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

I'll concede that, but I have no doubt COVID was entered on many, many death certificates incorrectly to boost the figures.

Perhaps N&J, Princess NN, zebra woman et al, have disappeared into the ether, because if they were still commenting on here, they’d have their arses handed to them on a plate for being so drastically wrong and instilling anxiety and fear. I forgotten about ‘baked in’ - that was a favourite of N&J’s IIRC - and the previously mentioned ‘it’s going to be absolute carnage!’

On another note - the arrows in shop aisles. I remember popping into Tesco Express about 8pm one evening. I was the only shopper in there…I got told off by an employee for walking in the opposite direction of the arrows in an aisle. Sheer absurdity!

That’s a terrible thing to happen. And the Covidian Puritans would have gloated “this is precisely why you should have stayed the fuck at home, because you might accidentally burden the NHS”.

Well that's positive at least! The number of people who think we have a vast army ready to patrol every street corner never ceases to amaze me.

As for selfishness, for many of us the term essentially lost meaning through overuse during the pandemic and reached trope levels. And no, I don't live in London.

Nope bought alone and had a small deposit to put down. I still live alone. My employers wrote to the bank and told them my wage was due to go up a few months later as I was going from part time to full time and they accepted my new contract and boss' letter and let me have it. As I don't spend lavishly I presume that supported that given that I live like a student still. I didn't stretch to what the banks would allow me to borrow either. They offered me 50k more than I borrowed.

My sister went for a distanced walk with another family ( twas allowed at the time). Friends dc slipped on a river bank, my sister was the nearest adult and tried to grab the childs hand and pull him up . Unfortunately he screamed that they couldn’t touch hands cos Covid !
He slowly slid further and fell in the water . Totally avoidable. Such fear instilled in kids was so awful.

@whippy1981 do you live in a very cheap area indeed , had a huge deposit or bought with a partner or bought shared ownership in a very cheap area because otherwise I can’t see how on earth you would have got a mortgage on £18k

Exactly. It was selfish people like that who contributed to the London lockdown in the first place.

It was a tongue in cheek comment although it was unfair how many broke the lockdown. And selfishly spread the virus.

Butter in coffee is a thing in some countries so not that mad.

I can see the point in not sending an 80yo with Covid to icu. It’s not ageism, it’s thinking about what’s in their best interest and whether they’re likely to survive it.

my dad developed lymphoma at 69yo and needed a stem cell transplant. They harvested his own stem cells. They told him if he was 70yo they wouldn’t do it as that was the cut off. Then he had to wait for a “bubble room” to be free at the hospital as he’d need to be in isolation for I think six weeks. He was waiting months, he turned 70 so that was that. He never had the transplant and died a few months later.

And yes I would go as far to say it wasn’t worth locking down with the resulting decimation of the economy, education, mental health, businesses to save mainly elderly people who would probably have died in a few years of something else anyway. Harsh but true. And my mum died of Covid in her 70s and I still think that.

These posts have bought back so many memories.

I totally rolled my eyes at the nonsense we were supposed to follow: walk in the direction of the arrows, why ? Because covid only flows one way?! Is that why sweden didn't suffer as many deaths? Because the covid germs there follow the ikea type arrows?.

And wearing a mask when you walk around a restaurant but not when you're sitting down. Utter nonsense. It brought out my rebellious streak.

At work I'd see prison leavers very very adamant that they wouldn't go back to prison as they were now locked up 23.5 hours a day so it wasn't as comfy as they were used to. I saw offenders fake covid test results so that they could miss appts.
We'd have loved to be furloughed. I desperately wanted to put my feet up. I remember neighbours who wouldn't even usually say hi to us, be clapping for the nhs. Hypocrisy at its finest

I had no issue getting on the property ladder a few years ago. I was earning 18k then. Yes property prices were much less in relation to their wages but the interest at the time meant that you were paying rates like we have not seen for a long time. We've been crying in the UK of the interest rate rises here for a few % nothing like what they experienced. People now take the maximum offered by the banks and then have no wiggle room when they need it.

People usually had interest only mortgages which also caused many people issues as they were mis-sold those and had nothing in the pots to pay off at the end. My parents had that and luckily my mum realised that it wouldn't be enough to cover it come the end and put money away. Others were not so lucky.

People do not have to pay back huge student loans either. I have absolutely no student debt. I worked full time as a student and paid for my course myself (as my parents couldn't afford it) and came away years of uni later with £0 of debt.
Why can they not graft while studying? I worked through 4 uni courses - BA, Post graduate certificates, MA and another Post graduate certificate.

Lots of grandmothers today are providing childcare which is also the same - I went to a childminder as my mother worked and my dad worked 18 hour days to make ends meet. They also had the poll tax which meant that people who were poor and had a large family were taxed a huge amount. Now we have council tax which is fairer but still not fair on those who are single occupants.

