Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

[mtk62]

‘We’re losing decades of our life to this illness’: long Covid patients on the fear of being forgotten

Five years on from March 2020, millions of people still face debilitating symptoms, with huge repercussions on public health and productivity. But politicians are starting to pretend the pandemic never happened.

On 20 March 2020, Rowan Brown started to feel a tickle at the back of her throat. Over the next few days, new symptoms began to emerge: difficulty breathing, some tiredness. By the following week, the UK had been put under lockdown in a last-minute attempt to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2, or Covid-19. No one else she knew had yet been infected, so she posted updates on Facebook to keep people informed: “Oh, guys, it feels like a mild flu. Tonsillitis was definitely worse.”

Brown didn’t know then she was at the beginning of a condition that did not yet have a name, but which has since become known as long Covid. After two weeks, she had a Zoom with a friend, and at the end of the conversation it was as if all life force had drained out of her body. Her doctor advised her to stay in bed for two weeks. Those two weeks turned into three and a half months of extended Covid symptoms: nausea, fevers, night sweats, intense muscle and joint pain, allodynia (a heightened sensitivity to pain), hallucinations, visual disturbances. By the end of the three months, she had noted 32 different symptoms. “I didn’t recognise the way my body felt at all: my skin, my hair,” she remembers now. “It was like being taken over by a weird alien virus, which I guess is what happened.”

A busy secondary-school art teacher in Oxfordshire and mother of two, she was convinced she could defeat the virus by sheer force of will. At the time of infection, she had been doing Olympic-style weightlifting four times a week, deadlifting more than 100kg and doing CrossFit competitions. Every time she felt a little better, she tried to get up and be active. Every time, she would crash. For 18 months, she was confined to her bed with the curtains drawn. “It disrupted my autonomic system so severely, there were times when my body would forget to take a breath, and I would have to lie there and manually breathe.”

Brown never went back to work. She lost the feeling in her hands and was unable to grip a pencil or a paintbrush, losing all muscle memory. “I had to relearn how to draw again. So while you’re dealing with these physical symptoms, you’re dealing with the compounding trauma that you have lost your entire identity: your job, being a parent, being creative, being fit, being a friend – gone. All of it. I was an empty shell.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/02/were-losing-decades-of-our-life-to-this-illness-long-covid-patients-on-the-fear-of-being-forgotten

Hopefully she's not on disability benefits - she'll be judged fit to work in a flash.

[mtk62]

How Covid changed children in Britain

When it comes to disasters, children are habitually “ignored and mistreated”, according to the disasters expert Prof Lucy Easthope. So five years ago, when schools were told to close and lessons went online, a siren went off inside her.

“The lockdown terrified me,” she said. The government’s planning was focused on keeping children safe, but many were at increased risk from domestic and family abuse at home. The introduction of online schooling, meanwhile, broke the hard-earned social contract between schools and parents “for a lifetime”.

Schools are still dealing with “terrifyingly high levels of school avoidance”, said Easthope. But where once parents and teachers worked together to help a school-refusing child back into class, suddenly there were parents who could no longer see the value of school.

Five years on the fallout continues. Uncertainty, increased inequality, accelerated screen use and crippling anxiety are just a few of the Covid legacies affecting children and young people. Covid babies are now five and struggling to meet basic developmental milestones; 1.6 million children in England are still persistently absent from school; and students whose university years were stolen by the pandemic are still struggling with low mental health.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/18/how-covid-changed-children-britain

[mtk62]

‘Key lessons of Covid are being forgotten,’ UK scientists warn

Key scientific lessons learned during the Covid-19 pandemic are being forgotten, UK scientists have warned.

The researchers have raised the alarm as the nation marks the fifth anniversary of the introduction of lockdown, which was announced by then prime minister Boris Johnson on 23 March 2020.

The decision was made to prevent NHS hospitals being swamped by hundreds of thousands of new cases of seriously ill Covid patients.

However, there is no evidence that the health service would be any better prepared today should another lethal virus appear in the near future, scientists said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/23/key-lessons-of-covid-are-being-forgotten-uk-scientists-warn

Am I surprised? Not at all.

