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

Oh gawd yes, and the madder parts of the LGBTQ community claiming ownership of a fucking rainbow,. saying it was offensive to use it for anything other than their own ideas...

The absolute maddest post I read was from a Mnetter triggered by the rainbow pictures she saw in people's windows.🤯😆

That was a feature throughout. Other people prioritising their loved ones, lives and beliefs are selfish, but it's morally virtuous when I do it. You are traffic, I am sitting in traffic. Things are a protection or a restriction depending on whether they bother me. The easiest sacrifices are always the ones expected of other people.

I don't think there's anything particularly awful or surprising about any of that, but the lack of understanding from some quarters that this is what was happening was a problem.

Flocking, ramming and flouting. No-one ever seemed to just break the Covid-related rules - it was always FLOUTING them.

And of course there were the frequent posts about 'idiots flocking to the beach' or how 'my town is rammed today'. It never seemed to occur to the poster that they were part of all that flocking and ramming. But there flocking and ramming was 'essential' I guess.

I agree, but I would add that the fear was largely manufactured. If you were so vulnerable that there was a high chance of dying from covid, then there was a high chance of dying from flu or a cold or other infection too - it was just the relentless emphasis on covid that made people feel like it was a definite death sentence.

There was one poster on here saying she would definitely die if she caught covid and I asked, not entirely innocently, what could increase her chances from say 1% to 100%. She couldn't answer because she wasn't thinking from a realistic point of view - she was thinking from a situation where relentless propaganda had made her feel like this was the worst threat in the world, rather than another threat in a world of threats.

Probably there was a correlation between people making "mad comments" and those being scared shitless because they were highly vunerable and might actually die if they caught it.

Covid wasn't that deadly to a lot of people, but to some cohorts it was extremely dangerous. It's easy to be blase about rules and regs and think everyone else is mad for following them when it's not you that ends up in the coffin.

I'm pretty sure a lot of the mad stuff was unreasonable. But maybe understandable.

Not sure if it’s been mentioned (read up to p20 so far!) but I remember a big fuss being made about cats, should you stroke cats, should you let your cats out, what if you stroke a cat outside and you catch covid from the last person who stroked it??!

Did she think she was the supreme leader of a cult or something? Weirdo.

@piscofrisco That is so terrible, and shows exactly how fake the clapping was.

During the height of the madness, I was suddenly offered a temporary job of visiting a family with an autistic non-verbal child, who turned out to be extremely clingy: no social distancing to be had there! The family told me they think they had Covid in 2019. This child normally went to a specialist nursery, but of course that lifeline was incinerated by Saint Boris. I had to carry a letter authorising what I was doing, in case I was stopped by police (which didn’t happen). In the poorer areas of town, in seemed there were far more masks, on faces, and on the pavement, back when the word from Matt Hancock’s Ministry of Truth was “they don’t make any difference”. There was “Blood on govts hands” scrawled on a wall.

The clapping. I was a care home manager during Covid. I had just got home from a very long day and nipped the dog out for his walk and happened to be in our village high st as 7pm rolled around. I still had my id on. At first everyone assumed I was NHS snd I felt like the Queen. Then one of my neighbours said ‘she isn’t NHS, she’s only a care home manager’ and they all Stopped clapping. Having been in full PPE all day watching someone painfully struggle to breathe their last with no help from anyone medical as no doctors could come in and no hospitals would admit care home residents, that put a cap on it and I actually cried. (Over something that I thought was ridiculous in the first place!) Later on the clapping was enlarged to be for ‘NHS and keyworkers’, but at first if you weren’t NHS you didn’t warrant it. I got into a big Twitter row with John Lewis who were only offering free drinks to NHS staff, not care workers. And I began to think very differently about a friend who was a back room admin nhs person, wfh, regular hours who still used her ID to get free drinks from Costa and line jump at Tesco.
Dont even get me started on the silly care home ‘rules’ which were in place long after lockdown finished. My staff at one point were all out socialising with each other and everyone else outside of work with barely any restrictions then coming to work, getting changed outside in a spidery shed one by one and wearing full PPE all day. The whole thing was mad.

I remember someone saying the army was out at Maidstone and that no one could get in or out. It was massive on the legal site roll on Friday at the time. I don’t think they have ever lived it down.

No, she was telling the members of the group that they were not to order anything online that was not medical supplies.

She seems ignorant of mental health issues. I really hope she was just saying what she would do and not telling everyone else they had to follow that rule .

Oh yes, I agree. But she was admin of a group where a lot of people took her word as gospel.

If she is serious them health should include mental health. Hobbies are needed to stay sane during lockdown. I don't say that lightly.

I was panic stricken because I touched my own phone in Asda and then convinced myself I’d spread Asda germs onto my phone screen which I’d then brought back into my home thereby condemning my entire family to certain death from Covid via iPhone.

My dd was made redundant at the start of lockdown. She found a job on the phones at a covid helpline centre, giving out advice to the public on the usual covid questions, staying safe etc.
There was absolutely no distances maintained, screens between operators. Hot decking the whole time and no cleaning of work spaces, phones etc after finishing your shift. Awful place to work!

I will never forgive the treatment of children during the pandemic. Their developmental, social and educational needs were treated as an afterthought, not only by the government but also by a large proportion of posters on this site.

I live right on the boundary of two counties. I was due to meet friends (outside) for coffee but my area was put into stricter measures. I couldn't meet them despite them only living 50 yards away from my house. I had been at home for weeks and broke down in tears as I was so looking forward to it.
I honestly kick myself now for putting up this this stupid bloody charade all while the idiots in power were having sodding parties.

The admin of a mental health support group I am in on FB pinned an announcement about not ordering online at all unless it was for medical reasons. So no craft supplies from Amazon or anything like that.

Some people really did enjoy the power trip.

People in our class WhatsApp were insisting that children who returned to school would be made to play on their own in squares painted on the playground. I think similar was suggested on here.

But it would of course have been fine to order shampoo online, thus devolving your risk to pickers and delivery drivers. Magically goes away then!

What was happening all over the globe was horrifying and barbaric. I am not done Little Englander gammon, but I think we showed ourselves a civilised land in comparison to many

not on here but our village facebook group had a woman that would post pictures of people in co-op who had bought what she deemed to be non essentials. Every day she would post so she was either going through her food at a ridiculous rate or she was going in purely to take pictures and post them trying to shame people for buying shampoo (not essential as we weren’t allowed out so why did we need clean hair according to her)