13 ms·

Different countries, and different situations. Living in a big old house in the country with your family? Your life is probably basically the same as it always

by _uwiz 6y ago

Different countries, and different situations. Living in a big old house in the country with your family? Your life is probably basically the same as it always was. Potentially better, depending on the work situation. Okay, sure, you're not going on as many holidays, and depending on how strict the rules are where you are, dinner parties are off the cards. Living in a flat as a single person in the big exciting city? Literally everything you do has been illegal or restricted in some form for almost a year now. I have no issue with how people choose to live their lives. I'm sure one day when I settle down I'll be in that group too. It sounds lovely. But we have to be very, very clear about this - a month or two more and I'm going to be in the 'pitchforks and torches' group. There are limits, you can't just delete my lifestyle for a year and counting as a risk-aversion play and expect me to roll over and take it. Nah.

AltruisticGap2 6y ago
I understand your sentiment but for me the realization is different. For me seeing the streets of my capital city completely empty at beginning of lockdown, as well as the trams and buses (even though you could ride them), made me realize that I was living in an environment that is fundamentally not pleasant. That it was people that made it alive. Without people, I saw that this city which I always thought of as "the place where I can do anything, almost any time of the day" is really just a conglomerate of gray buildings, commerce, lots and lots of roads and noisy traffic, and very little green. The spell was good while it lasted. That said I am also past 45 now... if I was younger I might still want to come back to a big city when I can in order to have access to more activities.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lmm 6y ago
  Wasn't that something we all knew already? People are what make cities worth living in, the point of living in a city is to be close to more people, and that naturally involves some compromises (though I'm all for non-grey buildings and minimising the space devoted to cars - something my city is fairly good at).
  - wayoutthere 6y ago
    I was living in the center of a major city on the east coast when the pandemic hit. I was renting a 400 sq ft apartment, but that was ok because I really only slept there — the coffee shop nearby was my living room, the park was my backyard, the restaurants my kitchen. That’s city life. With all of that gone, the 400 sq ft apartment stopped being livable. That apartment wasn’t cheap, but I was able to afford to buy a house in another part of town. So I did — as did every other person in that downtown area that I knew. Those areas are now severely depopulated to the point it’s not safe to walk around in after dark, despite being one of the nicest areas of town a year ago. Businesses are continuing to fail because their customers keep moving away. City centers will be absolutely dead for a decade or more. People are underestimating the long term impact to cities because office workers aren’t coming back en masse any time soon either — if ever. People are what makes a city great, and they’re not coming back for a long time.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    To an extent - but city-dwellers also often deal with the high density by ignoring one another, to a much greater extent than they would in a smaller community. I've heard city-dwellers claim (perhaps partly in jest) to have spent decades standing with the same people at the commuter rail station every day without giving them so much as a nod or smile, let alone learning their names.
Nursie 6y ago
I'm in between the two groups. I live with my partner in a mid-sized house in the centre of a small city. Financially I'm doing great, I've worked throughout and there's literally nothing to spend the money on. My mental health is starting to deteriorate though. I'm not sleeping well most nights, I've turned very much inwards, I feel angry and despairing a lot. Part of the current problem is that we don't have a timetable. There is no plan. There isn't even a set of criteria around which a plan could be built. I don't agree that this is "a risk aversion play" here in the UK though - we have well over 100k people dead from this disease, hospitals beyond capacity and all sorts. Cancer treatments being pushed out, causing more death down the line. I don't think you can say that trying to control the spread is unwarranted. Poorly communicated, yes. Mishandled, screwed up, too little, too late every time, yes. But unfortunately necessary to stop it just getting worse.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  There is actually a provisional timetable now: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9267563/Roadmap-lockdown-Blueprint-UKs-future-suggests-pubs-business-May.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9267563/Roadmap-loc...
  - Nursie 6y ago
    Heh, the old "leak it to the press and if there's no immediate outpouring of rage, announce it properly next week" trick. Been very popular over the last year or so. Yeah I've heard a few of the trickles of info. I'm hoping for the official reveal on Monday. Guess we'll see. (and thanks for the link)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- brailsafe 6y ago
  I'm so confused as to how excess money can be enough fuel for so many people's positive feedback loops that it keeps them working. That already wasn't working for me, but as soon as there was almost nothing to do, I crashed and lost my job.
LandR 6y ago
Also my city feels much more dangerous now. PReviously with loads of people always milling around I would feel safe walking around alone at 2-4am going home from bars. Now it can feel pretty dodgy as soon as its dark in the city centre. No one has any reason to be there so the junkies, homeless and others have seemingly gotten more brave. I was in the city centre around 9-10pm a little while ago and it was almost 100% drunk / high / homeless looking at me really weirdly and got approached by a couple in a semi-aggresive way. That had never happened to me in the five years I've lived here previously.
- dashundchen 6y ago
  Anecdotally my experience has been the opposite in my mid-sized US city. Previously the only people out during the weeks at night would be drunks from bars. Now even in the dead of winter, on my nightly walks I see people strolling around at night. Many times the same people, assuming they're just looking to get out of the house. Summer was even more drastic, I don't think I have ever seen more people take to cycling and walking for enjoyments sake in my area before.
schwartzworld 6y ago
