This is super interesting. The protective factors against being lonely in lockdown were not being lonely before lockdown. That's interesting because so much rhetoric has been about the effect of lockdown changing the category of people (from not ill to ill, not lonely to lonely) https://twitter.com/WhatWorksWB/status/1328256495331532801

Feels a bit obvious when you set it out. We kind of knew who fitted in which category before the pandemic. So much discussion has focused on preventing people 'falling into' mental ill-health or loneliness, rather than reducing impact of pandemic on those we already know struggle

If these results hold up, it would seem that people with fulfilling relationships actually have had time to maintain those relationships during lockdown. Those without those relationships felt their absence even more sharply during lockdown.

So much debate and air time has been taken up, though, discussing what in essence is a societal fear that people who already have the things they need will lose them as a result of the pandemic, forgetting that some people didn't have those things to begin with

I think that's ok, in that no one wants more people to be lonely who weren't before. But as is common with advice and interventions around loneliness, there is very little that actually helps someone who is already lonely beyond advice that amounts to 'don't be lonely'

Reason I'm a bit snippy about these kinds of narrative in relationship to pandemic is there are lots of people getting lots of attention for focusing on *potential* of things being lost to those with most and few getting airtime for arguments supporting those with least already

Policy and public discourse around pandemic impacts is blinkered by focusing on category change over populations rather than change within people's lives. More excited by idea more people might develop mental ill-health than by what happens to those who already live with it

We like to talk about people's experiences moving them from one category to another against an arbitrary demarcation line, rather than focusing on what changes for people within one of these categories. Lonely people getting more lonely is different from more lonely people