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

As Goths and in the live performance industry, DP and I have alot of weird and wonderful costumery. DP was keen to go either full Mad Max including shoulder pads, or complete medieval plague doctor. For the sake of keeping the peace I dissuaded him from rocking up to Sainsbury's in either ensemble. Kind of wish I hadn't now.....

The one thing that used to amuse me during the early days was the things people would wear in the supermarket, my favourite was a man in a full balaclava (today that would make me recoil in shock but back then I barley turned a hair) but there was also an actual ancient gas mask, lots of rubber gloves and many tea towels covering faces.

I was always hoping I'd see a hazmat suit but sadly never did.

God I remember people doing that! I caught a family member goggling hazmat suits at one point.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/09/melbourne-public-housing-tower-residents-win-5m-payout-over-covid-lockdown

I think we got off lightly in the UK. In Queensland Australia they locked down immediately (after coming out of lockdown) because they found ONE person who had covid. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-09/how-a-single-case-of-covid-19-forced-a-lockdown/13042612

And New Zealand was locking down for absolutely no reason and everyone thought they were fantastic and bowing at the altar of Jacinda Arden

The one way systems never made sense either. Let's have people spend more time in the shop by going round and round to get to where they need to go to

And queueing outside when the supermarket was in an indoor shopping centre. It made far more sense to let people in, get what they wanted, and get out again, rather than all standing in a queue in a confined space. But when did common sense ever apply to any of the covid theatre.

The bonkers ones for me were:

the criticism of people walking to buy a newspaper each day

supporting the batshit laws in Wales about taping off areas of supermarkets so you couldn't buy non-essential goods (anyone (who a poster perceived to be) in England who criticised it was being imperialistic).

Going out in your car. You were DEFINITELY going to have an accident or break down and put pressure on the NHS.

It didn't matter if you were ill with, or died of, anything else. Only covid mattered.

All the runners who apparently breathed all over everyone at every corner. I couldn't believe how many people were constantly colliding with runners!

And all the people who constantly said we didn't lock down hard enough and wanted us to be like Spain. Presumably they all lived in large houses in rural areas with massive gardens.

I've seen people post on social media (NOW, not during covid) that only the rabidly selfish stopped wearing masks and did we think that the clinically vulnerable don't exist anymore. Apparently we should all be wearing masks every time we go to a public place for all eternity

The tier system was intresting especially as one area could be in one tier but depending where the boarder or cut off was you could walk a few mins and be in another. Then there was the football staduim which had the car park in England but the pitch or something was in Wales which had different rules.

The one way systems never made sense either. Let's have people spend more time in the shop by going round and round to get to where they need to go to

I think there was some other particularly unpleasant strain of flu or something going round at the time. I don't believe all these people had covid

There was - I remember my mum talking about how many people in her village had flu. It probably wasn't flu but we had a discussion about whether the flu vaccine had worked that year. Must have been in January 2020.

In February 2019 my DH had a really nasty bug with a cough. We'd certainly have thought it was covid if it had been a year later.

I think there was some other particularly unpleasant strain of flu or something going round at the time. I don't believe all these people had covid.

Wasn't there a choir in the news who all appeared to have covid that winter, but when tested it seemed it must have been something else?

I myself had something covid-like in early March 2020, but I tested for antibodies in May and didn't have any, so I don't think it was covid.

I don’t think you should regret starting it because it’s important not to forget how quickly people lost their minds. It illustrates how society and democracy exists on a knife edge.

I remember learning in school about the Holocaust and really struggling to understand the mindset and motivation of ‘normal’ people who reported Jews in hiding, or neighbours who were hiding Jews in their homes, to the authorities, because those were The Rules. It just seemed like such an impossibly, unnecessary evil thing to do. But when the pandemic happened, I suddenly understood how it happened. Fear. The Rules.

It was inevitable that it would get dark and sad, OP. Because the speed with which people lost their minds WAS seriously dark. But that’s why it should be talked about and not forgotten.

No just paranoid.

I’ve seen a real increase in mask wearing recently. I saw somebody driving alone the other day and they were wearing one. I wouldn’t be doing that again, it was awful.

Exactly. The government failed to correct the record, probably deliberately, because it suited them to have the public squabbling and fighting each other, instead of looking at the government. Classic divide and conquer.

My father, elderly, with heart failure, died of a chest infection in December 2019. Frankly, any virus would have taken him at that stage, he was frail. but I did wonder.

That’s so sad. Is there any justification for their reading? Elderly? ECV?

Poor sods.

Yes exbil and his dw. Exdh hasn't seen him for years. Exbil used to like going to the pub and football etc. He doesn't go anywhere or let anyone in his house.

Yes a few I knew got 'pneumonia ' christmas before lockdown. They were ill for ages.

This made me laugh so much I woke DH up. Hard to believe how ridiculous those days were

The banging on about that "rule" did my head in as it was never a rule.

It was Michael Gove's opinion...

And my DD is so vulnerable we still test for covid when we're ill etc so we locked down quite hard. Yet still wound me up something chronic

And the prick never clarified that it wasn't a rule

Are there really people who still won’t meet inside…socially distance…and won’t see family? In 2025 😬😳
I still see people in masks but only very occasionally. Like once every six months.

ETA: this is in response to various posters pointing out we thought it could be much more deadly/didn't know what we were dealing with at the start.

I thought, at the start, it was going to be reallly serious - like the Black Death, perhaps, or maybe less but something like 20% of the population dead.
I wondered who would die in my immediate family (parents/siblings, no DC).
I wondered if I couldn't look after them if I'd have to kill my pets.
I wondered about all the people dying and who would look after them.
I was ok with dying myself, so figured it was just my luck that I'd be fine and so would volunteer to do my best for people in their dying moments.

I still think it was inhumane to isolate people living alone. That was the worst thing. When it seems like the time is up, you want to spend every second with others, not hide away in a sterile, pointless existence.

Or at least some of us do. That was a real dividing line.

Various posters at the time talked about how awful it was living alone, and there was one poster who kept saying they had it easy. She lived with her DH but was isolating from him within the home (one was CEV) and seemed to think this self-imposed isolation somehow trumped the suffering and mental decline of those who were truly alone.

Please don’t regret starting the thread - it’s cathartic to talk about all this stuff. It was so bloody awful at the time, and all the doom mongers were so convinced they were right, that it’s nice to be reminded that they were talking out of their arses.