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Original poster

In January, if someone had said in 2 months time...

100 replies

Thorilicious · 27/03/2020 07:41

You'd have to stay inside at all times, apart from a walk or to get food, what would you have said?
I'll admit when it happened in China, I felt sorry for the people there, but selfishly, pleased it wasn't happening here. Now look at us...

OP posts:
StirCrazed · 28/03/2020 19:17

I have been prepping since then so I would have been glad to find a fellow insightful person. The speed of the uk lockdown has actually been snail like and I am incredibly pissed off we wasted two months of prep time as a nation. I did my bit, got our food sorted, new glasses, dentist appts done, medicine up to date, tried to sort people at work, posted on here (laughed at).

OhhhPeee · 28/03/2020 19:20

On 28th January, we booked our summer holiday. On 28th February, we bought a new car. On the 28th March, both of these things seem ridiculous!

Should’ve added, DH and I both get paid on the 28th each month, and we’re so grateful to still be employed right now.

OnlyToWin · 28/03/2020 19:21

In January I felt very stressed and was concerned about work related stuff looming. Now all that stuff is not happening. I would not have believed you if you had told me there was a possibility of that back then. It all seems very petty now, as so much does.

MistyMinge2 · 28/03/2020 19:45

I remember talking to my 92 year old gran in January as she was worrying about it. I said I thought it was inevitable that it would reach us. I didn't for one minute think this is how it would play out. I thought it would possibly be a bit like swine flu.
That same grandma hasn't left the house since January and is now terrified she's going to catch it and die. 😔

CigarsofthePharoahs · 28/03/2020 20:29

I did think it would reach us, but being a bit naïve I thought that the Chinese government were being heavy handed and it would all be a bit like the swine flu epidemic. I even had swine flu and we were all fine so....
Who'd have thought people would end up hoarding bog roll?

ArlenesWoodBurningStove · 28/03/2020 20:39

I wonder when this is evaluated, whether there will be regret that as soon as China announced their findings countries didn’t stop all inbound flights except for repatriation ones. It seems so obvious now.

pfrench · 28/03/2020 20:50

People wouldn't have accepted it early though. Lots of people aren't accepting it now/behaving now. My parents only started playing ball when NHS Nightingale became a thing.

HairyToity · 28/03/2020 22:00

I've been half expecting it since end of January. Started buying extra store cupboard items with every shop since February.

BasilDiffuser · 28/03/2020 22:06

Last month I booked a holiday. I was sending out invitations for DD’s birthday party. I was organising a series of dance lessons for my class and a street party on our playground with residents from the local care home. Seems like a different life time now. It’s like being in a living nightmare. Every morning I wake up and I can’t believe this is our lives.

tangledyarn · 28/03/2020 22:16

On the one hand I'm in shock but on the other I knew from december and was following things quite closely, I knew there was a risk but thought we had a good possibility of avoiding it. Once I found out the incubation period was 2 weeks + I knew we were likely in trouble, but it still feels like an awful nightmare.

RacheyCat · 29/03/2020 03:29

@tangledyarn you knew from December? Gosh. What alerted you so early? Do you follow a lot of social media in Chinese or something?

tangledyarn · 29/03/2020 05:55

@racheycat Ha no! I was just getting a lot of highly complex information (which I didnt understand) fed to me from my partner which always ended with him saying this is bad news and me initially thinking well yeah it is but it's a long way away from us...

Mawbags · 29/03/2020 06:29

I was laughed at for my brexit cupboard last January
I was laughed at for doing a generous costco shop in January
I was laughed at for refusing to book any holidays

Nobody took this seriously enough soon enough. I really wish the government had acted more promptly. Im not at all sorry that Boris has caught it.

FrenchFancie · 29/03/2020 06:33

I remember seeing the news reports from China and think we could be in trouble, but I underestimated the scale of things and how fast it would all happen.
I worry a bit about the future, how we will cope in the summer and autumn because this isn’t goi away with one lockdown, we will be in and out of lockdown for a while to come yet, and I wonder how well people will tolerate that.

CoronaVera · 29/03/2020 06:35

I was thinking why the hell don't they close down the flights out of China to keep it contained. And they didn't. It's a virus. It's contagious. It was all kind of predictable.

