When was the moment you realised covid was serious?

For me it was the day Wuhan locked down
Yes. Obvious how serious it was.

I was horrified that our government didn't close our borders.

Yes. I remember being so utterly horrified and shocked. Lunatics in charge of the asylum.

We are an island. We could have closed our borders and stopped the 1st wave in its tracks.

Yes. (And before people try the NI argument, the Republic of Ireland managed to introduce pandemic border restrictions.)

(Real) quarantine was/is the way to deal with genuinely essential travel.

I was on holiday in Sicily, and the longer we were there, the more things were being shut downa festival, an amphitheater, an old churchand finally, on our last day, all the restaurants closed at 6 pm. We were luccky to get a flight home.

The realisation hit early for me. I remember hearing the first reports from China in December 2019 and thinking it sounded unusually worrying. I was avoiding public transport by the second week of January 2020.

I remember shouting at the radio on the evening of 23rd January 2020, while listening to a news item about it. The report said the government was continuing to allow flights from Wuhan to land at Heathrow and PHE was going to check passenger temperatures on those arriving on these flights. I shouted because it was clearly an inadequate response given what was known by that stage.

The next couple of months I had a feeling of dread at every missed opportunity to avoid infections and deaths. I couldn’t believe how complacent our leaders had been given the substantial head start we had to prepare and mitigate against the virus.

About a week before lockdown and I had had a client in a hospital setting just coughing all over me and I raised concerns with my manager that maybe we should no longer operate our clinics ( non essential service ) face to face. I was so worried ( I have an ECV husband) that I told my manager I would face being disciplined by refusing if he didn't pull us out. A day or so later we were told to just pack our laptops, grab what stationary etc we needed and go home asap. That was a few days before lockdown started and we have never been back to our office or hospital setting since.

10 March I wrote on Facebook to friends in the UK to stay at home and prepare for it. We live in Italy and on 2 march the schools closed. I remember not believing that they would close the day before that. We were in the park. A week later and we were locked in our houses, and only allowed out to take out the bins. It was so sudden, we'd only been talking about it in the office for a week before that.

WE are now at almost 627,000 deaths, and STILL have a certain section of society here claiming that it is all a Democratic hoax. They do not wear masks. They do not distance. They do not get vaccinated. They are dying like flies, insisting that they have pneumonia or the flu

Natural Selection in action.

We should really stop interfering.

Monday 9th March.

I work for a healthcare provider and we split the non-clinical workforce, only allowing 50% in the office at a time. That meant everyone was set up to WFH before it was mandated.

Also that week several of my clinical staff were preparing Lasting Power of Attorney and were really scared when treating their first Covid patients.

Oh and when the borders finally closed. My DS1 flew to Australia on 23rd February.
We have no idea when he will be able to come home

Very early on - early January, more precisely when Wuhan closed its airport it was completely clear to me that pandemic is imminent. I didn’t know how dangerous the virus is back then so sourced a stash of n95 masks in hardware shops like screwfix, lots and lots of hospital grade disinfecting wipes, and a lot of non-perishable food (and yes, toilet paper once I realized people are panic buying that in Hong Kong - a week later it started in the UK) some remnants of which we still have now.

I remember later in early March when it was obvious that the virus was everywhere waiting for the lockdown to be announced but being delayed on and on riding home from work on my bike, hearing ambulances in the distance and tears just rolling softly down from my eyes for all the lives that will inevitably be lost - more with each passing day of delay, and these people that are to die in just a few weeks time unaware but already condemned, as a kind of acceptable collateral damage for another day of no restrictions. It just didn’t fit with my worldview.

I have become so much more jaded since then.

We were going on holiday in mid feb and I did a major shop and stocked up before we went (after much deliberation about cancelling).

It was obvious where it was heading to me. I was well stocked way before the panic buying.

I think where I lived at the time up north it was only heard about on the radio and wasn't spoken about much till march and then I took it seriously when we all got sent home from work and supermarkets started required masks

When my brother and his Italian wife came back from a visit to Bergamo Italy in February...and became ill after the flight home. Pre covid testing but I just remember my brother saying 'I can't smell or taste anything!'

Then being at school where I am a TA and the head coming to each class to tell us that school was now closed. (We were back after a fortnight..special school) We were booked to see Les Mis the evening after Boris made the lockdown announcement and remember thinking.. I wonder how long before we can go to the theatre again. (We saw it last weekend ..and it felt SO good)

Walking my dog and seeing deer, foxes and other wild animals just trotting around in broad daylight because there was no traffic and few people. It was awesome and eery at the same time.

