How Covid always changes our way of living, working and playing

Five years ago today, Boris Johnson announced that the government made the unprecedented decision to command the country in locking. Stay at home, the nation has been informed without any idea that the locking restrictions will extend well over a year.

Today, a large part of what seemed to be permanent during locking has returned to pre-cook normality. Children are back to school, workers are increasingly returning to the office and most of us have abandoned hobbies such as cooking and home training sessions a long time ago.

But the pandemic, the locking and the changes that accompanied have had lasting changes on society beyond the most obvious. Here are only five of them.

We stopped partying

UKS discos have faced a perfect storm for a decade or more. Commercial owners are impatient to withdraw the nightlife sites for greater benefits from developers, which means that rents are hikes. Young people drink less than before and go out less often. Local residents even complain about historical places once they approached them. It is a difficult period to be in the trade.

Covid then hit the end of the evening sites like nothing else. The clubs were already on their knees and, unlike restaurants or other companies, could not offer a take -out version of their product. The impact that resulted in the clubs could not be clearer in March 2020, the United Kingdom had 1,247. In December 2021, it fell to 1,035. Today, it is less than 851, which means that the United Kingdom has lost a third of its late evening sites in just five years.

A key reason was the drop in disposable income among young people, as well as social media replacing socialization in real life. The pandemic has also pushed a distance from spontaneity with more places and events requiring a reservation, so it is more difficult to have an impromptu evening.

Sacha Lord, the night economy advisor to the Greater Manchesters Mayor, Andy Burnham, called on clubs to be valued as cultural places such as theaters and galleries. The government must understand the importance of the places you go out, meet your friends, start relationships. It is not only a dancefloor.

The over 50s have left en masse

The British retirement age is currently 66 years (and reached 68 years), but millions of people leave the labor market earlier than that. Some are just good news that won enough and saved enough to take a voluntary early retirement. But many older adults leave the labor market earlier than they want because they are not good enough to do their job.

There are many factors for this complex problem. Some people still fight against the long-term effects of Covid himself, while for others, long-term health problems are not treated (or less treated) during the pandemic, with sustainable health effects. Mental health problems have skyrocketed. And a high number is simply stuck while waiting for treatment, because NHS waiting times are still much longer than in 2020.

This is a problem for the government, which loses the money they would pay in taxes, as well as to pay the advantages to which they are entitled, and even worse news for those affected. It is also a problem that has been strongly aggravated by COVID-19.

When the figures culminated at the beginning of 2023, there were 372,000 young people aged 50 to 64 years old as before the pandemic. Today, the figure is slightly lowered, but there are still about 210,000 people more aged than before Covid.

We had pets then we regretted it

Since the Secretary of Health, Matt Hancock, briefly planned to order the extermination of UKS cats when we thought they could be carriers of the cocovio pandemic worked well for the pets of the nations. About half of households in the United Kingdom had a PET pre-countryic, which increased to 60% today, while about a quarter of all pets in the country have been acquired since COVID-19.

With millions of workers stuck at home, many of whom with their children of school age, the pandemic led to an increase in the possession of animals. PDSA PAW report data show that there are 400,000 more cats today than pre-countryic and 700,000 more dogs.

Lockdown was the right time to get a puppy, families were at home to train dogs and spend the time to acclimatize them.

This has led to something of a mini-boom in the pet well-being industry, it was a few years for dog trainers, pet cafes, and especially for day laptops, because people returned to work in person. With more young households who delay children, there are even questions as to whether pets replace children for certain younger millennials and the Gen ZZ.

Five years after locking, attitudes change. Some families have found that their lives had no room for a pet once the locking is over, and animals are a great expense during a cost of living crisis. This shows in people who refer their animals: a group of shelters in London reported that 24% of additional animals stayed in 2024 for even a year earlier.

Young people are anxious but the midlifers are happier than ever

Covid was the deadliest for retirees when people entered the 1970s and in particular the 80s, the lethality of the disease soar, which means that deaths are highly concentrated in this group. Locking and many other security measures that have been taken were made massively to protect this particular group.

It is just as clear that the heaviest assessment of these protective measures appeared on children and young people, who have missed crucial years of education, socialization and development. This fueled a mental health crisis among young people.

More than one out of five children now now has a probable mental health disorder, according to official NHS figures, compared to about one in eight before the pandemic. The increase is even clearer among older adolescents in part reflecting the other trends in society, but clearly strongly influenced by COVID. The increase is even clearer in older adolescents, which is clearly strongly influenced by,, Although anxiety induced by the use of smartphones is also a commonly identified culprit.

The combination of the increase in mental health problems for young people and NHS financing restrictions means that expectations for treatment and therapy are so bad as they have ever prevented many young people out of the workforce.

On the other hand, a recent study by University College London, of 4,000 people in England, showed that more from the 1950s now had greater life satisfaction than before the pandemic.

We cashed

For decades, the former maxim was the king, but from the pandemic, he was dethroned exhaustively. The rise in power of bank cards and contactless payment meant that species have been declining for decades, but COVID-19 accelerated this trend to the point of no return.

The companies that remained open during locking, and those who worked to reopen safely once they could, often insisted to take card payments only for hygiene reasons and most of them stuck it. The data collected by the United Kingdom Finance shows the extent of this decline: in 2019, the last full pre-countryic year, there were 9.3 billion in cash in the United Kingdom. In 2023, which fell at just under 6 billion. It is even more than 11,000 cash transactions every minute of the day, so money is not entirely dead.

For most of us, this is not a problem at all and can even be a bonus convenience, but for some, the disappearance of money is a problem. People living in the streets find it difficult to obtain donations for food and shelter when so few of us still carry money, while the elderly who are most likely not to have smartphones or bank cards are limited without the possibility of paying in cash.