MurrayTheMonk · 29/03/2020 07:26

I remember listening to reports from China-expats on the radio trying to decide wether to get on the repatriation flights-and thinking-'that sounds bad'-and then wondering why the people landing here were allowed to just make their own way home via public transport etc...and thinking 'thats a bit dumb'. But I didn't make the connection that we would be in the same boat until probs the last week in Feb, when I started chucking a few extra tins in the weekly shop. (And also got laughed at).
I'm finding it all a bit surreal-I keep thinking-'maybe it's not that bad' then looking at the news and realising that it really is.

Barkingfuckingdogs · 29/03/2020 07:35

I had absolutely no idea it would come to this. Was oblivious until about 2 weeks ago. Thought everyone was over-reacting and it was just fanatical preppers madness. Even when I started showing the first symptoms of CV, I still thought nothing of it. I just thought, bloody great, I've picked up a cough from someone's snotty kid! It's hard to get your head around it all really. Surreal. Just surreal.

middleager · 29/03/2020 07:42

It was thanks to Mumsnet that I became fully aware at the end of January.

My colleagues and family thought I was nuts worrying about it. At that point though it was all about China.

Like PP said, if little old me was so worried and tracking the news and prepping then why the hell were the British Government, with its wealth of 'experts' so staggeringly floored by this? I was so angry to hear Hancock in the HoC briefing a few weeks ago saying "nobody could have anticipated this." Or to see BJ encouraging shaking hands (that same week BBC Breakfast ran a feature with a doctor promoting that too).

And that sheer arrogance/ignorance/incompetence is unforgivable.

DroppedBoxxedRuth · 29/03/2020 08:01

I'm in Aus and it was thanks to MN that in Feb I started to get concerned and from last week of Feb started buying extra bits for my shop.

We now have about 2 weeks worth of stables but I'm continuing to shop once a week because we just can't tell how this is going to pan out.

We have moved quicker to social distancing in Aus but I still don't think everyone here gets it and so there is a bit of piss taking happening (Bondi beach, St Kilda beach just the other day FFS)

HennyPenny4 · 29/03/2020 08:12

Not entirely exonerating the Gov but we were in the throes of Brexit negotiating - and that then needed sorted as soon as.

Getmoveon14 · 29/03/2020 08:35

When I heard about the lockdown in China I thought, lucky they can do that, people would never put up with it here. When we were sent a message at work in early February saying 'as we prepare for the arrival of Coronavirus' I was actually shocked that it was on the cards. Up until about 2 weeks ago I thought schools would probably close for a just a couple of weeks.

5littlespeckledDogs · 29/03/2020 08:40

Another one here to hold my hands up and say I had no idea it would be like this. I imagined something similar to SARS/swine flu with extra handwashing and precautions, or even Ebola where countries with less developed healthcare systems and infrastructure suffered- which would be appalling- but nothing like the extent of what has happened globally.

I also think there are people coming out of the woodwork who "knew all along" who are talking up early vague worries as if they predicted exactly what would happen, (no idea if that applies to posters on here who may well have been aware much earlier but in my RL circle I've heard people blithely saying they saw it coming and would have handled things totally differently if they were in charge when I remember them talking differently a few weeks ago!)

LazyFace · 29/03/2020 08:44

This is when I started building up my food stash again (the little one I have space for). But it hasn't actually sunken in until a week before schools have shut what is coming.

dudsville · 29/03/2020 08:47

I didn't see it coming. I was thinking of cv19 as being like sars, i barely noticed that and assumed this would be similar. When reports started coming out of Italy i just put my head in the sand. This was because I had something really important (to me) to do and i couldn't face it not happening. Now I'm broken hearted AND frightened, kind of all of a sudden. The mind is a powerful thing.

middleager · 29/03/2020 08:52

5little

The 'AIBU to be worried about Coronavirus' threads started in January.

Many of us were on there expressing our concerns and frustrations. As the weeks progressed the AIBU? vote for 'no' increased.

I looked up the threads recently and it's so scary to see how concerned many were and how dismissive the Govt and much of society were.

I naively thought that our Govt would act, that if we could see this and because they had a window into Italy that we'd have an advantage.

My boss dismissed me. I went to see him about it twice. He went to the Liverpool match and continued travelling to conferences. I lost respect for him.

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