Italy did it for me, as well. And my government made NO real response until long, long after that horse was well out of the barn. THEN they politicized a pandemic to the point that 35+% of the country felt that masks and distancing were unreasonable, flat refused to do it. And the death toll went up and up and up. WE are now at almost 627,000 deaths, and STILL have a certain section of society here claiming that it is all a Democratic hoax. They do not wear masks. They do not distance. They do not get vaccinated. They are dying like flies, insisting that they have pneumonia or the flu.

End Jan/early Feb 2020 mainly from reading the peppers board and other posts on here. I started stocking up and booking ahead for our usual online deliveries. Lucky enough to keep getting them right through which meant we could help out friends and family who didn't want to or couldn't go to shops. We started limiting interactions about 3 weeks before lockdown. We were isolating for the week before lockdown as DD had a suspicious cough. It was bizarre driving into work (keyworker) when our isolation finished, all shops boarded up and everywhere absolutely deserted.

Mid January 2020.

I was horrified that our government didn't close our borders. So many people went to Italy/France at Feb half term. The footage coming out of Bergamo was horrific. Madrid was also a massive hotspot. That the government then let Cheltenham races and the atletico madrid/Liverpool match go ahead was insane. I looked on in increasing disbelief.

Bought things like BP machine and 02 sats monitor as it was obvious to me that the NHS would grind to a halt.

Stocked up on basic medications, re stocked the 1st aid kit.

Bought hair clippers, new ipad and phone chargers, Bought extra food, loo roll etc

Took my kids out of school a week before they closed.

Tried to gently prepare my dh and mum for what was coming.

Not sure either of them believed me.

We are an island. We could have closed our borders and stopped the 1st wave in its tracks.

So many lives could have been saved.

I felt like i was going crazy because it was so obvious how things were going to pan out but hardly anyone i spoke to could see it.

I remember getting quite annoyed at people who didn’t/wouldn’t see what i saw coming.

The moment a Tory government paid me (self employed) to stay at home

I just turned to Dh and said 'oh we're really fucked'

My friend is a funeral director. I saw her one day and she just broke down in tears. She said they had stacks and stacks of coffins just ready and waiting.

It gives me goosebumps even now.

I don't know if there was ever an exact moment I thought it was very serious. I have a background in public health so was watching with interest from early on - I thought it might be a goer but equally thought it might fizzle out with good luck or an early public health response (this optimism was in early January 2020).

I was travelling in East Asia transiting through Singapore in and out, with a few days there each time. On my way towards Asia (before Christmas 2019) there were rumours floating about, taxi drivers saying they were back on the jobs after a bad flu etc, whispers about a disease coming out of China. At this point it was all rumours and it's not clear even now whether this was covid or simply another virus circulating.

On my way back through Singapore in mid January we knew it was serious, both for what was in the news and what wasn't. When you live in certain parts of the world long enough, you learn how to read between the lines! By then Changi airport had brought in their temperature controls.

By late January I was convinced it would be a pandemic. Why would China close highways, airports and train stations for a mild illness? Why would they start expedited construction of a 10,000 bed hospital? That all happened in January 2020.

It beggared belief to me that in late February 2020 people still thought this illness couldn't spread in the west. You can be almost anywhere in the world in 48 hours and there was no indication that any population had any form of natural immunity. It was being detected in various countries.

I can't remember exact dates from then on, but I was remember reading daily updates about the Diamond princess and feeling antsy about what I felt was a slow border response. In February I was moving and did a big pantry stock up for my new place. I remember deciding to shop in my hometown as the new city I was moving to was already experiencing panic buying and reportedly was short on toilet paper. This would have been late February as that was when the first case was confirmed in my country (New Zealand).

Italy and Iran were already in a bad way and there was a real sense of anticipation in the community. All eyes on the government. Various measures were introduced but at that point we were 3 weeks from border closure and 4 weeks from total lockdown.

The compressed time video of workers in China turning a bit of wasteland into a hospital in a few days. The urgency was palpable.

Going to the supermarket and seeing the empty shelves. Such a weird experience.

Then a friend of mine in her mid-30s caught it and was very ill. Ended up in intensive care but luckily she was OK.