Mumsnet during the beginning of the Pandemic - please tell me your stories of the maddest comments you saw

It really does! I think it’s the people just standing there

I expressed mild disappointment and surprise that my DC couldn't have a school photo together on here and was basically told I wanted babies to die.
They only had 1 years overlap and hadn't had a school photo since primary 4 years previously and my Mum in particular wanted one.
The school situation was crazy, my DC were not allowed anywhere near eachother at school but walked home and lived together whereas the friends they spent all day with had to be distanced from as soon as they hit the school gates.
I don't blame the school, they were following the guidelines but it made no sense.

From DHs work...
After the first few months of just carrying on, they were suddenly told their desks had to be 2m apart. It was a squeeze, but they managed it.

Except they still had to share a telephone....

People wearing masks when they were alone and inside their own cars. Madness

This I understand. If going from place to place and in the car for a short time it is easier to keep it on than take it off and fanny with your glasses, hat, hair etc. Suppose some people didn't think that someone could be between two places and just making it easier for themselves!

I couldn't agree more and thank you for posting the graph. The dip and uptick from 1980 is quite interesting. Can you link the source for more context please.

We don't have a big enough army or authoritarian state to be able to force the population into significant restrictions the majority don't want. If we have to talk about the army, it's already not happening.

In another pandemic, we will have restrictions only if the public are on board. That was also true during covid, hence the focus on messaging once the lockdown strategy had been chosen.

People wearing masks when they were alone and inside their own cars. Madness.

The two teenagers, sons of friends, who died of cancer because their symptoms were ignored, delayed, because the NHS became the national covid service. The whole thing made me think we lived in a gerontocracy.

I still see families with children wearing masks in shops, actually. One family a month or so ago being very theatrical about wiping down their cups and cutlery at the shop café. I felt very sorry for the young, masked children.

The only upside for me was finding out which of my neighbours were curtain twitching rats, calling the police the minute our children went out for a walk. Now I know how their minds work.

I posted this a bit earlier, but I always suspected covid measures were over the top. The big spike is the 1918 pandemic. That one affected young people the most. The irony is that if something genuinely as dangerous swept in today, the UK would not be financially solvent enough to cope and this is due to….covid.

I remember when the second lockdown started lifting (was there a Phase 1/Level 1 or something?) and I finally took my then-1 year old to a toddler music group, maybe the 3rd or 4th time in his life he'd ever seen other children in the flesh. I posted about it on MN.

It was outside in a chilly pub garden, everyone on individual mats with their own personal rattles and bells that were sanitised in between sessions, and the kicker was that only the group leader and four other chosen volunteers were allowed to join in with the singing at any one time. Yup, someone in the civil service had looked at The Science and decided that if six knackered mums mumbled their way through Wheels on the Bus at their babies through a mask then it would be a super-spreader event, but if only four of them were doing it then it was definitely a safe gathering.

The level of control and micromanagement was completely unreal. Didn't stop someone on here trying very hard to justify all of this to me - "Don't you understand how risk management works?!" 🤦‍♀️

Late to the party but I remember someone posting about their children colouring on the footpath with chalk and a poster chastised them, saying it was "common".

So many more mad things happened, but the utter snobbery and classism has stayed with me.

I didn’t go in a supermarket the whole of lockdown. Managed to get a Tesco slot every week, I think mainly due to chronic insomnia and being awake at stupid hours. So glad because just going in the village shop was bad enough.

The denial was a sight to behold even though China and Italy were racking up numbers of dead.

I remember not being able to buy more than four loose baking potatoes in Aldi at a time. Pointing out that there were five of us in our house, or that they were also selling 2kg bags of smaller potatoes didn't help.

Oh I really wish I was around here during Covid

@DrPrunesqualer it was truly a place of wonder and lurkers 👀 delight

I’m surprised anyone managed to wash their hands with all of the handwringing and curtain twitching that was going on.

One comment that was truly wild was where a woman was questioning whether/why she should wear a mask in an EMPTY cinema.

She was called every vile name under the sun (granny killer and worse!) when her chances of passing a virus (that she didn't even have!) onto anybody were virtually non-existent.

That's when I realised so many people in lockdown had seriously lost the plot!

Covid or not think I’d be shouting at some random stranger in my hedge ! 😉
Come on mumsnetters we all know how that thread would go here.

‘Random guy lurking in your hedge what would you do ‘….errm 🤔
set the hose on him 🤣
the dog
or lots of mumsnetters !

Oh I really wish I was around here during Covid 🥳

I did too, and wiped down groceries. This was at the beginning when I didn’t know it was airborne.

I remember that one! It was truly bonkers 😜

There was a crazy thread on here where a poster complained about her husband getting shouted at by a neighbour, because they caught him hiding in their hedge. Lockdown restrictions had just been lifted and people were allowed to go on walks. The husband was messing around with their DCs and hid in some hedge/bush. This spooked a neighbour who yelled at the husband. The thread descended into COVID insanity about who was BU and I'd love to be able to find the thread again for a laugh.

That is still going on now though due to the lack of NHS dentists.
I was struck off my NHS dentist list for not going... when they were not seeing people due to Covid!

Grimm
Think I’d have gone for the old sting and door technique. 🥴

Agree @Upstartled
If there’s ever another Pandemic I think they’ll have to get the Armed Forces on the streets to get anyone to comply. Even then I’m not sure it would make a lot of difference.

I’ve just remembered the poster who pulled her own tooth out with a pair of pliers because it was hurting so much and she couldn’t access a dentist. She posted a picture of the tooth and everything 😱😱
That was some kind of lockdown low point I think.

I remember one thread on here. It was a woman who was going to be traveling to Australia. Apparently at this point anyone traveling there was automatically quarantined for something like 30 days in quarantine camps. She fine with this but made the mistake of asking here how she could bring alcohol with her. Oh the roasting she endured.

I did manage to find a link to some tampon flasks for her…with careful rationing she could have made it 😁

Personal experiences during Covid can only be described as batshit. You can be rest assured that the US was just as inconsistent and stupid with their response.

My state had a ‘state of emergency’ which authorized lockdowns. They legally overstepped by trying to continue them so were forced to turn it over to individual counties and cities. We had bars and restaurants fully open with no mask or SD requirements on one side of the street and on the other full masking requirements with people limits.

Also if you remember that this was the summer of BLM protests… Yeah so protesting was ok but I couldn’t get my nails done 🤨

I can’t remember if it was here where I was called a granny killer for flying to Vegas when they reopened.

@Aposterhasnoname We need more people like you! Perhaps some of the suppliers of booze to Downing Street should have done the same thing.

I took this creepy photo in our local park in January 2021. It has real ‘zombie apocalypse’ vibes.