What we're the most bizarre/memorable moments of the pandemic for you?

[Jaggerdagger]

Just wondering what they are for you?

I'll start. One of mine was seeing a children's playground cordoned off with tape, including all the park benches.

That's mad @Justmuddlingalong. On occasion I decided we shouldn't be eating pizza from the carton but that was in 2020 and I soon realised it was too much messing about!

Probably very early on, when we were all supposed to be staying home here, and things felt a bit surreal anyway, I looked out my window and there was a tyrannosaurus rex running down the street like a bat out of hell.

I was also tutoring online due to covid, and that resulted in some odd and sad observations. Kids who had no quiet place at all to do work. Kids clearly left alone all day on the internet. Kids doing inappropriate things online. Grandma not realizing the camera was on setting up the computer and bending over in front of it in her undies so I got a face full of grandma butt.

Finding out my friends were quarantining their shopping in a shed for 24 hours before wiping it with bleach and bringing it in. (They are still struggling with real anxiety about things going back to normal.)

There were some things that were nice, like people's yards and gardens were clearly being spruced up all over, whether it was just pansies in juice cans or serious vegetable gardens. Even in student housing. It was really noticeable walking around in town.

@Thasheblows88

And how was it possible to know for sure deep down at the beginning that the rules were ridiculous, when we didn't know much about the virus? Later on, for sure, more facts became clear, but it was only latterly we knew that Covid was spread more by air droplets than touch.

No it wasn't, it was known really early on that it was unlikely to spread by touching eg shopping baskets.

But I agree that maybe some of the rules were stricter than they needed to be to make sure people complied generally. However, I still maintain that refusing women the right to exercise with others in the dead of winter, and taping off supermarket (and Boots) aisles served no purpose whatsoever.

Well, and then there were things like locking elderly people in their rooms for weeks. Which possibly isn't acceptable under any circumstances.

Where I live our last restrictions are ending this Sunday. People in care homes have been allowed only very minimal visitors and not been allowed to go out except for medical reasons, until now. That's two years. The average amount of time spent in such homes here, before covid, was 18 months.

I'm in Scotland and they announced yesterday masks are here till about 4th April.

I remember thinking it was like a film at first with everything closing and the streets getting emptier. Then the nursery my dd went to closed and she couldn't understand it. She was only 3 and had only started in the November. She changed from a happy little girl to a nightmare. She still is if she's stuck in the house when off school if the weather is horrible.

Having to go to hospital myself in May 2020 to get it confirmed that my baby had died. "Luckily" I'd booked a private scan just before then so dh could come with me and I was told then.

Going to work in a place that in Feb 2020 I'd been working at an event. Then going in April 2020 and it was starting to be turned into a hospital.

My dd pointing at pics of children and saying those are my friends. She never interacted with another child from march 2020 till August 2020 when she went back to nursery and then the teachers wondered why she wasn't sharing and hitting out.

Going into Glasgow on a train on a Friday night and being the only person in the carriage.

My workmate breaking the rules and giving me a cuddle after telling him about my miscarriage. I worked all the way through it. Only asked for 1 night off when the pains were too bad.

We are still having to stand 2m apart with masks on in the playground.

Having to go to all appointments when pregnant on my own and recording the heartbeat on my phone so dh could hear it. He was allowed to my 12 and 20wks scan though. And I had a lot of appointments.

Me and dh worked at the same place and we were working the same nights at one point and people who didn't know us would bark "social distancing" at us. I was bloody pregnant lol. We kept getting told off for standing together.

I'm glad we are getting back to normal now. Well normal-ish.

And I fucking hate the phrase "covid times"

People's lack of ability to critically analyse the information we had, and risk assess appropriately really surprised me. That and people's general lack of understanding of how viruses spread, why rules are made, and to predict how things would progress.

I'm a scientist. And it was during this pandemic that I realised that a lot of what I considered basic common sense, was not common at all. I don't mean this to sound arrogant - I was genuinely surprised that people didn't work out how the virus spread, how tests work, why a mask over your mouth but not your nose is useless, how touching something infected with covid would only affect you if you then introduced it to your own mucous membranes, i.e you don't absorb it through your hands, you can just wash it off... etc etc.

Being told we were working from home for the next two weeks and then not going back for 18 months.
Being made to socially distance from the rest of my family at my Dad's funeral.
Seeing the queen sitting by herself at her husband's funeral

When France first introduced travel restrictions and there was a last minute rush to get back to the UK a friend of mine was on the Eurostar back to London when there was a train announcement that there would be no Wi-Fi on the journey because of Covid.

YYY @SpikyJugs.

I realised that large numbers of people are profoundly stupid.

I found it chilling to see how using the tactic of fear how easily people were willing to give up their civil rights, how eager the police were to enforce petty rules (such the woman going for a walk with a coffee incident), how easy it was to scare people and worst of all how easy it was to get neighbours to inform against neighbours and on a larger scale turn sections of society against each other such a blaming school children for the spread of the disease.

I can now see how easy it would be for an extreme right or left wing dictatorial government to take over by using the tactic of fear and "keeping everyone safe".

@SpikyJugs

People's lack of ability to critically analyse the information we had, and risk assess appropriately really surprised me. That and people's general lack of understanding of how viruses spread, why rules are made, and to predict how things would progress.

