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

Fully agree with this and Boris and his Poundland Churchill caricature was as painful then as it is now.

We had some very similar experiences @RosesAndHellebores and continue to do so to this day. Nightmare stuff to contend with honestly, but as we see from the current government, SEND and MH are never a priority as they just expect us to cooperate, ass we always do. Maddening!

I also particularly hated the WW2 analogies. It was a blatant attempt in my opinion to encourage blind populism and nationalism.

I think that's pure twaddle and the infrastructure & population of Sweden versus the UK is so different, this does not fly sorry.

I remember in MN people talking about being allowed outdoors only an hour a day, but I don't remember that ever really being a rule?

Also I remember a t thread where people were wondering of you're covid positive, is it OK to go to your own garden.

Does anyone remember the poster called @NannyAndJohn

Wonder what happened to that poster? If remember rightly they wanted to live the rest of their lives in a permanent lockdown.

What I still fail to understand and could get no answers about at the time. DD has some MH issues and is under the ADHD service and medicated. She has had a dalliance with self harm: cutting, overdosing and anorexia. Pre covid it was essential that she was checked every six months for weight and BP. During Covid monitoring went on-line and she was advised to be weighed and have bp checked at the pharmacy. I never got a satisfactory response as to why it was safe for the pharmacist to interface with her but not for the nurse/MH service itself. The service has still not opened up BTW.

The above illustrates everything that was wrong about the NHS response imo.

There were signs up along some of the main trunk roads near where I live saying simply "Beware, COVID 19" as if it was likely to jump out of the hedge in front of your car at point blank range! I was out driving with my DD and we began noticing them.

Utterly ridiculous. There was a lot of ridiculousness around. The Pingdemic caused by the stupid app was another example. I deleted the app pretty sharpish. Only had it on my phone for maybe a couple of weeks.

Mumsnet classics were:
you shouldn’t walk on empty fields if you could have Covid etc as you could fall into a ditch and endanger anyone who needed to rescue you.
being in your own garden or having your windows open with Covid was selfish and dangerous.

I think what I noticed was that people loved to add on to the rules or attach mad reasoning onto guidelines or rules that’s didn’t exist… so they seemed to get worse and worse. Like the washing shopping thing. No one was ever told to do this but people swore blind we were “supposed to”.

I also saw - not on Mumsnet - a relative who really tested the limit of the guidelines themselves anyway by going on frequent bike rides over long distances when they were supposed to be vulnerable and isolating - taking photos of shops that were (legally!) open and plastering them over Facebook and asking what the point of these shops (pet shop, hardware shop etc) being open was. It felt like they wanted to see businesses fail and people to lose everything.

Also the many social media posts from almost empty and abandoned city centres (“FINALLY people are staying at home! Good to see London so empty!” Etc.) Who and what were these people - the self appointed lockdown police who were allowed out themselves but not others? I barely saw empty London because I was actually at home for the most part, but the ones out documenting it had the moral high ground.

Yes I agree it was all new and scary and people and the government were doing their best in “unprecedented” times but it really brought out the worst in a lot of people.

Pretty obvious government control. It was ludicrous the lock down and they didn’t expect to have so many compliant people, even the government were
shocked. Noticed how many government advisors, high up journalists. Drs etc all broke the rules? They knew it was an over reaction. In the meantime we paid about billions to small business to close, our economy really suffered, CAMHS are full and old people still die of various ailments. The lockdown was completely unnecessary. Remember it also became popular and the left winged “right on” thing to do so Sturgeon and Stammer pushed for more and firmer lockdowns. People were demanding it and it was like the trans argument many felt they couldn’t speak out. I ignored the rules and worked during lockdown and had plenty clients. I also had many leave as I decided not to get vaccinated or get my son vaccinated, they demanded to know and was honest. I told them the truth. Their choice but it’s my body and as I’ve never had covid (or have never bothered with a test either). I actually took zero notice of the whole thing. Governments do get things wrong and debating the issue shouldn’t have been taboo.

Luckily we have the case study of Sweden which proves lockdowns weren’t necessary.

@Crikeyalmightyonly on a website, they didn’t lead the news with daily cases and deaths?