What a weird comment. You think people with families don't miss their social lives? You think it has been easy? People aren't meant to spend so much time together. Not to mention work and full-time child care don't really go together. I'd say if anything, I considered maintaining a social life to be a form of self-care, one I was already struggling to get enough of. > A month or two more and I'm going to be in the 'pitchforks and torches' group Why wait a month or two? I'm not saying I agree with you, but nothing's going to change in 2 months. I'm pretty sure nothing's going to change in the next 5 years.
- _uwiz 6y ago
  > Why wait a month or two? Because I have just about enough left in me, and by then, in the UK we will have vaccinated the groups which make up ~99% of preventable mortality. At that point, the moral argument of "go outside and you're putting people at risk" completely falls apart in my view. If there are variants which escape the vaccines, then at that point it's game over since I know I definitely won't be able to make it through another year.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - schwartzworld 6y ago
    Honestly, unless we vaccinate everybody in the entire world, it seems that vaccine resistant variants are inevitable. I don't know what the lockdowns are like in the UK. Are you guys not even allowed to go outside?
- CaptainZapp 6y ago
  > I'm pretty sure nothing's going to change in the next 5 years. Given the speed in which effective vaccines were developed I think this is a rather bleak outlook. Sure, a lot is still unknown with the new virus variants and as has been expected vaccination drives had their teething problems. But in a few month time (almost) everybody who wants their jabs can get it (in rich countries, that is). I for one, see myself on a 3 week vacation in Asia later this year. Optimistic? Maybe, and certainly dependent on a number of factors beyond my control. But I think it's a much better perspective than wallowing in misery and not seeing a way out.
pjc50 6y ago
Yes, it's terrible. Even those of us who are "coping" aren't coping terribly well. But ironically the disconnection has made the costs of the disease invisible as well. The zoom funerals. I personally know a couple of people who are now effectively long-term disabled with respiratory issues - well enough to leave hospital, but their previous lifestyle can't come back. The death toll dwarfs every single "disaster" in UK modern cultural history. Aberfan, Lockerbie, Dunblane, Piper Alpha, Grenfell, Bloody Sunday, Hillsborough, Herald of Free Enterprise, Marchioness, Titanic, Lusitania, Harold Shipman: COVID exceeds all of those put together. Invisibly. Any given one of those is dwarfed by the daily COVID death toll. A rate that starts to rival wartime deaths. At the recent peak the death toll for 19 January was almost one HMS Hood per day.
- Clewza313 6y ago
  But those mostly killed people still the prime of their lives, while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway. If we measured the toll in disability-adjusted life years instead, the comparison would be quite different. Cynical thought: COVID lockdowns are extreme largely because unlike most public health problems it affects the rich too, and the decision-makers behind them fall into the high-risk categories. Sobering thought: if you think COVID-19 is bad now, wait until there's a pandemic of something like the Spanish Flu that does target and kill the young and healthy too.
  - robocat 6y ago
    > while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway. The average years lost is 10 years of life in the US and 16 world wide[1] - and I think you need to reconsider how callous your comment comes across (to me at least, and I would guess others too). [edited: added detail] I also feel your comment entirely disregards the point made by the parent comment: “I personally know a couple of people who are now effectively long-term disabled with respiratory issues - well enough to leave hospital, but their previous lifestyle can't come back.” https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=years+lost+covid https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=years+lost+covid
watwut 6y ago
> Living in a big old house in the country with your family? This might be exactly situation where you might desperately need to go out to keep sanity, to escape the family.
SyzygistSix 6y ago
>Literally everything you do has been illegal or restricted in some form for almost a year now. I've more had the mindset that everything I normally do can put other people in danger and potentially kill them or someone close to them. Or leave them with lingering side effects from illness for who knows how long. But yeah, also kind of going crazy.
- Layke1123 6y ago
  I feel better now that we have competent leadership enforcing rules and rushing to get us vaccines. It has made all the world a difference for my mental health knowing that others are now doing what I am doing and we are all pulling our weight. It makes me feel connected again even without going to bars, theaters, vacations, etc. I don't know why that makes all the difference for me but it does.
CydeWeys 6y ago
> Living in a flat as a single person in the big exciting city? Literally everything you do has been illegal or restricted in some form for almost a year now. And unsafe, too. I'm not not going to restaurants because I'm not allowed to (they're actually opening back up a little bit here now), but because under the present circumstances it's not safe to do so.
- toby 6y ago
  Open-air dining with six feet of separation is almost certainly safe. There's literally no evidence to the contrary despite multiple court orders to produce any.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    It's below freezing here right now, currently snowing, and with high winds. No one's eating outdoors. I did it a bit before winter started but this entire season has been a wash.
  - Uberphallus 6y ago
    Unfortunately when restaurants around here could open, they didn't have the required distancing between tables because that'd mean they'd make half the money. Your country culture may vary.
- Wintamute 6y ago
  Have you quantified that? How unsafe it is to your personally? I don't know anything about your personal situation, but if you're healthy and relatively young the risk from Covid (first catching it, then having a bad time with it) in resuming these aspects of normal life may be extremely low, even compared to activities you wouldn't think twice about doing pre-pandemic - like taking a short car ride for example. I think there are probably a lot of people struggling with this sort of thing. Cognitive behaviour therapy incorporating aspects of exposure therapy could be useful here.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago

