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

Did any of the much trumpeted Nightingale "hospitals" actually get used?

I remember seeing a sign at the doctors which said not to go if you’d been to china, a specific region of Italy and one other place but I can’t remember - madness! I can’t believe how often I get auto email responses now still referencing it and signs/ stickers still dotted about (mostly in nhs places)!

Thanks. Unfortunately I was very unlucky. It took a long time for the consultants to prescribe an effective medication.

I remember that by the Christmas where people were by now thinking the government was talking out of its arse - Boris announced restrictions just a few days before Xmas that didn’t kick in for 48 hours but told people not to try and travel before that.

I remember going outside afterwards with my suitcase and throwing it in the car. I turned to my left and my neighbour was doing the same. We gave each other “the nod” and both went about our business.

The initial lockdown had destroyed my mental health (not that any help was available on the NHS ofcourse. I got a call the following summer that I had reached the top of the waiting list - after which time I had been seeing someone privately for months) and like fuck was I going to let it interfere with Christmas with my family too.

Yes NHS hospitals were under pressure. In fact they are under pressure every winter due to a surge in flu cases, I’m sure you’ve seen the headlines every year.

The issue with lockdowns is that you have to open up at some point, and so they may have temporarily suppressed the number of patients needing hospital care, but as soon as lockdown lifted, pressure intensified again. Unless we stay locked away forever, this is just something that our health service has to deal with.

@Poppymeldrum we had the reverse out in Copenhagen - a double fridge groaning and flights cancelled out from UK 3 days before Xmas so our guests couldn’t come- we wasted about £140 of food - froze what I could - but blimey our wine and champagne supply kept us sane for months

Holy crap that’s awful . Didn’t know vaccines could trigger such auto immune reactions

I wish I had refused the vaccine. After I had 2 jabs it triggered psoriasis. And now I’m stuck with it. I’ll be on medication for the rest of my life.

Your next door neighbour is crazy b*itch and the type that would turn informant on a neighbour for any old reason if we lived in a dictatorship !
so sorry for what you all went through .
Boris and party gate was an absolute insult to anyone who’d followed the rules even with loved ones suffering / dying .

The amount of parents condtantly washing their children's hands with anti bacterial soap until they were cracked and sore.

Both me and our son (then 19) were apparently CEV and should shield. We weren’t informed until after shielding had begun as people with our blood condition weren’t initially added. We were each called by the practice nurse who said that catching Covid would be ‘catastrophic’ for us. I went into a complete meltdown, especially when the official letters arrived and we were advised not to leave the house, to stay 2m away from others in the household, try to use a different bathroom, eat separately and to get fresh air through an open window.

We both chose not to shield but were careful. Our son couldn’t work from home but as he was officially on the shielding list he couldn’t go into work as he was there when the nurse called and she told him to go straight home so obviously he had to inform his manager.

I did some research and found an article by leading haemotologists who’d decided that shielding wasn’t necessary for certain conditions and the one we have was listed. I spoke to our GP who felt it was overkill and agreed and he wrote our son’s employer a letter stating that he felt he wasn’t at any extra risk and he was able to return to work and carry on with his apprenticeship.

@StClabberts oh I think so too - the difference for us being in Copenhagen for 2nd one was palpable - it was far more reassuring , far less anxiety provoking- and not once in public society did I see anyone berating anyone else, and as I mentioned earlier I never queued once for a supermarket

I didn't get the vaccine. I'm not opposed to vaccines in general but when I was a child I had a very severe reaction to the measles vaccine, that caused extreme swelling, febrile convulsions, and apparently I was a whisker away from brain damage. After that I had to take a little blue antihistamine before every further jab.

As an adult, and given it was a "new type" of vaccine, and knowing my frankly appalling "you couldn't make this shit up" luck (I was born on a Wednesday), I decided I'd take my chances. DP did try to persuade me at one point due to the threats of never being able to travel again unless fully jabbed. I have had Covid officially once, it was rough but I survived, obviously and count myself lucky I didn't suffer long term effects.

That said, I will never forgive the gas-lighting around what a vaccine actually is, and the fact that allegedly vaccines have never reduced transmission, but are in effect prophylactic that just minimise disease in an individual. I swear to God that's not what we were told at school, and also, we were told that jabbing was the answer to stopping transmission.

