Why I (a millennial) want nightclubs shut down

Why should 20-year-olds be able to go out there and enjoy the exciting, carefree youth that was denied to me? Maybe we should shut down Tinder, too, just to be safe

Millennials like me have a reputation for being boring, and there’s some truth to that. I sometimes call us the “crochet generation”, because for some reason in university everybody I knew took up really twee hobbies and got into long-term relationships instead of making life-altering mistakes that would follow us forever.

I have a theory that it’s because we already knew back then that the dying economy would never really let us graduate to being full-blown adults with secure jobs and mortgages, so we focused our energy on doing our best impressions of what we assumed grownups were like: Harry Potter wrist tattoos and wistful imaginings of what our youth could have been – name a more iconic duo.

That’s why I’m not really surprised by the results of a new survey by More in Common, which shows that millennials (defined as people aged between 25 and 40, or thereabouts) favour the closure of nightclubs to combat the recent uptick in Covid cases more than any other generational group.

Gen Z were surprisingly close behind, followed by Gen X, baby boomers, and then the “silent generation”. That’s right – for some reason people aged 75 and up are really invested in being able to get a £2 vodka Red Bull when they’re trawling Canal Street at 3am. Good for them – they grew up without iPads, let them live a little.

Honestly, I support closing nightclubs too. Not because I’m scared of Covid; I’m just jealous of young people who can properly metabolise alcohol. Why should 20-year-olds be able to go out there and enjoy the exciting, carefree youth that was denied to me? Maybe we should shut down Tinder, too, just to be safe.

I’m kidding, obviously. Covid is still a clear threat. A pandemic doesn’t stop happening just because you’re sick of hearing about it (and it certainly doesn’t stop happening because somebody on YouTube told you the whole thing is an Illuminati conspiracy).

Even though we’ve managed to curb the more serious effects of Covid, it’s still a serious disease with far-reaching health implications. I’m still suffering the effects of long Covid after getting a nasty bout way back in 2020. I use an inhaler now, and it wrecked my already-temperamental digestive system, to the point that my body sometimes reacts to a single glass of wine like I’ve swallowed a vial of acid (I wasn’t joking about the “metabolising alcohol” thing).

My most recent encounter with the ’vid (Gen Z aren’t the only ones who can come up with baffling slang) came in late October, and put me out of commission for a full week. Even after I’d “recovered” enough to go back to work, I still felt the effects for around three weeks afterwards, experiencing intermittent coughing fits, headaches and long stretches of intense fatigue. That’s a month of my life down the drain, thanks to a disease that people keep telling me is “basically just like having the flu at this point”.

I mostly work from home, and if that wasn’t an option I probably would have had to have taken even more time off. I can’t imagine how much it affects people in areas like retail or construction, where there isn’t really a “work from home” option. Not to mention independent contractors without sick leave, who potentially have to make a choice between their own health and their ability to pay rent.

None of this even takes into account the fact that the holidays are coming up. Covid isn’t just a seasonal flu that most of us will get over in a few days – for many of us, it has the potential to completely overtake the entire season. I have to fly home for Christmas this year, and I’d really rather not give my poor mother the gift of a debilitating pathogen.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we shut the country down and never reopen. The hospitality industry took a beating last time we had to do this, and a lot of businesses are either struggling to recover, or simply never did. But staying ahead of the curve on outbreaks by enacting a breaker like this is how you prevent that exact thing from happening again (even if it seems a little counterintuitive on first glance).

I get it. Covid has made more comebacks than Ric Flair at this point. When I heard about the above poll, my first reaction was excitement, because I thought it meant that my time machine finally worked and we were back in late 2021. That quickly gave way to a mixture of dread and déjà vu, then finally exasperation that we apparently need to keep having this conversation.

But we do need to keep having it. Covid won’t disappear just because we ignore it, or loudly proclaim how bored we are of it. And it definitely won’t disappear if we prioritise WKDs and screaming along to “Mr Brightside” over the nation’s health.

’Tis the season to be jolly... at home. Just keep the doors to superclubs (and contagious viruses) firmly shut.