by _uwiz 6y ago

AltruisticGap2 6y ago

I understand your sentiment but for me the realization is different. For me seeing the streets of my capital city completely empty at beginning of lockdown, as well as the trams and buses (even though you could ride them), made me realize that I was living in an environment that is fundamentally not pleasant. That it was people that made it alive. Without people, I saw that this city which I always thought of as "the place where I can do anything, almost any time of the day" is really just a conglomerate of gray buildings, commerce, lots and lots of roads and noisy traffic, and very little green. The spell was good while it lasted. That said I am also past 45 now... if I was younger I might still want to come back to a big city when I can in order to have access to more activities.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lmm 6y ago
Wasn't that something we all knew already? People are what make cities worth living in, the point of living in a city is to be close to more people, and that naturally involves some compromises (though I'm all for non-grey buildings and minimising the space devoted to cars - something my city is fairly good at).
- wayoutthere 6y ago
  I was living in the center of a major city on the east coast when the pandemic hit. I was renting a 400 sq ft apartment, but that was ok because I really only slept there — the coffee shop nearby was my living room, the park was my backyard, the restaurants my kitchen. That’s city life. With all of that gone, the 400 sq ft apartment stopped being livable. That apartment wasn’t cheap, but I was able to afford to buy a house in another part of town. So I did — as did every other person in that downtown area that I knew. Those areas are now severely depopulated to the point it’s not safe to walk around in after dark, despite being one of the nicest areas of town a year ago. Businesses are continuing to fail because their customers keep moving away. City centers will be absolutely dead for a decade or more. People are underestimating the long term impact to cities because office workers aren’t coming back en masse any time soon either — if ever. People are what makes a city great, and they’re not coming back for a long time.
- michaelt 6y ago
  To an extent - but city-dwellers also often deal with the high density by ignoring one another, to a much greater extent than they would in a smaller community. I've heard city-dwellers claim (perhaps partly in jest) to have spent decades standing with the same people at the commuter rail station every day without giving them so much as a nod or smile, let alone learning their names.

