I think the clapping was well-intentioned at the start and it did give people a boost when countries first went into lockdown. However as clap for carers went on here I found it more and more just an empty gesture and would get annoyed about how people would try and out-do each other. People would forget social distancing cavorting about with a drum on the street or something daft. Then there was all those people who crowded onto the bridges in London to celebrate it. Apparently hospitals had spikes at a & e after clap for carers because of people doing daft things.
I also think that at the beginning everyone had some adrenaline to get through everything, being locked up was a new weird experience we needed help with and we imagined this being this 'we'll put our all into it and get this sorted and it'll be fine soon.'
Nobody has any adrenaline anymore. We all know this is not going to be over any time soon. Add into the fact that it doesn't matter how much I clap if the government makes decisions to routinely fail everyone. We opened up too early to eradicate it in the spring and track and trace had too many problems. We allowed international travel and didn't properly quarantine people coming from abroad. We locked down too late in November. We didn't lockdown hard enough in November. We came out of lockdown too early in December. London didn't get put in a strict enough tier after lockdown. They shouldn't have promised anything for Christmas from the start. The government's appalling management has resulted in too many public being dismissive of self-isolation, of complying with track trace, of quaranting themselves etc.
Clapping is just a charade now.
