have such a negative impact on peoples mental health that they cannot be considered the primary choice any more, and shouldn't have been for a long time after they still were.

I'm not falling out with you over this because it is genuinely interesting hearing how other people see the world, and I am acutely aware how a civilised conversation in person can come across very differently online, I'm just trying to express why some of us have the views on these things that we do. Maybe poorly, but it's as good as I can manage.

[HighlandPete]

Originally Posted by Ennoch

I'm reminded of my old boss with my previous company a number of years ago. I'd explained that I wasn't in a good place, yet she said to me 'we all have our struggles, you just need to leave them at the door of the office when you come in in the morning. I have things going on and while I'm in work I just park them and don't let them impact me or my work'. There was zero empathy for my situation because she believed that everyone should be able to block stuff out at will. Then her primary school age son started having panic attacks and she could no longer do that. It took her a while but she did actually apologise because for her it had been an awakening as to how other people struggled once the straw was applied to the back of her camel. Everyone has different breaking points and thresholds, but once the threshold has been crossed it's very difficult to then go back to your old way of ignoring stresses once the dam has been burst once.

An insightful experience which emphasises the divide, when we discuss this subject. Empathy is not the possession of all folks.

There is one thing that I have observed over the years, is where we also sit in the positive/negative spectrum. Is the glass half full, or half empty?

I see this position as having a powerful drive in my own family. My mother has had mental heath issues all through her life. When I was born, she clearly had post-natal depression, not really recognised back then, plus also being traumatised by the second world war, was given treatment. She had that horrid 'electric shock' treatment, not sure if that didn't make things worse. She is now 96 and still has nightmares about the war and her life. Her glass is always half empty.

My wife has had poor health since her 30's, had glandular fever and it left her with CFS/M.E. Life really ruined by that condition. Plus allergies, compromised immune system, cancer which almost killed her, fighting for her life one night with a unknown infection, something in the sepsis spectrum.

Many folks who know her, can't understand how she can be so cheerful, she has been referred to as the "smiley lady". Her glass is half full.

First hand, I'm seeing and dealing with both sides of the emotions and approach to Covid challenges. With my wider family and friends, I'm surprised who are falling over with the present situation and who seem to have the resilience to cope, even see benefits to the restrictions. I do see some evidence that the positive/negative response has a big part to play in the outcome.

Empathy is a key to understanding how different we are.