Nursie 6y ago

I'm in between the two groups. I live with my partner in a mid-sized house in the centre of a small city. Financially I'm doing great, I've worked throughout and there's literally nothing to spend the money on. My mental health is starting to deteriorate though. I'm not sleeping well most nights, I've turned very much inwards, I feel angry and despairing a lot. Part of the current problem is that we don't have a timetable. There is no plan. There isn't even a set of criteria around which a plan could be built. I don't agree that this is "a risk aversion play" here in the UK though - we have well over 100k people dead from this disease, hospitals beyond capacity and all sorts. Cancer treatments being pushed out, causing more death down the line. I don't think you can say that trying to control the spread is unwarranted. Poorly communicated, yes. Mishandled, screwed up, too little, too late every time, yes. But unfortunately necessary to stop it just getting worse.

nicoburns 6y ago
There is actually a provisional timetable now: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9267563/Roadmap-lockdown-Blueprint-UKs-future-suggests-pubs-business-May.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9267563/Roadmap-loc...
- Nursie 6y ago
  Heh, the old "leak it to the press and if there's no immediate outpouring of rage, announce it properly next week" trick. Been very popular over the last year or so. Yeah I've heard a few of the trickles of info. I'm hoping for the official reveal on Monday. Guess we'll see. (and thanks for the link)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
brailsafe 6y ago
I'm so confused as to how excess money can be enough fuel for so many people's positive feedback loops that it keeps them working. That already wasn't working for me, but as soon as there was almost nothing to do, I crashed and lost my job.

LandR 6y ago

Also my city feels much more dangerous now. PReviously with loads of people always milling around I would feel safe walking around alone at 2-4am going home from bars. Now it can feel pretty dodgy as soon as its dark in the city centre. No one has any reason to be there so the junkies, homeless and others have seemingly gotten more brave. I was in the city centre around 9-10pm a little while ago and it was almost 100% drunk / high / homeless looking at me really weirdly and got approached by a couple in a semi-aggresive way. That had never happened to me in the five years I've lived here previously.

dashundchen 6y ago
Anecdotally my experience has been the opposite in my mid-sized US city. Previously the only people out during the weeks at night would be drunks from bars. Now even in the dead of winter, on my nightly walks I see people strolling around at night. Many times the same people, assuming they're just looking to get out of the house. Summer was even more drastic, I don't think I have ever seen more people take to cycling and walking for enjoyments sake in my area before.

schwartzworld 6y ago

What a weird comment. You think people with families don't miss their social lives? You think it has been easy? People aren't meant to spend so much time together. Not to mention work and full-time child care don't really go together. I'd say if anything, I considered maintaining a social life to be a form of self-care, one I was already struggling to get enough of. > A month or two more and I'm going to be in the 'pitchforks and torches' group Why wait a month or two? I'm not saying I agree with you, but nothing's going to change in 2 months. I'm pretty sure nothing's going to change in the next 5 years.

_uwiz 6y ago
> Why wait a month or two? Because I have just about enough left in me, and by then, in the UK we will have vaccinated the groups which make up ~99% of preventable mortality. At that point, the moral argument of "go outside and you're putting people at risk" completely falls apart in my view. If there are variants which escape the vaccines, then at that point it's game over since I know I definitely won't be able to make it through another year.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- schwartzworld 6y ago
  Honestly, unless we vaccinate everybody in the entire world, it seems that vaccine resistant variants are inevitable. I don't know what the lockdowns are like in the UK. Are you guys not even allowed to go outside?
CaptainZapp 6y ago
> I'm pretty sure nothing's going to change in the next 5 years. Given the speed in which effective vaccines were developed I think this is a rather bleak outlook. Sure, a lot is still unknown with the new virus variants and as has been expected vaccination drives had their teething problems. But in a few month time (almost) everybody who wants their jabs can get it (in rich countries, that is). I for one, see myself on a 3 week vacation in Asia later this year. Optimistic? Maybe, and certainly dependent on a number of factors beyond my control. But I think it's a much better perspective than wallowing in misery and not seeing a way out.

