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

Clive Myrie doing those staged 'down in the morgue' piece for News at Ten. Not really news, and repeated in a dramatic way at least three times.

They had my recently widowed 82-year-old mother, just in remission for blood cancer, living alone, in tears each night. Frightening the wrong demographic as I doubt the conscientious, News-at-Ten watchers were the big lockdown breakers.

I think it was Christmas 2020? DH was at uni doing a PhD and had had dinner with the footie team a few days before. His team mates started testing +ve for Covid. I dashed to his uni town to get him home before he tested +ve, spending 2.5 hours in the car with him. He tested +ve the following morning. Meanwhile dd tested +ve. DS's girlfriend, living in a shared house tested +ve and her parents had elderly grandparents for Christmas and she couldn't get home. I went and collected her as covid was already in the house. None of the young people were particularly ill. I sent DH to his mother's (they were a bubble) and had Christmas with the kids in a covid septic tank. I didn't get it.

I got it 13 months later after jabs and whilst I breathed like a train for two days I was fine.

It was a strange time and the measures were wholly disproportionate vis a vis the severity and the statistics.

We should have protected our vulnerable and carried on. I have no time for those now whinging about cost of living, etc. The measures bankrupted the country and I fail to see what people thought would happen vis a vis consequences.

• Panic over a child blowing bubbles that were floating over the garden fence. Bubbles of Covid floating around!
• People saying that in addition to clapping for the NHS we should also be doing a clap 'for the children'
• My in-laws' neighbours had a bust up over who was and wasn't going out to clap each week
• The man who was nasty to me because I took my 2yo with me to the supermarket. Did not tell him to fuck off but should have
• I think the worst for me as someone who has working FT in a very busy job, juggling homeschooling and caring for a toddler with DH, were the hysterical 'close the schools!!!' people without young children who then wasted no time in taking to social media to slag off parents who admitted to struggling with it all, claiming they 'hate their kids'
• The people fanatical about how you couldn't drive somewhere to go for a walk in case you got into an accident (on a deserted road) and therefore wasted the time of the emergency services

I fell pregnant in summer 2020 - much wanted child and we'd been trying pre-pandemic etc. for quite a while. Low risk pregnancy and neither myself nor DH were at particular risk of Covid as we were in 30s and no health issues etc.

The amount of abuse I got for being so selfish as to get pregnant ON PURPPOSE during the pandemic, whilst the NHS is so busy was actually awful. I remember being very emotional about it at the time, now I find it hilarious! Several posters genuinely seemed shocked people were even risking having sex during the pandemic, should fate intervene and cause said shocking-pregnancy and many agreed and claimed they hadn't been near DH for months to avoid the unnecessary risk to the NHS 😂

Just before I was due to give birth I was due for my first covid jab (this was when pregnant women weren't prioritised for the jab - that came later) and I had posters claiming I wasn't deserving of a covid jab on the basis I'd recklessly risked multiple people's health by getting pregnant during the pandemic!

Ah yes, everyone trundling over from our Tier 3 area to Tier 2 down the road so we could still go to pubs and restaurants!

I remember people getting very indignant about a group of housemates playing mini-football in a local park. When it was pointed out that what they were doing was totally legal and not risky, they were accused of reducing the space available to other park users who had to walk around them.

I worked on a surgical ward which was next to icu and we became the first Covid ward in our hospital. Just before lockdown when schools were open as normal I had messages from parents telling me they had heard I was nursing Covid patients and if this was true they would be removing their child from school as they had elderly parents that they wanted to visit at the weekend and if their child sat or played with mine it would kill the elderly parents 😔

Looking back some of the messaging was just awful. The "can you look them in the eye" campaign which basically said that if you went into supermarkets then people would die and it would be your fault. Indefensible.

I think the issue with MN was that pretty soon into the pandemic there were many of us who realised that the idea of eradicating Covid as pushed by Ms Sturgeon and others was complete pie in the sky. That keeping numbers low and waiting for a vaccine was the best we could hope for. Others seemed to think that the aim was for everyone to avoid Covid forever and a day and this is what led to arguments. Those of us who accepted that most of us would probably get covid and that we'd be fine were branded as irresponsible granny killers.

