COVID cringe memories (light hearted)

[Floogal]

Looking back at the pandemic, especially at its height in 2020, what made your toes curl?

1. "Imagine". Enough said.
2. The Marsh family.
3. On the local news, footage was shown of the Thursday clap (may or June). There was a parade of bhangra drummers and smarmy bratty kids doing the irritating floss dance. Was that point the 'applause' was seen as having had it's day.

I know some people may mention the dancing nurses, I only saw tiny clips on the news. Even that made me cringe.

I mean nothing's as cringe as the people who trivialise it now and try to revise history to erase all the death, long covid, persistent level of excess death, and new heart conditions etc.

Or blame the vaccine or covid measures for them.

My DS has autism and I think (from memory) one of the first claps coincided with World Autism Day. So he got it mixed up in his head and thought the clapping was for that. It was months later when he asked with a bit of confusion; 'Is it World Autism Day EVERY week?'

This - ‘if only we’d locked down early/ hard/ long enough, we’d have zero Covid!’, disregarding the fact that Covid excited in other countries too, no matter what their measures were.

exactly!

Oh yes!

I had forgotten that we were given formal letters from our workplace identifying us as essential workers in case we were stopped by the police. I seem to recall that they had got them from some government website where they could be verified as such but am vague on those details.

The whole thing seems so surreal.

To a pp who said that she still feels the effects of having to limit journeys etc. My world got really narrow and I have had to work on slowly building myself back up to socialising etc. It makes me very anxious. I'm a bit of an introvert anyway but it made me less able to socialise.

Here in the U.K. we've got about 7 million people of working age who have left the workforce.

The government likes to imply they've taken early retirement and no doubt some of them have, but all the people I know who were working pre pandemic who aren't now are either too ill or disabled to work or looking after someone who is too I'll or disabled to work.

The vaccine mandate for care workers was an unbelievably stupid policy. The government were told it was going to cause even worse staff shortages in the sector, but were too arrogant to listen, so lo and behold the NHS bed blocking problem has spiralled.

Oh god yes!! Plus seeing people at the supermarket who I knew were NHS Admin and were working from home, not having to go anywhere near a patient, flashing their work passes to get to the front of the queue.

Love this 🤣🤣

One of my colleagues (and good friend) had to quit her job as a solicitor as the lockdowns very severely affected her child. He has learning issues and immune problems and his mental health suffered so badly he was suicidal at the age of 11. She and her DH were on waking shifts 24 hours of the day to watch him. However, his immune issues that when he did get covid he became critically ill. So while some said the lockdowns affected MH for young people (for many yes) she was in a double bind because lockdowns to protect people like him affected his MH yet he was clinically extremely vulnerable physically as well.

She and her DH have both left work and both are over 50. There is no incentive whatsoever the government can offer that will get them back to work any time soon.

This is not lighthearted, but just before the children returned to school my colleague was in bits. One of the other mothers at the school had rounded on her (knowing his health issues which are acute) and screamed at her why should children like my colleague's mean that her own children could not go to school, Children like my colleagues should have died in infancy anyway.

Anyway her boy is starting to do well now. His MH is fragile but things are looking up.

So I guess- what surprised me about the whole covid thing is that in many ways some parts of humanity cracked. Some people became harder, more selfish, more cruel. Or at least they did not feel socially obligated to hide those bits of their personalities.

That is all kinds of wrong!

I don’t think this thread agrees with you.

I never really understood the ‘what if you have an accident and need an ambulance’ to deter people leaving their house for an isolated walk… the amount of accidents that can happen inside your own home that would require an ambulance or A&E visit. Doesn’t really make any difference if it happens inside or outside.

Jesus. You might want to work on your anger issues.

I agree.

Flooring someone is a bit much, I'd have just got in and then pulled the mask back down. Much as people like that didn't come from nowhere, and their behaviour can't be separated from the government policy to deliberately try and increase fear, we'd all have been better off if they'd have been told to fuck off a bit more. Them included.

Did you berate people online for being selfish?

pp likely did too

True, as if economy was some abstract concept completely detached from people’s lives or only benefitting ‘The Rich’.
Not that we needed a healthy economy to sustain the NHS amongst other things…

I briefly had a crush on Gavin Williamson. I blame the isolation and drinking too much lockdown wine.

This. There were still some odd rules and people behaving in odd ways a year in, when it was known how Covid spread and who was most at risk.
Some people we know were too nervous to stop and chat on the street, socially distanced on all that, for more than two or three minutes in case a neighbour might see them.

That’s a good example of some of the batshit behavior from back then that can’t be explained away with ‘we didn’t know any better at the time’ and ‘it was a novel virus after all’.

The disorganisation of it was something else too. I tested positive 3 weeks into the first lockdown. My kids started with symptoms the day after i tested so we assumed they were positive too but they had very mild symptoms. The guidance was to isolate for 14 days. I was really really poorly with it anyway so couldnt have gotten out even if i wanted too, i was off work for 8 weeks in the end.

But there was no online shopping slots. I couldnt go out to get food. My kids couldnt go out for us as they had to isolate too. I had no one locally i could ask to go for me. We were so isolated and alone. Being really ill, scared for my own health and what would happen to my kids if i had to be admitted as i had colleagues admitted to hospital at he same time i caught it one was in ITU at the time and unfortunately passed away, and not being able to get even basics made the whole thing worse.

In the end my lovely BIL drove 80 mile round trips with food shops for us. Breaking rules travelling so far and concerned about possible consequences, but it was that or we would have starved.

@CloudyMcCloud

Did you berate people online for being selfish?
pp likely did too

No. Why attack me? I just have a different opinion to you. I believe that's okay.

@Dontcallmescarface I experienced this too. My mum died suddenly during one of the lockdowns. I had people say to me 'oh, was it Covid?' And then look actually disappointed when I said no.

I'm sorry for your loss. 😔

People who referred to the lockdown in Spain also liked to claim that what happened in the UK wasn’t a lockdown at all: ‘Lockdown? What lockdown? Where you banned from leaving the house?’