@EasternStandard says a lot really though about certain sections of the population- in Denmark (2nd lockdown) we had daily figures and cases on a website and only had 1 conference when rules changed ( every few weeks) I certainly don’t remember the scaremongering stuff , it was all very matter of fact and didn’t have all these ludicrous tiers or multiple conflicting rules etc

We’d stay home when asked. You can’t enforce that kind of behaviour change really. We don’t have the policing capacity. The U.K. is well regarded on behavioural stuff and we used experts to get compliance.

Spi B I think it was called.

Scaring the general public into adherence with the rules. It's discussed in more detail here. The date of the meeting is 22/03/20, ie the day before the first lockdown was announced.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5ecd084586650c76acac37e0/25-options-for-increasing-adherence-to-social-distancing-measures-22032020.pdf

The bottom of page 1 literally spells it out. People needed to be made more afraid, so this is how they planned to do it.

Perceived threat: A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group (8), although levels of concern may be rising (9). Having a good understanding of the risk has been found to be positively associated with adoption of COVID-19 social distancing measures in Hong Kong (10). The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.

@Mumoftwo52 Respectfully, I think you need some perspective here. I was clear that some consequences (inevitable) were far from ideal. However, this does not negate the fact that lockdown also brought about some positives. Regardless, it was a necessary response, which helped keep the virus from spreading, this has all been clearly evidenced.
I feel that for many, families got opportunities spend time together they would never have been afforded prior to the pandemic. Even these days, I see a far higher percentage of father's participating in school drop offs, attending activities, which was not typical before. I think this is a great positive. WFH for some meant that professional opportunities that did not exist before for many women have been opened up, offering them vital independence and income, around home/family responsibilities. Schools prior to the pandemic were not the safe haven for a great number of SEND child. My DC thrived at home, learning way more than they had at school and were calmer than they had ever been. This says far more about the state of mainstream education, but nevertheless, was I cannot begin to tell you a most welcome change.
As a society, lockdown really shone a light on the public services we rely upon, not just those who had the luxury of working from home, able to get most things delivered. Our health workers, education support services, medical teams, retail staff, rubbish teams etc were all suddenly afforded the credit they deserve. This I think was a very positive change.
Was all perfect? Absolutely not. My own mother went through lengthy cancer treatment from the very early days of lockdown, it was stressful and the limitations of how we were able to "bubble" and support her through this was stressful. But we understood why.
In the first few weeks, we lost a local headteacher to Covid which was very sobering, then followed a great number of relatives, friends and acquaintances. This was of course horrific.
When it comes to mental health, I think we could and should have responded, had better volumes of support available as we came out of lockdown. The word "unprecedented" still haunts and irritates me, but like all services for the vulnerable, there just is not funding where it needs to be. The same applies to DV and the increase we saw there. Piece and social services are again still woefully oovrsubscribed and underfunded, what's your solution here? IIt's not as if these issues did not exist before the pandemic, if we were to learn any lessons on this, you would hope and pray that specialist teams not only better predicted the increases, but also prepared for them. These are areas I do think we could have delivered better, but again, none of us knew the extent or duration lockdown was going to take. Remember when they talked about it being three weeks only?
My experience informed me clearly that Covid was as lethal as we were told, the fearmongering was I believe a wholly wrong method applied to make people comply when it mattered. But only the benefit of hindsight informs us of this now. At the time, the information coming through all led to this being the only way to protect as many as possible. I am not saying it was easy for indeed that consequences were insignificant, not at all. We had a number of deeply stressful challenges, losses and the daily grind of having a SEND child to navigate through this unknown was a hellish 24/7 job.
Therefore for your to cite, with no knowledge of me, the circumstances and challenges I faced with: It was mass hysteria, and it sounds like you bought into every word of it. is as offensive as it is inaccurate. We did the same as anybody did. Read the info and guidance, did the very best we could and muddled through, trying to help all we could along the way. You clearly resent lockdown, this is your right, though I disliked much of it, I disagree it was not needed. What you do not have the right to do here though is abuse me or jump to assumptions you have zero ability to judge properly. What I "brought into" was the best option available for all at the time, with an unknown, growing problem looming across the globe.

