Man Comes Out of COVID-19 Isolation 5 Years After Pandemic Started, but Says He's 'Still Cautious'

A British man is starting to see people again after spending around five years in isolation since the U.K. announced the first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020. 

Karl Knights, who is from Suffolk in the east of England, has an increased risk of complications from a potential coronavirus infection due to him having cerebral palsy and being immunosuppressed, according to the BBC.

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), people who are immunosuppressed "have a reduced ability to fight infections and other diseases," and this may be caused by having certain diseases or conditions.

While discussing the feeling that most people would have had when lockdowns started to lift, Knights — who is a poet and journalist, per his website — told BBC Radio Suffolk, "Five years later, I am having that moment now."

Admitting he has only recently started leaving the house, Knights told the station, per the outlet, "It has been nice, but I am still more cautious than most."

Recalling the "scary" moment the U.K. government announced its first national lockdown, between March and June 2020, Knights — whose doctor advised him to immediately isolate — told the station he knew his life was "about to change."

"For me it was one of those pivotal kind of moments, where I could sense something was going to shift, and my life wouldn't be exactly the same for a little while," the writer said.

Knights regularly posts about COVID-19 and isolating on social media, and during the pandemic, he admitted his tweets gained "a lot of attention."

"I found that just through taking about what I was thinking about or feeling, that seemed to resonate with people who were in the same position," he told the radio station, per the outlet.

While speaking about what it's been like to be isolated for such a long period of time, Knights added to PEOPLE, "To tell the truth, the first year or so wasn’t as isolating as everything that came after that time."

"The isolation has been tough. It may sound odd, but the physical isolation doesn’t bother me anywhere near as much as the emotional or psychological isolation," he admitted. 

"Not counting the people I live with, all in all I’ve probably seen about three people in the flesh in that time. One was a friend, and the others were my dentist and the pharmacist," the poet said of the past five years.

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He said that "pretty much" every holiday "since 2020 has been isolated," sharing, "Unfortunately illnesses of all sorts tend to spike around the holidays, as people see family or travel. Though if I’m honest, even pre-pandemic I liked a quiet and low-key holiday season."

"A friend of mine said something that stuck with me once. She said, ‘I didn’t do much, but what I did do I enjoyed.’ That’s true for me, too. I was never a relentlessly social person, but the bits and bobs I did do meant a lot to me and kept me going," Knights told PEOPLE.

When it came to taking his first steps back into the world again, Knights admitted it's "been quite stressful, in all honesty."

"My first toe into the water of the world was for a writing residency, at a local library," he said, adding, "Taking this first step into the world, even if it’s a little step, has really hammered home how much I missed very tiny things."