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

I don’t remember the dates, or months at all, but I do recall the difference between the ‘first wave’ and the second. I was a frontline NHS worker; first time around as we witnessed its arrival, Italy, London- it was scary. What is this thing? I was pretty much pulled out of a corridor into emergency don and doff PPE training, to cascade. The training box said ‘Ebola’ on it. The frantic mask fitting, the 2 (distanced) staff meetings a day, as ‘the situation’ changed hourly. The fear of your first ICU patient encounter, sweating away in full PPE, praying it’d hold up (it did).

BUT with the second wave, we knew So Much More. The difference at work was huge. We now had an understanding of what this thing is. We See You.

BUT the political situation was more rules, more constraint, more control by fear. People becoming nastier to each other, the hysteria on here, kids locked in halls of residence, months of kids at home, not in school, because, obviously, a day at school murdered grandma. Whereas us more in the frontline were seeing our patient being less ill, recovering more quickly. And none of my team of 20 caught it (several claimed to have, but that was back when it gave you 10 days off for free, before easy testing was available…, most of that group ‘caught it’ multiple times).

So it was an odd disconnect, but it did mean I could help my family to look like they were complying, but without the fear.
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Turning up to my ex’s house to pick my child up wearing blue surgical gloves. The poor kids everyone was a basket case and still are really.

For many on threads here at the time, this most certainly was the sentiment, I do remember gulping reading some comments here.
My personal view is that we largely coped very well as a country, though still believe had we acted in a more prompt manner instead of just gawping at the footage from Italy, lockdown and it's impacts could have been far less severe. As with all these things though, the benefit of hindsight is a marvellous thing.
Whilst I am aware that there were some consequences which have been horrid for many, we still in the circumstances we found ourselves in, with the minimal information we had, were best having the lockdown as we did. I also think that over time, it brought about a great many positives for us as a society. That's not to say I would ever want to go through it again, but I don't think all results were bad ones at all. We sadly lost a number of family, friends and acquaintances to Covid, there were points where it felt far greater than 1%, but thankfully this improved as time went on.

@MinkyWales that’s so awful - very glad you are still with us !

Regarding the pictures and early footage, do you remember seeing video from China of people suddenly dropping dead in the street , and fitting on the ground and being carried away. This was very early on but then covid presented very differently. I often wonder what that footage was

Some astonishing number of people apparently believed that 10% of the UK population had died of it.

Which proved that a) there was SO much inaccurate reporting and scaremongering and b) that incredibly large numbers of people don't even understand what the phrase "per cent" means.

I do think though hindsight is a wondrous thing- at the time we were being fed all the pictures constantly in Italy and Spain and there were naturally a lot of very frightened people about -a lot of people did die who hadn’t previously been unwell . One thing I feel that fed into the anxiety was having the daily TV conferences. I don’t think this was a good thing - a lot of older people in particular got hooked on it and more and more anxious. For the second one when we were in Denmark they didn’t have these, they posted figures daily but only did TV conferences when any rules were being changed- so around every 3 weeks

Not a thread on here but I feel a bit embarrassed about how little common sense I had. Only being in my garden for an hour etc. Went to local park on way to shop, sat on a bench, no one was around but I was convinced I would get in trouble. I was barmy!

Yes I thought it at the time but impossible to talk about without people on the attack.

Not really about MN comments, although there could have been a thread about it that I missed, but I would love an explanation for all the 'people dropping like flies' videos that allegedly came out of China.
What the hell was all that about and who made them? It was even reported on the BBC.

I got the first vaccine, and have never been so poorly afterwards. Covid multiple time but the vaccine nearly finished me off!

Never had it again! DH and my 2 younger kids never had it. My eldest had it, because school insisted she had to to be able to attend.

@Crikeyalmighty it could have been worse. One of my friends lost two siblings to covid within a week. I'm still here and wheezing!

Which was what made me so angry. She was probably just trolling, just to upset people.

Which sounds plausible enough tbh. The index case was on 1st December when a person was hospitalised. Odds are they were ill a bit before that. Wuhan is a massive city, millions of people, airport hub. There must have been any number of people flying between there and the UK in December 2019, as well as more indirect spread. I'm not saying you definitely did have it, but I can see why anyone who had anything with similar symptoms to covid from December onwards might suspect something.

Also I do remember some talk of a nasty chest infection going round in the January!

I remember so many comments about people who knew someone who was run over by a bus and killed and covid being written on the death certificate. Seemed like everyone knew someone it had happened to 🤔😂

I always wondered:

1. why were the buses running people over when there were less cars on the road and less people out.

2. What has happened to all these murdering bus drivers and why did they stop running people over!

3)Or was it just one bus driver being a serial killer and going round the UK killing as many as he/she could?

So many questions left unanswered!

I know! It was actually quite scary how quickly authoritarian attitudes ramped up.

I don't think that people will ever be as willingly compliant ever again. Any trust capital between the population and the government has been almost entirely spent.

I used to wipe down my shopping and when I took rubbish out to the communal bin, would come in, wash my hands straight away, and then dettol wipe the door handles, tap and everything. Similarly I worked in a care home and would strip myself naked as soon as I got home. Clothes on a boil wash, straight in the shower and everything wiped down.

I was forever anti baccing my hands if I touched a door or gate when out. And went as far as disinfecting my doorbell and letter box on a regular basis.

I genuinely thought at the time I was being sensible and hadn't succumbed to madness when I clearly had! Needless to say, my doorbell hasn't been cleaned since!

I must be in the minority but never got the vaccine and never had covid(unless I had and was asymptomatic) nobody in my house got it so it was easier for us to think it was all mad. I get that so many people were devastated by it but personal experience shapes how you see things and I just saw the world going mad, leaving shopping outside for hours and disinfecting it etc.

Yes. It was reprehensible. But golly we the peeps were jolly stupid.

@MinkyWales I’m so sorry - I got some awful neuro stuff post covid totally out the blue in 2022 for around 8 months and it was incredibly frightening - so living with it must make even the mention of it hard to take

I wasn't on here then, thank god judging by the craziness. I live alone and had to wfh alone solely on Covid related stuff (NHS) and it was hard to keep rational, We knew so little about the virus and how it was spread when it first arrived so some of the madness (and in retrospect it was mad) was just a response to the fear of the unknown. If I had been on here I think that I would have been very influenced by some of the things posted as it was such a strange and scary time. I know I used to wash my shopping bags when I got back from Asda and looking back it seems mad. My solace was reading, I got though about 70 books, they transported me far away from the fear of catching it and dying alone.

Yes, this is important

Worth pointing out, if it's not been already, that it was government policy to try and make people more afraid. Some behaviour was still inexcusable, but the population were getting plenty of nudges and there was no real thought given to the longer term impact that was going to have on mental health.

We do think we had Covid in December 2019. A horrible flu like illness, that MIL brought back with her from China....