I also think they pushed the agenda that vaccination was the be all and end all and it was like polio etc ( ie you wouldn’t get it) clearly not the case at all - I’ve had 4 by the way so am not an anti vaxxer - I do think the gvt got lots of things very wrong , particularly the constant scaring of older people with all the daily conferences and as someone else said about the Main news channels- down at the morgue etc!! Maybe if the Tory’s had actually been ‘governing’ and made sure they did their pandemic prep as they were due to do in 2016 and kept in huge supplies of quality PPE they would have been in a better position to take swift action - instead what were they doing in 2016? Playing politics and fannying around with a totally unneeded Brexit to shore up a Tory vote because of a UKIP threat.

I think some people have weird worldviews or realities, which normally other people laugh at, or express concern at. When something like Covid happens, it appears to validate those weird worldviews as being 'true' after all. For years, they've been told they're neurotic and suddenly they're right (in their minds).

If it was intentional, why? What was the motivation? What was to be gained?

Oof I washed my shopping once (well they were cat litter trays) they came from a depot shut down that day because all the staff came down with covid literally that day just after my package was put on the truck I had two clinically vulnerable children at my home and I panicked 😂 I went in with masks and gloves took them around the outside of the house removed all the packaging and soaped them all down left them to dry before bringing them in totally second guessing myself if I was over reacting or not

But we didn't catch covid (that time) so I guess it was OK

In defence of the people bleaching their groceries – at the start we didn't know it was airborne. Remember all the "Wash Your Hands" stuff?

We had something similar happen at work

It was during the eat out to help out-we where packed,I've never seen it so busy

I was running (and I mean running-i have arthritis in my knee,but the bosses didnt give a fuck) around when I heard shouting in the part of dining area I was the farthest from

I ran over and some old lady was screaming at some bloke (I wouldn't have messed with him-he was huge) for sitting too close to her (he couldn't help it-the tables are close together)and she just wouldn't let it go

He was calm and trying to explain he was trying to eat his meal,he'd leave straight afterwards,if it wasn't him that sat there,it would be someone else and if she was that worried,why was she out in a busy restaurant rather than staying at home?

She lost it and belted him with her handbag,he knocked it away so she started hitting him again

I'm trying to sort it out and get between them,bosses where sat in their office watching it all unfold on cctv,she's whacking me around the head with her (heavy) bag and finally some customer went down to get a manager to break it up

Last I saw was the old lady in the back of a police van and I'm running around trying to calm down customers while saying I was so sorry they had to see that

It wasn't until my shift ended,I was like 'wtf happened??'

The boss that was sat in the office was obsessed with capt Tom

She got it in her head that we would all donate and she'd send it off (under her name for the praise and to get her ugly face in the papers)

For weeks all we got was 'it's only £50!' (each!)

She got about a tenner and sent it off-and we all know what happened about that

I did say I thought the whole thing was a grift and got shouted at in the office for daring to say it about 'an old man who served in the war!' (So did my grandad but no fucker gave £50 to him)

She held this against me for weeks but then went very quiet a few months later and moved stores not long after

It wasn’t just that campaign. Behavioural experts knew daily case and deaths would be highly effective.

It’s this that over exposed the risk so we’d get pretty good compliance. I can understand why some felt manipulated by a fear campaign. It was intentional.

The pp on ‘I’m sorry to say here comes lockdown’ etc reminds me of those posters who were adamant nightclubs would never open again, we should holiday virtually and students were fine only with online learning, if they got much at all.

I recall this giving me many laughs.

Gawd, NannyandJohn (the most vociferous IMO) and Princess Nutnuts. Can’t recall in particular the zebra poster.
N&J’s posts used to fill me with anxiety, but I was inexplicably drawn to them 😬
The emotive language ‘absolute carnage’…’I’m sorry to say’ and so on. The insistence that we’d spend the rest of our lives in lockdown, and all social gatherings would be conducted on zoom for the rest of our lives. No more Christmas as we once knew it.
Don’t recall seeing them making a brief reappearance during MPox scare. What did they have to say about that?