pjc50 6y ago

Yes, it's terrible. Even those of us who are "coping" aren't coping terribly well. But ironically the disconnection has made the costs of the disease invisible as well. The zoom funerals. I personally know a couple of people who are now effectively long-term disabled with respiratory issues - well enough to leave hospital, but their previous lifestyle can't come back. The death toll dwarfs every single "disaster" in UK modern cultural history. Aberfan, Lockerbie, Dunblane, Piper Alpha, Grenfell, Bloody Sunday, Hillsborough, Herald of Free Enterprise, Marchioness, Titanic, Lusitania, Harold Shipman: COVID exceeds all of those put together. Invisibly. Any given one of those is dwarfed by the daily COVID death toll. A rate that starts to rival wartime deaths. At the recent peak the death toll for 19 January was almost one HMS Hood per day.

Clewza313 6y ago
But those mostly killed people still the prime of their lives, while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway. If we measured the toll in disability-adjusted life years instead, the comparison would be quite different. Cynical thought: COVID lockdowns are extreme largely because unlike most public health problems it affects the rich too, and the decision-makers behind them fall into the high-risk categories. Sobering thought: if you think COVID-19 is bad now, wait until there's a pandemic of something like the Spanish Flu that does target and kill the young and healthy too.
- robocat 6y ago
  > while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway. The average years lost is 10 years of life in the US and 16 world wide[1] - and I think you need to reconsider how callous your comment comes across (to me at least, and I would guess others too). [edited: added detail] I also feel your comment entirely disregards the point made by the parent comment: “I personally know a couple of people who are now effectively long-term disabled with respiratory issues - well enough to leave hospital, but their previous lifestyle can't come back.” https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=years+lost+covid https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=years+lost+covid

watwut 6y ago

> Living in a big old house in the country with your family? This might be exactly situation where you might desperately need to go out to keep sanity, to escape the family.

SyzygistSix 6y ago

>Literally everything you do has been illegal or restricted in some form for almost a year now. I've more had the mindset that everything I normally do can put other people in danger and potentially kill them or someone close to them. Or leave them with lingering side effects from illness for who knows how long. But yeah, also kind of going crazy.

Layke1123 6y ago
I feel better now that we have competent leadership enforcing rules and rushing to get us vaccines. It has made all the world a difference for my mental health knowing that others are now doing what I am doing and we are all pulling our weight. It makes me feel connected again even without going to bars, theaters, vacations, etc. I don't know why that makes all the difference for me but it does.

CydeWeys 6y ago

> Living in a flat as a single person in the big exciting city? Literally everything you do has been illegal or restricted in some form for almost a year now. And unsafe, too. I'm not not going to restaurants because I'm not allowed to (they're actually opening back up a little bit here now), but because under the present circumstances it's not safe to do so.

toby 6y ago
Open-air dining with six feet of separation is almost certainly safe. There's literally no evidence to the contrary despite multiple court orders to produce any.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  It's below freezing here right now, currently snowing, and with high winds. No one's eating outdoors. I did it a bit before winter started but this entire season has been a wash.
- Uberphallus 6y ago
  Unfortunately when restaurants around here could open, they didn't have the required distancing between tables because that'd mean they'd make half the money. Your country culture may vary.
Wintamute 6y ago
Have you quantified that? How unsafe it is to your personally? I don't know anything about your personal situation, but if you're healthy and relatively young the risk from Covid (first catching it, then having a bad time with it) in resuming these aspects of normal life may be extremely low, even compared to activities you wouldn't think twice about doing pre-pandemic - like taking a short car ride for example. I think there are probably a lot of people struggling with this sort of thing. Cognitive behaviour therapy incorporating aspects of exposure therapy could be useful here.
- CydeWeys 6y ago