[Ashfordian]

Five years ago we massively overreacted and the disastrous decision was made to put the country into lockdown. This led to over £400bn being wasted over the next two years and that money wasted is today costing us nearly £20bn a year in debt payments.

Fast forward to today and we are scraping around to save £2bn on the winter fuel allowance, £2bn on the civil service employment costs and up to £5bn on welfare payments. These numbers are rounding errors to the money wasted overreacting to Covid and the ongoing yearly debt costs.

All for what was at worst a cold for most people!

[Lootman]

Five years ago we massively overreacted and the disastrous decision was made to put the country into lockdown. This led to over £400bn being wasted over the next two years and that money wasted is today costing us nearly £20bn a year in debt payments.

Fast forward to today and we are scraping around to save £2bn on the winter fuel allowance, £2bn on the civil service employment costs and up to £5bn on welfare payments. These numbers are rounding errors to the money wasted overreacting to Covid and the ongoing yearly debt costs.

All for what was at worst a cold for most people!

True, and yet there are still a couple of Lemons who just can't let go of Covid, and endlessly try and re-create the "glory days" of 5 years ago.

It is almost as if they enjoyed Covid, and miss lockdowns, over-reactions and paranoia.

[mtk62]

All for what was at worst a cold for most people!

It is almost as if they enjoyed Covid, and miss lockdowns, over-reactions and paranoia.

Yes, let's sweep it under the carpet.
Pretend it didn't happen.

Forget the 250000 killed by Covid?
The millions who suffered/suffer from long Covid.
Just a cold they say.

I don't call that glory days I call it a scandal.

[Lootman]

All for what was at worst a cold for most people!

It is almost as if they enjoyed Covid, and miss lockdowns, over-reactions and paranoia.

Forget the 250000 killed by Covid?

As a scientist you surely should know that it is excess deaths that is significant and not merely a gross figure?

As an example the only person I know who technically died of Covid was my aunt, in May 2020. She was 92 and had a variety of health problems, any one of which might and probably would have killed her at any moment. As it happens Covid ended up on her death certificate. But does that really matter?

And of course you should express the excess deaths as a percentage of the total population and on that basis we are somewhere in the region of one quarter of one percent. About the same as what you might expect from five flu seasons.

[XFool]

Five years ago we massively overreacted and the disastrous decision was made to put the country into lockdown. This led to over £400bn being wasted over the next two years and that money wasted is today costing us nearly £20bn a year in debt payments.

Fast forward to today and we are scraping around to save £2bn on the winter fuel allowance, £2bn on the civil service employment costs and up to £5bn on welfare payments. These numbers are rounding errors to the money wasted overreacting to Covid and the ongoing yearly debt costs.

All for what was at worst a cold for most people!

True, and yet there are still a couple of Lemons who just can't let go of Covid

Indeed there are!

e.g. There are two such immediately above.

...and endlessly try and re-create the "glory days" of 5 years ago.

The only "endlessly" I see are those set on obsessing about COVID and the "lockdown" to the end of their days.

[Lootman]

...and endlessly try and re-create the "glory days" of 5 years ago.

The only "endlessly" I see are those set on obsessing about COVID and the "lockdown" to the end of their days.

I rarely post about it and was merely noting that there are still a (very small) number of Lemons who just can't let it go, as if somehow they think that this was their finest hour.

It wasn't, but if it helped them feel alive then good for them.

[XFool]

The only "endlessly" I see are those set on obsessing about COVID and the "lockdown" to the end of their days.

I rarely post about it and was merely noting that there are still a (very small) number of Lemons who just can't let it go, as if somehow they think that this was their finest hour.

It wasn't, but if it helped them feel alive then good for them.

You may or may not post rarely on the matter but, when you do, I see your posts are as creatively as 'imaginative' as ever.

[Lootman]

I rarely post about it and was merely noting that there are still a (very small) number of Lemons who just can't let it go, as if somehow they think that this was their finest hour.

It wasn't, but if it helped them feel alive then good for them.

You may or may not post rarely on the matter but, when you do, I see your posts are as 'imaginative' as ever.

I give Covid as much attention as any other historical footnote and folly.

[XFool]

You may or may not post rarely on the matter but, when you do, I see your posts are as 'imaginative' as ever.