Also, in December 2021 I had pre-emptive risk surgery to have my ovaries out. At the pre-op when I admitted I wasn't vaccinated, the consultant icily told me my chances of dying under anaesthetic were increased if I hadn't been jabbed. I was like - eh? Did she mean if I had Covid during the OP? But of course, you test for it before the OP and they don't do it if you're positive, at least they didn't then. Am still utterly baffled by that one.

I was so glad we were lambing when lockdown was happening. I realise we were very lucky

But normalising zoom/teams for hospital appointments was also detrimental to others.

My twins turned one in March 2020. I was panicking that if I and my husband are taken to hospital, they would perish, nobody would take care of them.

I agree there were some tragic consequences of lock down but hospitals would have got overrun ?

@PyongyangKipperbang

For me lock down really was an eye opener, same for my sister. We both worked in management in different sectors of hospitality. 60-70 hour weeks, only at home to sleep. I ended up signed off with severe stress just before lockdown as the doctor said he would either have to sign me off or I would be in hospital with exhaustion within a month. I was, in hindsight, very ill.

That summer was amazing for us because it was the first time for years we had anything like a proper break and reset. I had been suffering weekly migraines for years and didnt know why. Never had a single one in lockdown but had 2 my first week after we reopened. So we both took a long hard look at our careers and decided to step down. We are both at non management level now and our health and mental health has imporved massively.

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand why it was a big liberation for some people. As someone who still works far too hard, I understand how that must have felt.

But there was something so tone deaf about the way some people did it and with this awful faux pastoral condescension. "All you rat race people, you're so stuck and we're all liberated from this madness." With a nice revenge jab at working mums from people with trad wife tendencies.

At a time when people were genuinely frightened at many levels and those who weren't physically frightened were over-wrought, exhausted and cut off, desperately trying to keep their children's physical and mental health on track and keeping the wheels on, it was astonishingly graceless to celebrate playing Little Bo Peep on the internet.

I haven't RTFT so apologies if this has already been posted.
But this thread saying everyone should have forced vacations had all of mn up in arms it was fantastic!
There is 1000 post on the thread but please take time to read at least the first few posts 🤣

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4206223-too-bloody-right

I think I forgot about the drive through centres. Looking back it was like something in a bizarre dream. Ours was in a large park & ride car park and had several points/stations under plastic domes - it looked so alien. Being passed a test pack and sitting in your car swabbing your throat/nose next to a car full of strangers. Then waiting to receive the results sometimes up to 48 hours I think!
So much I blanked out as it was all so abnormal.

We'd agreed with my in-laws that we would spend Christmas with them (they live 200 miles away)

Day before Christmas day,mil rang to say she couldn't risk us going

She was convinced the police and army would be waiting for us on the motorway and we'd never get past them ('they'll have guns you know!')

We spent a shitty Christmas with barely any food in and the world's crappest trifle

We where thrown out of our local aldi for being together-we are a couple,we live together,we'd been together in our house for weeks but would kill old people if we did our weekly shop together-i had to go sit in the car

My boss screamed in my face for helping a customer that just kept moving towards me,no matter where i stood,all my fault apparently

I was screamed at in asda for daring to buy a 4 pack of soap by some mad woman

Fast forward to feb/March and mil rang to say fil wasn't very well,could we get down there-now?

He didn't have long left-cancer had reared it's ugly head

We heard people clapping and whooping but didn't really take it in as we where running around,throwing pants into a suitcase and just trying not to cry as we got in the car and drove off

The day we got back (and no army or police in sight) the police knocked

The silly bitch next door had reported us for not clapping

I remember standing there saying 'really?this cannot be for bloody real-youve come out because we didn't make a racket on our doorstep?!'

We where up and down the m25 3 more times before fil finally passed away-not having a last Christmas with him racks me with guilt

Then it all came out about Boris and the gang having fucking parties

I really wish I'd told mil we'd already set off

The clapping was so cringe. People banging pots and pans etc. They didn’t need clapping they needed payrise.

I often wondered at the time if they would get covid and find it an absolute breeze.

I just remember the absolute lack of nuanced thinking. "Oh you think this, and so does Donald Trump, therefore you must be a Trump supporter" or "Oh you are against forced vaccination/extended lockdowns therefore you must be a Covid denier" etc

Yes I had Covid in summer 2021 and felt like absolute shit, for a long time but no, it didn't make me "learn me lesson".