There was also a lot of blind sticking to the rules without question, especially here in Scotland. We had a lot of VERY silly rules about pubs being allowed to open but not sell alcohol, wearing a mask to walk into a cafe but being allowed to remove it when seated, not leaving your council area irrespective of how small that was, different rules about meeting people. In Glasgow we were not allowed people in the house from March 2020 to Easter 2021. Our kids were out of school way longer than kids in England.

We did break the rules and I was roundly slated for it at the time and I didn't care then and don't care now. We regularly travelled out of area to go for a walk or do some geocaching and a change of scenery. My teenagers found being away from their friends very hard so we had them over for pizza and Netflix. My self-employed hairdresser started back working so she came and cut my hair.

There was a huge lack of people on MN who could not see that their situation could not apply to others. Lots of sanctimony about how THEY loved being at home with their children doing crafts and baking and how those of us moaning about schools being closed were just a bit shit at being a mum. Lots of tinkly laughs about how homeschool was such FUN and how if you weren't managing to work from home and simultaneously coach a 17 year old through advanced higher studies in Chemistry then you were just not trying hard enough.

To be fair, there are lots of numpties who can't imagine other people's circumstances at any time. Covid just gave them the perfect opportunity.

I never once remember being scared. I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. Worked occasionally when I shouldn’t too. Never got jabbed either.

When I heard of locking kids up in their bedrooms bringing food to them or not leaving the house I felt really sad for people.

I genuinely felt and still do. If I’m in my 80s or have compromised health. I wouldn’t want the entire economy to shut down and children’s education to suffer on account of me. Even now let’s just say we saved thousands of elderly people locking down. How many children has been permanently damaged and affected? Who’s more important? To me it’s children’s wellbeing before nursing homes. This is an offensive statement to some but we are not immortal and I thought everyone would realise children’s wellbeing is the priority, to me that’s logical.

Really enjoyed lockdown was one of the happiest periods of my life. Just my teen son and I. He felt and looks back on that time as a really lovely happy time. I think I gave him too many hobbies to do prior and we were burnt out. Lockdown was a joy.

Mum died in the very 1st week of lockdown. At that time there was no option of having a funeral via Zoom and the bereaved had to drive themselves there and back. My dad was 82 at the time and his eyesight was a bit poor so I said he could come with me. When I mentioned it on here I was questioned as to whether my dad really needed to go the funeral and that I should refuse to take him. One poster even ranted about how "lockdowns where there to protect the elderly" and that him wanting to say a last goodbye to the woman he had loved for 60 years was "selfish" and "irresponsible".

I remember in the December, almost the entire country was in lockdown but Liverpool wasn’t. All the shops and restaurants were open as usual. We had literally half the UK descend on us. Trains arriving into Lime St were packed like sardines, full of day trippers coming to do their Christmas shopping. It all just seemed ridiculously nonsensical and I never understood the concept of the whole tier system.

The tier thing was crazy. I lived in Lincolnshire, on the western border. Apparently it was too dangerous to drive a few miles west, but safe enough to travel between Mablethorpe and Lincoln and Boston and Gainsborough...

Remember the “tier” thing? There’s a nice cycle loop we do which taught me where the boundary with the next local authority is a someone had put a sign up telling us to keep out. Yet apparently it didn’t matter for others when visiting the country park that’s within our local authority (DH recognised some people).

And we faced trial by Mumsnet for saying these things at the time, being called "selfish arseholes", "granny murderers". And indeed, thanks to 2020 and 2021, I will never believe, respect or trust anything that any politician says again, in my life, especially if it is reinforced with fear and hysteria. The government cried wolf on a massive scale, by deliberately exaggerating the danger of the virus.

Other mad MN comments were:

Driving a car churns up virus particles, and spreads them.

Right, and you could argue that the first lockdown - when we didn’t have as much info and needed time to develop testing and roll out a vaccine - was needed (I don’t think this but you could argue). But there were 3 lockdowns in total,1 of which was introduced long after the vaccine roll out.

I hope you don’t ever eat out because I can guarantee the food isn’t always prepped/cooked in sanitary conditions.

I worked in a small mental health care home at the time so while we didn't experience the absolute awfulness and trauma that happened in the elderly nursing homes, we were still subject to a lot of the same rules which looking back seem absolutey mad now and probably contributed to my own mad anxieties such as washing shopping.

