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

@whippy1981 whilst some of what you say is certainly correct, other aspects are conveniently forgotten - average house prices in many parts of the country are 5-6 times joint earnings not 2.5 , easier to get on that housing ladder too on modest earnings , ( I had a 3 bed semi at20 ) so not having years and years of expensive private rentals ( which were way less relative to income than they are today) lots of grandmothers ( not all) were working far fewer hours and helped with childcare whilst parents worked, no paying back humongous student loans and grants and being able to claim housing benefit in holidays etc, utilities and ‘rates’ were proportionately less than they are today and so many even quite basic jobs had non contributory pensions too -

expectations I agree are much much higher -

what with paying into contributory pensions plus student loans a lot of under 40s can be 10 to 15% down on take home salaries before they’ve paid a single bill.

No, they definitely shouldn't have because it was a stupid idea. It's a point about practicalities, not anyone's moral take.

We have a small army, many of whom weren't even in the UK at Christmas 2020. They couldn't possibly have prevented widespread movement, much less assessed which of it fell within poorly defined legal exemptions or not. It would've been a waste of resources and a large scale demonstration of how much power the state didn't have.

I do agree with this. There does seem to be a lot of variation in terms of what Long Covid is. I wouldn’t deny someone who has become ill after having Covid though, I don’t think anyone really knows how it presents over time.

And vaccine complications ? Or is that still too taboo to mention?

There is someone near me that claimed she’d ended up in a wheelchair due to “long covid”. Recently they’ve found it’s not that at all and something entirely different and nothing to do with covid, but very serious. Makes you wonder how many misdiagnosed “Long Covids” there are. This woman suffered terribly and was never out of hospital for years, every time being blamed on long covid when it wasn’t.

Agree @whippy1981

Another OAP bashing thread…..Again !

The Titanic isn’t exactly the same thing at all
When it comes to protecting others in a potentially unavoidable situation I believe we should do whatever we can.

Unfortunately this didn’t really happen to an extent that we now have a lot of people, young and old, with Long Covid. Living long term with the reality of other peoples personal decisions.

And at the exact same time there was raucous Christmas parties with no socially distanced dancing going on at Tory HQ.

Actually maybe they should have. My son was locked down in London 5 days before Xmas 2020. Lots of people they knew just ignored the lockdown and went home for Xmas . He didn’t as he has a conscience - but we couldn’t see him until April 2021

Quite. But don't let actual facts & figures get in the way of frothing hysteria. It never fails to sadden me how people totally fail to correctly interpret data.

I don't doubt that. Do you expect to start working and earning what they did at the end of their working days with their experience? Work up. Save. Do not spend money like it is going out of fashion.

The way they lived and the way people live now are different. 1 TV vs TV in every room. Holidays to the seaside for a weekend vs Turkey all inclusive for 2 weeks. Most had no cars - now there are multiple per household. They handed down clothing not threw it away and bought new. Things were shared and reused. They repaired things - sewing on buttons, mending rips etc were the norm. These days those things would be thrown out.

Maybe if we didn't waste so much money on keeping up with others or for Instagram worthy posts we would also be as wealthy as them.

£150 for a vaccine - you get child benefit to pay for the child. Use it to pay for their health needs. No excuse. Bet all those you are crying poverty for have 150 quid to spare for new Shein haul when they want it.

Actually less than one inch OF THOSE WHO ACTUALLY CAUGHT COVID Not of the general population Many people never caught it at all. Many people who died had merely had a positive test in the last28 days of their life, even if they died of something completely unrelated. For example,e my mother had a stroke. Even when she had treatment withdrawn and was in last 48 hours of her life they were STILL covid testing her daily. If they had managed to get a positive test from her then she would've counted as a " covid death" So I'm sure there's people died from stuff that took them to hospital but because they caught the virus there even if they had no symptoms they'd also say they were " covid deatgs" Doesn't help with skewed figures

Omg!!!! I hope that was the best lesson for them

Let's not forget that the people who posted messages that we now think OTT or 'hysterical', were all scared and living through traumatic times. It's easy now to look at the 2m markings and think 'what was that all about?', but at the time it was all we had. No vaccines, no therapeutics, and very little idea about whether or how the virus would mutate. And for every person who took extreme precautions or was policing the behaviour of others, there was someone who believed all the anti-vax, 'it's just the flu' nonsense, and spent their time aggressively ignoring even the sensible advice. No wonder some people became hyper-sensitive about following rules. And let's not forget - we were not well led at the time. The very people who should have been giving clear, honest information, i.e. the senior politicians, were hedging their bets and contradicting themselves with every second announcement.

