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Your second paragraph is of course true. But right now, we're eleven months in and it's illegal for me to have a single friend over for a cup of tea. Not advi
by esotericn 6y ago
Your second paragraph is of course true.
But right now, we're eleven months in and it's illegal for me to have a single friend over for a cup of tea.
Not advised against; not something we should limit; illegal, punishable by law.
I'm at the point at which I've been told by medical health practitioners to ignore this nonsense and see people for my own wellbeing.
We have a vaccination program running in the UK and it's going fairly well. The thing that is keeping me clinging to sanity is the fact that once the vulnerable groups have been vaccinated, I'm just getting on with life.
Without that; well the news is saying 'social distancing until 2022' and the Government are telling us that maybe in a month it'll be legal to sit on a park bench with a coffee.
This is not me being hyperbolic. It is currently illegal for me to leave my house and sit on a park bench.
If I followed that stuff to the letter, I'd have already gone postal or just thrown myself in front of a train.
This is a policy that, if it works at all, works for specific types of people; nuclear families, introverts, etc.
Those might even be a majority.
But it's not viable at a population level because a significant percentage of people are either in situations whereby they need to mix households in order to function, or have brain chemistry which means that avoiding social mixing for prolonged periods (months or more) causes them to become depressed, anxious, or in extreme cases psychotic.
We're doing all of this stuff in an attempt to reduce coronavirus cases prior to vaccination, because we care about public health, not purely for the sake of it. That would be "clown world".
- TeMPOraL 6y agoOk, fair enough. I didn't mean to diminish your experience. I also I didn't realize meeting in homes is strictly illegal in the UK. That sounds a tad bit excessive, for the reasons you outline (over here in Poland, it's currently max 5 people except the host and people living with the host, and I think there was no actual case of enforcing it against small family&friends gatherings). > But it's not viable at a population level because a significant percentage of people are either in situations whereby they need to mix households in order to function, or have brain chemistry which means that avoiding social mixing for prolonged periods (months or more) causes them to become depressed, anxious, or in extreme cases psychotic. That's absolutely true. The long-term effects of social restrictions on public health and general morale was something somewhat unexpected, or at least not thought much about early in 2020 (and, hindsight being 20/20, only confirms that the big mistake was not doing hard but short lockdowns early on). I'm just hoping we can vaccinate our way out of this in the coming months, because even introverts are having troubles taking this much longer. Myself, I started this pandemic in a state of being burned out by interacting with other people - a year later, I now desperately crave some socialization, but I'm not sure if I'm even capable of it anymore.
- esotericn 6y agoMeeting indoors has been illegal in London since December 2 and based on current communication will be illegal until at least March 2, so that'll be four months of it being illegal to meet any person from outside your household indoors. I actually had to look this up in order to make sure I had the dates right, but it's absolutely correct. It is also illegal to meet a single person in your garden or outside unless you're exercising. I don't have exact timings on that, because in order to protect my mental health I've stopped following the news. "A tad excessive" is understating it a bit. It's inhuman. Writing it down makes me feel ill. When people talk about it as if it's normal and okay, I get an intense feeling of anger and a desire to cause them pain. So if you want your perspective on why people are acting like "covidiots" or whatever offensive name we're applying to our brothers now - this is why. I am done with bureaucratic despots telling me what to do, I am not a guinea pig to be experimented on.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoI'm glad people are starting to get angry. I've felt like you for a long time, after monitoring the actual statistics instead of the news.