I'm a scientist. And it was during this pandemic that I realised that a lot of what I considered basic common sense, was not common at all. I don't mean this to sound arrogant - I was genuinely surprised that people didn't work out how the virus spread, how tests work, why a mask over your mouth but not your nose is useless, how touching something infected with covid would only affect you if you then introduced it to your own mucous membranes, i.e you don't absorb it through your hands, you can just wash it off... etc etc.

Your a scientist though. It’s much easier to risk assess a virus and make sense of data for you. I’m not arrogant enough to believe I know better than Chris whitty, a lot of the information didn’t (and still doesn’t!) make logical sense to me. But I’m not going to go against it, because I dont know better.

Sorry but what I see on this thread is a lot of "in retrospect it was batshit that I couldn't go to a certain place with my DC" or "visit my aunt for a cup of tea" (using these as general examples, not focusing on any specific posters) and yes, looked at from an individual's perspective , it was batshit , but of course the whole point was that there might have been a much worse outcome from the NHS , which was already struggling, had many people collectively kept doing those things.

@Flintfarmhouse

Sorry but what I see on this thread is a lot of "in retrospect it was batshit that I couldn't go to a certain place with my DC" or "visit my aunt for a cup of tea" (using these as general examples, not focusing on any specific posters) and yes, looked at from an individual's perspective , it was batshit , but of course the whole point was that there might have been a much worse outcome from the NHS , which was already struggling, had many people collectively kept doing those things.

I completely agree. It’s bat shit now, with hindsight and when we have more knowledge, we followed the rules and didn’t make things worse. If we’d all carried on regardless, who knows what mess we would have been in.

It’s like years ago people taking mercury for illnesses. Now. Batshit.

the use of batshit irony is not lost on me

I hope there’s not another pandemic any time soon. Compliance will be terrible. It will be like the OAPs from the war at the start of covid, “I survived the blitz, no one’s keeping me in”

“I didn’t have tea with my auntie during covid, I’m not doing that again as it didn’t make a bit of difference”

Yeah what I meant was it was all about the collective effort, even thought what we did as individuals seemed batshit at the time. And as the collective effort was difficult to quantify, at the time and maybe even still is in retrospect, it seems more batshit than it really was because we mainly assess it from the standpoint of how it impacted on us as individuals. If that makes any sense at all

Hindsight isn’t a wonderful thing if it’s making us feel shit! I think we need to just remember that we generally did the best we could with the information we had at the time.

On a positive note, seeing children and their dad walking down to the river with their fishing nets.

Some quality time that didn't happen before COVID and unfortunately hasn't happened since.

@Flintfarmhouse

Yeah what I meant was it was all about the collective effort, even thought what we did as individuals seemed batshit at the time. And as the collective effort was difficult to quantify, at the time and maybe even still is in retrospect, it seems more batshit than it really was because we mainly assess it from the standpoint of how it impacted on us as individuals. If that makes any sense at all

Perfect sense and your right. It’s not something we can easily measure and produce data on to compare. But individually sometimes it just wouldn’t have made sense. But for the greater good (channelling hot fuzz there) it worked.

@RivaLa

On a positive note, seeing children and their dad walking down to the river with their fishing nets.

Some quality time that didn't happen before COVID and unfortunately hasn't happened since.

This is so true. When the weather was nice in the first lockdown we spent a lot of time together in the garden. I realised how lucky we were to have that outside space when so many others didn't. Normally we would have been planning days out, spending half the day travelling back and forth and probably arguing when one of us was hot/thirsty/hungry! Instead we had some lovely times together in the paddling pool, playing games and just being together.

Absolutely @TeaStory - the fact is, the less info you have the more cautious you have to be, you always have to assume the worst case scenario until you know otherwise.

I think a positive outcome has been a bit more understanding of children's capability for independence - I expect a few parents started leaving their kids (obviously not tiny ones, but ones they may have felt borderline about leaving unsupervised before this) so they could get out together for a short time and, guess what, nothing bad happened!

Also our youngest's school allowed slightly younger kids to go to and from school alone, which was great. I sometimes help out at drop-off time and I have noted there are now significantly fewer car drop offs than before COVID as either parents have the time to walk their kids in because they are WFH, or else they are letting kids make their own way there and back, in some cases with younger siblings.

“I didn’t have tea with my auntie during covid, I’m not doing that again as it didn’t make a bit of difference”

More like "I didn't have tea with my aunty and she became depressed and lost her mobility levels and now needs social care, when if we'd been a bit more humane about things, she's be ticking along nicely in her own home still." (True story)

@Buzzinwithbez

“I didn’t have tea with my auntie during covid, I’m not doing that again as it didn’t make a bit of difference”

More like "I didn't have tea with my aunty and she became depressed and lost her mobility levels and now needs social care, when if we'd been a bit more humane about things, she's be ticking along nicely in her own home still." (True story)

That one is completely true and I understand that one has been fucking terrible

I spent a lot of time being thankful my grand parents died in care homes prior to covid. What the care homes and those being cared for in homes went through, was utterly terrible

I think the whole "in hindsight I should have ignored the rules and visited x,y,z" shows how quickly people forget. Just last January (2022) my friendship group lost 5 parents to covid, we are early 50s sp parents were 72-80. They all died of covid. Not of underlying conditions. It was covid that killed them. Now, of course, they would have had 3 jabs and probably OK, but the threat was real.

Should read January 2021