COVID-19 Lockdown Horror Stories

The legacy media presented COVID-19 as the cruelest of all killers, but two years later we may begin to look back and see that government lockdowns and other measures designed to fight the novel coronavirus caused untold damage. Some people, no longer content to suffer in silence, have shared their stories of the pain, grief, and even additional deaths triggered by government anti-COVID policies. While the world will never know the full extent of the harms inflicted by overly restrictive government diktats, we can begin to appreciate some of the most painful vignettes people have shared about their life under lockdown — and vow they will never happen again.

Families denied the chance to visit dying loved ones or attend their funerals

Public health orders separated even the closest loved ones, including in their final days — depriving family members of the chance to kiss their parents, hold their hand, or whisper one last “I love you” at their death bed. The Washington Post reports one such instance:

Heather, waging her own battle with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, said goodbye to her younger sister on a live stream, tears running down her face as she watched doctors unplug the machine that had helped her sister breathe. Heidi, in a hospital room just down the road, was suddenly gone. Heather longed to rush to her, to hug her and touch her one last time, but she couldn’t. The feed went dark, and she sat with her head in her hands, crying.

The pain deepens when mourners found themselves unable to say goodbye to their loved ones during their funeral services. “You should be there at the end, and I wasn’t. I felt ashamed in case other people were judging me. This is what was in my head – guilt and shame,” said Michael Cooper, who was unable to attend his 87-year-old mother’s funeral in person, thanks to the UK’s COVID-19 restrictions. “The ceremony was impeccable, except there was no one there who should have been there. I felt my mother was alone.”

The government-enforced harvest of loneliness overlooked no socioeconomic class. Juren Klopp, who manages the Premier League’s Liverpool soccer (“football”) franchise, could not attend his 81-year-old mother’s funeral last February, because Germany had restricted travel from the UK over the coronavirus. “She meant everything to me,” the grief-stricken star told a German newspaper. “As a devout Christian, I know she’s now in a better place. The fact that I can’t be there at the funeral is because of these awful times.”

Even Queen Elizabeth II and the royal family had to postpone part of its funeral ceremonies for Prince Philip, who died last April at age 99, for nearly a year, because the government forbade churches from singing hymns (when it deigned to let the churches to open at all).

For all mourners, the emotional wallop of being unable to attend a loved one’s funeral does not end when the funeral video stream shuts down. “It’s not a lack of emotion at all, but a swelling tide of it, unchecked by the reassurance, the scant but real comfort, that can and does often accompany the rituals we are usually able to participate in when a loved one dies. These rituals can still leave us feeling incomplete, but they can also act as signposts, guiding us from one phase of mourning to another,” wrote Nicole Chung, who lost her mother in 2020. “When my father died, being at his funeral, seeing his casket lowered into the ground, crying with my mother were all things that helped me to acknowledge and feel the loss, to begin to process and live with it.”

Too many people felt this double grief during COVID’s never-ending winter — particularly when the loss did not involve an elderly relative. Last May, when 8-year-old Cooper Onyett drowned at school camp, his mother petitioned for an exemption to strict limits imposed by Australia’s southeastern state of Victoria, which decreed only 10 people may attend a funeral. His mother, Skye Meinen, asked that his classmates be able to attend the service while maintaining social distance, outdoors. When the state denied her request, Meinen was “quite disturbed and distressed,” and all of his schoolmates were “sad and confused.”

Worse yet, not a single member of one British family could attend their 13-year-old son’s funeral in 2020, thanks to COVID restrictions. After Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab died in London of a cardiac arrest, his family developed mild symptoms of the virus and had to quarantine. “It’s extremely upsetting for everyone involved,” said the celebrant at the teen’s outdoor ceremony.

Physical abuse, substance abuse, mental health issues, and suicide

The stress of COVID-19 — the social isolation, the job loss, the tedium — pushed an already drug-riddled nation to a breaking point concerning substance abuse. “The disruption to daily life due to the COVID-19 pandemic has hit those with substance use disorder hard,” admitted then-CDC Director Robert Redfield, M.D.

Often, the simmering tensions caused by COVID-19 caused children to inflict self-harm — or be harmed by others. A CDC report released on March 31 says that “in 2021, more than a third (37%) of high school students reported they experienced poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 44% reported they persistently felt sad or hopeless during the past year.” The report adds:

• More than half (55%) reported they experienced emotional abuse by a parent or other adult in the home, including swearing at, insulting, or putting down the student.
• 11% experienced physical abuse by a parent or other adult in the home, including hitting, beating, kicking, or physically hurting the student.
• More than a quarter (29%) reported a parent or other adult in their home lost a job.

Often, young people snapped under the pressure. William (“Jack”) Green of Huntington Beach, California, committed suicide in September 2020, in the middle of his freshman year at the University of California at Irvine. The lifelong athlete found himself cut off from social life, competition, and exercise. “His rapid decline in mental health was caused by many factors, central to which was the COVID-19 quarantine,” read his obituary.

Some suicides stem from another side effect of COVID-19: Guilt over the possibility that normal social interaction would inadvertently cause someone else’s death. Last December 28, 17-year-old Anthony Reyes Jr. took his own life after he became convinced he bore responsibility for his father’s fatal COVID infection after the family attended a school event together. “He felt guilty. He felt like he was the one who got us sick,” his mother, Stephanie Reyes, told People magazine. “He felt like he was the reason why his dad was gone.” His father’s loss may have built upon the emotional problems Anthony Jr. suffered due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. “The whole coronavirus affected me in many ways, and the way the pandemic affected me the most was through my mental state,” he wrote in August 2020. “With everything being closed, it was becoming increasingly harder to stay home with my depression.”

Thankfully, not all suicide attempts succeeded. In the United States, however, attempted suicides among teenage girls rose 51% during the pandemic.

We will likely never know the damages inflicted by the COVID-19 lockdowns — in part, because the fight against COVID gave too many people a sense of purpose and accomplishment. They did not merely go to work; they were heroes. They did not simply wrap their faces with nearly useless cloth; they stopped the spread! In addition to the trauma caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, and the government’s frequently flawed response to it, some Americans may be traumatized to learn the futility and harm of the cause they so ardently, so innocently supported. But the time has come, for those who are able to, to look Anthony Reyes Jr., Jack Green, Skye Meinen, Michael Cooper, and a million other nameless victims squarely in their eyes, if we can wipe the tears out of our own.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a free hotline for individuals in crisis or distress or for those looking to help someone else. It is available 24/7 at 1-800-273-8255.

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