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Fortunately they rather enjoyed it

Autistic people left completely stranded during pandemic

Being left alone and all that…..

10 thoughts on “Fortunately they rather enjoyed it”

  1. Not in the best of taste, Tim. Their carers would disagree.

    What mental problems are OK to joke about? Narcissists definitely. OCD?

  2. It’s been pretty bad for my 4 year old daughter who is autistic. She’s currently in the Philippines and prior to the lockdown she was visiting a therapist 4 times a week whom she really loved. She hasn’t been able to go for 6 months or more now and keeps picking up her bag asking to go but she doesn’t understand why she can’t. She was really improving verbally when she was going there too and her improvement has slowed right down since the lockdown.

    This sort of thing is just another, albeit small, “cost” that wasn’t considered when governments the world over kneejerk shut their countries down without any cost/benefit analysis what-so-ever.

  3. Sorry to hear that, DJ.

    If a government is such a bunch of bloody fools as to listen only to virus experts, they’ll get no advice on other aspects of the policies these experts recommend. Blindly “following the science” is a mug’s game.

  4. Sorry Tim, but you are incorrectly somewhat wild of the mark with your comment. I post this not as a complaint, but as education. I’ll side with the “what’s fair game for one group is fair game for others” and not say it’s in bad taste, but you are factually incorrect.
    Autism is a wide spectrum, and while some might fit your description, the majority won’t. It’s a myth that us autistics (yes, I’m one – at the Aspergers end of the spectrum) don’t like social interaction – it’s just that mostly we don’t like social interaction in the same way as most neurotypical people do.
    Luckily I’ve been able to carry on working from home in a secure job, and I’ve been able to keep up some regular contact with colleagues. But I am really missing the craic that comes from being in an office, and I’m really missing the socialisation with other groups that have shut down for the duration.
    You see, it’s not that we don’t like meeting other people, it’s that we find change “challenging”. Throw me into a new social situation with lots of people around and you might well come to the conclusion that I “don’t like being with people”. But you’d be wrong. It’s the change, the meeting lots of new people all at once, that I struggle with. Observe me in an established social situation (e.g. a small group of friends that I already know, in a location I’m familiar with) and you might be hard pressed to know I’m autistic.
    That’s what it’s like for me – change is challenging, rapid/large scale change can be terrifying. It’s different for everyone – as I said, it’s a very wide spectrum – but that’s how it is for me. I have friends, I do socialise, I’ve really missed the socialisation over the last few months – but it takes me some time to get comfortable with any changes.
    For some, although they won’t appear (to an outsider) to socialise much – the effects of the lockdown will have been really difficult to cope with.

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