The Easter egg thing was mental. I remember a notice coming out from public health (I'm in Scotland), that if easter eggs or any easter gifts were bought then these must be wiped down and then "quarantined" (that was the actual phrase!) for 48 hours. We could however get our own shopping delivered from the same supermarket no problem and none of that had to be quarantined but easter eggs were a completey different story! I still never understood why this was.

Staff couldn't accept a lift with their colleagues even if they sat in the back with the window open and despite the fact they would both be doing lft tests in work. But getting the bus with a load of strangers wasn't a problem.

Debates about where to hang up coats incase covid could spread between clothing.

And then there was the online cleaning training session I attended that was set up by our local public health body that had to be abandoned halfway through when we were told we shouldn't be using trigger spray bottles in the event that the metal part of the spray became infected with covid and we ended up spraying covid infected disinfectant all over the care home! It descended into so much arguments, the session had to be stopped by the organisers. Absolute madness.

I live in Wales and this was the daftest idea the Welsh Labour Government brought in. Children's toys and books were taped off but feel free to buy as much booze and fags as you want! Ludicrous.

I’m afraid that’s what we did. I’m embarrassed and shudder to think how stupid I was at that time. Mind you, my mum would wipe her shopping trolley down as well when she got back from the shop.

As for the MN threads, well some of them were staggering. I’m sure I saw one post where a woman was ‘literally crying and shaking’ because her neighbours had come close to her fence whilst her children were playing in the garden and she thought they might catch COVID that way?

Our GP surgery at the time put a post on Facebook on a Sunday morning with the reasons why they were not prepared to give CPR to anyone - the biggest reason was that they did not think it was fair that they could put be at risk of Covid for a usually pointless procedure, in their eyes. Also various stuff about that we could not rely on ambulances as they would be too busy with Covid so unlikely to attend any other illness. Fear mongering to the max.

They asked that all people who were clinically vulnerable (ie anyone who got a flu jab) or likely to drop dead soon seriously considered signing a DNR and stated that reception would ring their way round all patients considered at risk and ask them to sign to say they did not want CPR.

Funnily enough it was removed by Monday afternoon and they never did do the phone calls. They did apologise eventually saying it was a necessary evil due to the situation.

We also had a village emergency group which got very weird very quickly - one resident wanted a list of all people and all their ‘skills’. He included in the list of skills - fire management, rope making, fishing, hunting, basic medicine, being able to identify edible foods in the woods … fucking insane. I’m not sure what he thought he was going to happen - maybe he’d seen Threads too many times and imagined we’d be slaughtering covidy sheep for tea. The only wildlife we had were a few sad looking fish in the river and the odd roe deer or rabbit. Not exactly life sustaining. No one signed up for it beyond the shop doing a half hearted food bank for 2 weeks.

Bizarrely enough a friend still has a Covid job 5 years on, deals with people needing antiviral medication. She did say recently it’s not exactly busy anymore!!

And those of us who dared to question the narrative were burned to a crisp.

The total hero-worshipping of Boris Johnson. “Boris said this, Boris said that”, as if he was some kind of paragon of truth. It’s why I call him Saint Boris, because he was practically worshipped as a saint, and he probably believed it himself. (Nobody told him you have to be dead before you can be a saint.)

I know from work that Yorkshire Police were particularly bonkers. They were telling cleaners that they weren't allowed to go to work at places that were open as essential services. We ended up having to arrange for each to have a letter to carry in case stopped.

Covid definitely gave some people and organisations an excuse to do things they already wanted to do, also to not do things they didn't want to do.

some of the anti Vax stuff was pure bonkers. Chips were going to inserted into people, everyone was going to be sterile or dead with 12 months. I think MN wasn't as bad as twitter but it brought out the crazies.

Some of the police enforcement pissed me off the most.

I remember Michael Gove being quizzed about what counted as local for local exercise on breakfast tv and he said if you could get there and back in a day you were fine. That evening some police superintendent from Skegness said they’d be stopping people in town that weekend and anyone from out of Skegness itself would be in trouble/fined.

later on when shops were open in certain zones of the country I went to York shopping outlet. It was legal for me to drive from my zone to the York zone for shopping as you just had to follow the rules from your own zone. The police were pulling cars over on the a64 and sending people from west yorks back even though they were allowed. I’d heard rumours and took a back road to avoid road blocks. Bonkers! The police were proudly on the news that night saying what they’d done.