Yes rates were lower as many houses didn't have things like central heating and some not even a fitted bathroom. So of course heating the whole house didn't happen so obviously cost less! Stands to reason! Nor did they have the amount of electricals that we have now. There were no TVs in bedrooms, consoles, mobiles to charge, microwaves etc. Many didn't have a washing machine. So yeah again charges will have been less as there was less to run!

Thing is these people saved and yes they have decent pensions and people are jealous that they do not want to put in the graft that that generation did to avoid debt and build up their pot. We want instant gratification. What we are seeing in the boomers is delayed gratification. We can't have both. They have delayed gratification.

@lifeonmars100 they also used it for political point scoring with regards to the vaccine- the reason the EU were behind somewhat is because we were in Denmark at the time and they were not prepared to use the Astra Zeneca vax , all my vax in Copenhagen were Pfizer - whether or not one was better than the other is debatable- but it was interesting to note all my friends in UK who had vaccines post May 2021 had Pfizer - none were given AZ - for whatever reason post Brexit they were desparate to say ‘hey we are having it 1st ‘ in my opinion for political reasons

@Shodan Oh god yes, I'd forgotten about PNN too. Their use of "I'm afraid" or "sorry, no" when someone would post asking if people thought there'd be any chance of their 2023 wedding going ahead when they were anything but sad or sorry used to rile me so much.

N&J was bloody obsessed with hitting 100,000 cases and kept spouting that the resulting deaths were already "baked in" for a fortnights time.

I used to love their posts purely for their bonkers entertainment value but at a time when many people were vulnerable and looking for guidance they were also irresponsible as hell.

We were very unlucky to have the worst PM and government at the worst possible time. Any administration would have made mistakes but that lot were something else...

I washed my hands so often and so fiercely that I developed horrible hangnails.

I couldn't remember the usernames of the worst offenders (although PPs have mentioned NannyandJohn and Princess Nutnuts or something?) but I do remember the phrase 'I'm afraid' they used (again, as a PP mentions).

It never fazed me, because I find that kind of patronising guff ridiculous, but I do recall thinking that there would be a lot of people who would find it distressing.

There's no doubt that the whole pandemic brought out the best in a lot of people, but on Mumsnet there was plenty of evidence to show that it brought out the absolute worst as well.

@MrsFrumble And let’s not forget all the children from abusive and neglectful homes who relied on going to school for some safety, warmth and a hot meal. Once again, their ability to remain in school would have been dependent on being previously identified and so many slipped through the cracks.

This is sadly horribly true. Poor Arthur Labinjo-Hughes is just one such example.

That is interesting, I remember a friend getting really ill with a respiratory infection around Christmas 2019, she had to leave our pre-Christmas meal out as she was so unwell. Then in late January 2020 I had something similar, was poleaxed by it and had not felt so unwell for years. Me and my friend referred to it as the "plague cold" due to how ill it made us and how it left us feeling wiped out. I had no appetite, felt weak and exhausted for ages

Also remember the children that suffers the most would be probably from household with high anxiety parents feeding this fear to their children. It’s hardly surprising that some kids really suffered and it was totally unnecessary. I think the kids happiest in lockdown was where there was no big deal made of the virus.
The special needs children were allowed into school second lockdown.

Not true. Only the ones with EHCPs were allowed back, and as any parent of a child with special needs will tell you, having an EHCP isn’t necessarily dependent on the level of need, but rather the availability of educational psychologists, the intransigence of the LA and the tenacity of the parents.

And let’s not forget all the children from abusive and neglectful homes who relied on going to school for some safety, warmth and a hot meal. Once again, their ability to remain in school would have been dependent on being previously identified and so many slipped through the cracks.

I’m a nurse and remember fretting about who would look after my children if me and my medic husband both had shifts on the same day (this is when schools were completely shut). Someone on here told me that I should be prepared to leave my children with complete strangers so that I could go into hospital to work. They were serious as well. Fortunately both of our employers were a lot more understanding and we were allowed to work opposite days to each other.

@MumToad I did light switches , door knobs and letter box daily

One of our neighbours left baked goods on our doorstep. She was bored so she baked. Me having a hissy fit about her leaving her “ Covid ridden biscuits here “ and putting them straight into the bin. I mean who, if sane, bins home baked biscuits????Plus the poor woman had Covid for the first time a year ago!!! I think it safe to say the virus really messed with my head. I desinfected the front gate and all the light switches daily.

We wouldn't, is the answer.

Either the population will be on board with a lockdown, in which case a majority voluntarily restrict their own behaviour. Or they won't be, so it doesn't happen. The latter could happen because the public don't view the disease as serious enough to warrant it, or because it's so serious we can't have a lockdown because that requires a functioning society.

Which was just as true in March 2020. But I think the big difference currently is that the space for a pandemic where we could have a lockdown has shrunk, if it exists at all at the moment.