Just a suggestion, I know the emphasis is on actually meeting but I wonder whether there might be a combination of the request posted a few days ago for people to communicate via skype. Maybe people could do a group meeting via Skype or Zoom or Line.
Just a suggestion.

Just a suggestion, I know the emphasis is on actually meeting but I wonder whether there might be a combination of the request posted a few days ago for people to communicate via skype. Maybe people could do a group meeting via Skype or Zoom or Line.
Just a suggestion.

I understand your suggestion, Nobody, that it would be good to set up a Skype or Zoom plan for group meetings between Lockdown Sceptics forum people. But can I suggest this idea be developed on the "General chat - anyone interested?" thread, rather than here?

The mental health support groups we are contemplating on this threat would not, by my reckoning, include any telephonic meeting -- except for coordinating the face-to-face meeting of the groups.

This is because, for many people's mental well-being, face-to-face interaction with others (including, for those who live with others, people not within the household) is the essential missing thing.

Telephonic (whether phone or Internet) is still very useful, of course. But such communication has not been curtailed. To the contrary, it has become so pervasive as the substitute for face-to-face contact that it can feel emblematic of the corrosive curtailing of face-to-face contact. I doubt very much that we would have such lockdowns if it weren't for people settling for telephonic substitution of personal contact. Many people mistakenly consider it equivalent or even preferable.

It's quite understandable that a person, having worked remotely all day on a computer, may the revolt at the idea of socializing, playing, worshipping, dating, or doing anything else over phone or Internet. But one does anyway, because it is addictive, and then one feels even worse. The solution is real human contact, in the flesh, face to face.

We are training everyone, by habit, to be afraid to meet. Imagine you are 17 and in love, and over the past 10 months you have essentially been trained to engage with your love remotely, electronically. If lockdown ever ends, you will be wired for remote, electronic engagement with your love. You will not have learned, for example, touch and physical proximity. You will have developed alternative neural pathways, and it will not be difficult to develop different ones when the time comes. This is perilous stuff...

"You will not have learned, for example, touch and physical proximity. You will have developed alternative neural pathways, and it will not be difficult to develop different ones when the time comes. This is perilous stuff..."

Yes just like being poor and stigmatised, these conditions exist for the devalued and unemployed and have done for decades, now, others will endure it.