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

My local shop was selling the tiny bottles of anti-bac gel for £7 each!
Nowadays they have them on the counter for free 😅

OMG I'd forgotten about those.

They are still hilarious.

The cabbage people! 😄

There was one particular poster who I will never forget (stripey animal…) who was everywhere, and furious at everyone and everything. On a thread about too many people in parks, I mentioned that I had to walk through one to get to the nearest big supermarket (London, no car) and apparently even that wasn’t a good enough excuse according to them 🙄 They kept saying “but is it worth the risk?” when I pointed out that my family needed to eat.

There was another really horrible one early on where a poster lived in an upstairs flat and had to take her dog outside to the grass verge to relieve itself. This, according to some, was not acceptable and I think someone even suggested that the dog should be PTS. Awful.

I got some horrid comments in real life after I took my children to the supermarket.

DH was working 8-7, 6 days a week, in the office. The one day off was random.
We needed food, after having to isolate as DH had returned from France just before lockdown (he basically isolated, then straight into that working pattern. He was working from home those first few days).

The comments...
I should have left them at home alone.
I should have left them on the village green so people could watch them from a distance.
I should have got a food delivery.
They should be in school as their father was a keyworker.

They were 7&8.

Being on this crazed mission to find antibacterial hand wash as it had sold out everywhere!

Things like toilet rolls and pasta being depleted in shops.

Omg I still do this! A small birthday cake for blowing out candles and then i make tiny cupcake versions of the birthday cake to hand out!

I say it's because it's easier to store multiple cupcakes in the fridge than 1 large cake but actually kids are just gross and I don't want to eat their Germy breath with my delicious chocolate cake.

Pasta became a means of currency.

When I suggested some skepticism around the stories of sad looking elderly men spotted in the supermarket clutching a shopping list with one item on I was told that obviously I hate old people and want them all to die.
I also got my arse totally handed to me when I espressed I was a bit worried about dropping some things off to my Mum in hospital (not for covid) when I had been warned by a nurse at the hospital not to do it. My sdad was going anyway but apparently my Mum was going to starve to death while wearing dirty clothes if i didn't go. There were many "cancel the check" type comments saying I could leave her some stuff at Reception when I had said many times that wasn't allowed.

I saw loads of those, leaked voicemails and emails 🤣 that was the thing that finally got me to leave FB, I couldn't cope, as if top government officials tell their wife's friend all the details of their confidential meetings.

My treatment was delayed by quite a few months so I did have a stroke and have lost the use of one of my arms now due to the delay, however I was very fortunate that I made a full recovery from the cancer, I know 2 people who weren't so fortunate and died within a few months due to the delays they had, which is heartbreaking, both parents, and both a decade younger than me as well. I didn't feel lucky at the time, but I do now.

Oh god I'm so sorry

I also believe this is true. We basically heard nothing from our politicans. It was all Anders Tegnell’s doing. But back then there was a time I shook my head watching him speak to the nation.
My DH is not Swedish and he had to take so much shit from relatives and friends. They were really angry with him for even mentioning he thought Sweden’s approach might be a good one.
But, next time who knows which approach will be right. Maybe new different virus, and our view would be a disaster.

All the ones about the terribly dangerous heavy breathing runners were doing.

I remember some teachers on here suggesting it was perfectly reasonable to move all secondary school teaching online permanently.

And if your 11 year old had no one at home 9-5 to supervise them, they'd just have to fend for themselves in an empty house all day.

I know it sounds stupid, but I still feel deep sadness when thinking about Christmas 2020. I just had my 1st baby a few weeks before and I was desperate to finally spend time with family and have some support. When the government "cancelled" Christmas, I was devastated, and I descended into pretty deep PPD 💔

Not on MN but I remember pulling in to Sainsb's one day and noticing that people had social distanced their cars impromptu; leaving one parking space between each, all the way through the car park. Just collective madness really.

Washing hands singing happy birthday! 🤣

Yes I recall that MNetter getting their arse handed to them on a plate 😂 about the second home.

Love this thread. It’s funny how everyone got over it as quickly as they became obsessed. People are so fickle

I wiped my shopping down for a bit I had literally just given birth so was not in my right mind.

I could never understand the people who wore their masks pulled down on their chin, just why?!

So much batshittery around.

So many. The ridiculous clapping - although I recall we did it from the upstairs velux window so couldn’t be seen as on our doorstep seemed mega cringe!
Antibaccing the food shopping. For months.
My husband stockpiling cans of food in the very early days before official lockdown.
Individual infected members of the house isolating in their rooms as other family members didn’t want to catch it.
Getting irate at extended family members breaking rules by visiting each other.
The ridiculous homeschooling. The constant juggling between 3 kids uploading pictures of their work on google classrooms, watching never ending oak academy videos (there was one particular teacher who drove me to insanity).
Attending a friend’s 40th zoom party with a bunch of people I’d never met. Excruciating.
Dropping shopping off for my mum and feeling like we were criminals for sitting 10 metres away from each other on deckchairs on her drive just to talk!
Crossing the road to avoid people on the pavement! 😂
Not sitting on a public bench as it was forbidden.
Leaving post to ‘air’ for a few days!
The list is endless. It was such a bonkers time!

@UnstableMonkey I still think Sweden had the best mindset about it from the offset - mind you there’s a lot more space, a lot more , and to be frank (on the whole ) a population that to me actually choose to go along with experts and not take the piss

When things opened up a bit, birthday cakes were cling filmed or a "stunt cake" used to blow out the candles (and sealed cupcakes handed out). Wish we'd kept that one - it's nice not to have to eat cake that's been breathed over or worse 😂.

It was unutterably shit, I agree