I give Covid as much attention as any other historical footnote and folly.

I'm sure that comes as a great relief to us all.

[XFool]

The COVID-19 Revisionists Are Twisting the Record

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/covid-19-revisionists-twisting-record-reckoning-masks-lockdowns-fifth-anniversary

Lockdown skeptics and mask critics are crowing—and distorting what happened five years ago.

Tell us about it!

[scotia]

Got my latest over-75 Covid vaccination this afternoon (in Scotland). It was Spikevax JN.1
No problems - can't feel any difference between my left and right upper arms

[Lootman]

Got my latest over-75 Covid vaccination this afternoon (in Scotland). It was Spikevax JN.1
No problems - can't feel any difference between my left and right upper arms

I am not over 75 (but am over 70) and so that may make a difference. But since 2023 I have not been getting the texts from my GP's office imploring me to get Covid booster jabs.

Also the conversation amongst my contemporaries rarely is about Covid any more, even though there is no shortage of discussion about other ailments and issues.

So I am getting the impression that Covid really is normalised at this point, and that most folks can ignore it and its associated jabs. And five years on that surely should be the case. My last jab was September 2023, 6th of 6. Moderna.

[XFool]

Got my latest over-75 Covid vaccination this afternoon (in Scotland). It was Spikevax JN.1
No problems - can't feel any difference between my left and right upper arms

I am not over 75 (but am over 70) and so that may make a difference. But since 2023 I have not been getting the texts from my GP's office imploring me to get Covid booster jabs.

Also the conversation amongst my contemporaries rarely is about Covid any more, even though there is no shortage of discussion about other ailments and issues.

So I am getting the impression that Covid really is normalised at this point, and that most folks can ignore it and its associated jabs. And five years on that surely should be the case. My last jab was September 2023, 6th of 6. Moderna.

I guess it is "normalised at this point", but then too is receiving vaccinations against it - just like influenza is "normalised at this point".

If I may just say, you do seem to me to show signs of having ongoing 'issues' with COVID. Even though you insist it is other people who have the 'issues'. Perhaps that itself is a symptom of your ongoing COVID 'issues'?

[CliffEdge]

Five years on: Britons among hardest hit by Covid fallout



“When I look at the one big global indicator of how healthy we are, which is our life expectancy, we’ve gone backwards.

“We’ve fallen back to levels of a decade ago, while other countries have kept motoring on in western Europe and leaving us behind. It’s a pretty damning indictment of what happened.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/08/five-years-on-britons-among-hardest-hit-by-covid-fallout

It's disappointing that we've had a poor return on the investment - that'll be paid down for many years to come.

That's because of Brexit and the overall dire state of the country that has resulted.

[Lootman]

I am not over 75 (but am over 70) and so that may make a difference. But since 2023 I have not been getting the texts from my GP's office imploring me to get Covid booster jabs.

Also the conversation amongst my contemporaries rarely is about Covid any more, even though there is no shortage of discussion about other ailments and issues.

So I am getting the impression that Covid really is normalised at this point, and that most folks can ignore it and its associated jabs. And five years on that surely should be the case. My last jab was September 2023, 6th of 6. Moderna.

I guess it is "normalised at this point", but then too is receiving vaccinations against it - just like influenza is "normalised at this point".

But my point was that my GP office is no longer pushing me to get a Covid jab, even while it still recommends an annual flu jab.

So Covid is relegated below the flu.

[scotia]

I am not over 75 (but am over 70) and so that may make a difference. But since 2023 I have not been getting the texts from my GP's office imploring me to get Covid booster jabs.

In Scotland the 6 monthly Covid vaccination is offered to 75 and over and those with a weakened immune system. We have always taken the vaccinations, since we have no adverse symptoms. We both had Covid just before Christmas 23 - but it was just like a mild cold. We took the test, since we were concerned of passing it on to a family member with a weakened immune system - so we missed them at Xmas 23. But we all had Xmas together this year. I also had an (unrelated) routine hospital outpatient appointment just over two weeks after my (first) positive Covid test - but apparently 14 days or over is OK - so the appointment proceeded normally.
Some technical data - Spikevax JN.1 is an adapted Moderna vaccine which received approval by the MHRA on 2nd September 2024