So if you were on the titanic I assume you’re one of those elderly first? There comes a point you need to know your place of course a young person should come before the elderly. Are we so delusional that we believe to preserve life an any cost including the education and well being of children?

Anyway we did choose the elderly and now children are paying the price, economically and emotionally.

The a woman who seemed to think (in all seriousness, not tongue in cheek) that her delivery driver husband was at risk of a heist from desperados seeking loo paper.

And yet they are still the wealthiest generation. Google it.

And the chickenpox vaccine costs £150. It’s not because parents ‘can’t be asked’ FFS. It costs an arm and a leg and the NHS won’t pay for it to protect the elderly.

Interest rates of 18%, no freebies like free childcare hours, tax breaks etc, parents working 2 or 3 jobs to keep afloat as there was no working 16 hours then claiming!

Babies and children can have the chickenpox vaccine. You just have to pay and most parents can't be arsed to pay.

Rubbish. The boomer generation was the most prosperous in modern history. Cheap housing, gold plated pensions. We literally locked down society to save the elderly during Covid. How is that not caring? You know babies/children aren’t given the chickenpox vaccine because the elderly need exposure to the virus (through young people) in order to get shingles. So kids are literally put at higher risk to save older people.

I agree. Which is why I wonder exactly how we would be forced to comply in a future potential similar situation. The implications are scary.

The mother of a close friend tested negative for covid twice. Her death was recorded as being from covid, the reason being that otherwise her death would probably have required an inquest, which would then have revealed that her death was actually due to massive medical neglect. There was such a zombie-like moronic focus on protecting people from covid that seemingly intelligent people couldn't see that isolating vulnerable elderly people was essentially a death sentence.

I don't know what went on in people's minds. The level of stupidity was incredible.

This was amazing at highlighting that it is nothing biological that causes this.

And virtually every death was recorded as covid. There were people who had numerous serious conditions that had covid on the death certificate. Covid was not what killed them. It just caused more worry to those already lapping up the fear

Yes, I know someone who died from a brain tumour during Covid. They were in hospital and also had Covid, but that was not what killed them. I was told that Covid probably made their brain tumour more aggressive (what? 😂) so they still died from Covid and would not have died otherwise (yes, they still will have... from their brain tumour... which was what killed them).

Also read about someone whose uncle took his own life during lockdown. That was Covid too (apparently it can make people suicidal. never mind this man had pre-existing MH illness).

Agree

It seems ageism is a completely acceptable form of discrimination these days.

And virtually every death was recorded as covid. There were people who had numerous serious conditions that had covid on the death certificate. Covid was not what killed them. It just caused more worry to those already lapping up the fear.

I was very happy to be at home with my son, claiming every grant going. Some people received very large sums. Some claimed business bounceback loans for deposits to help their children on the property ladder. Rolex watches were flying off the shelves. I know a few with shops who got grants of £50k for the shop alone, some more if they had storage units. Then furlough on top of that. We paid a substantial amount for this. All to protect already very sick vulnerable people. It was wrong I knew it at the time and nothing could convince me otherwise.

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.

Which is also not going to be effective on a population who aren't having it, because we don't have the numbers. Population of knocking on 70 million, 170k police and 180k army, some of whom are stationed abroad.

Restrictions like lockdown can only happen in a society that's broadly, if not supportive, then at least acquiescent. We will not have another one unless and until enough of the population are up for it. If martial law even has to be considered, that's a sign that it'll fail.