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.

People just assuming that teachers had been prioritised for the vaccine because they were going into every year group 'bubble' and spending time with hundreds of people all day because this was so obviously a sensible thing to do, despite it never happening.

That's a very naive take. You need more than a few slogans.

We had a policy environment that placed structural barriers in the way of some people's access to exercise. Some people need regular rests when they exercise, particularly those who were generally vulnerable because of eg age, pregnancy or disability. While in England we never had any legislation preventing sitting and resting, people were still stopped and harassed by police for doing it. What would actually have been needed is for people to be told they could rest if they needed to. Gove running his idiot mouth off about how long he thought would be reasonable didn't help either- what he should actually have said was that people ought to take as long as they needed.

Then also in the 2021 lockdown, the short daylight hours combined with work obligations meant that some people didn't have any options for getting out and exercising on most of their days. Women especially. I'm aware of some employers who were flexible for this reason, but they certainly weren't all.

In a situation where some people are functionally excluded from exercise, saying get out and do it isn't going to help them.

A poster on here complaining about people from an estate walking past her house for their exercise because if they wanted nice views they should have 'paid the extra ten thousand' for a house in her village.
Her arse was fairly comprehensive ly handed to her.

I remember seeing someone I knew post in a FB group that she was glad lockdown had happened and she hoped it would continue because she didn't like socialising and now the pressure to do so was off. Of course, she could have just grown a fucking spine to say to people "No, thanks" when she was invited to things but noooo, taking away everyone's freedoms so she didn't feel socially awkward was so much better

You absolutely 100% do not know whether someone is exempt due to trauma or not, and it's worrying that someone who worked in a GP surgery doesn't understand that.

I run a youth group and one of the rules in Wales was that even when we were allowed to meet outdoors, we were not allowed to partake in any singing or voice raising as this spread particles. They carried on this ridiculous rule when we were allowed back indoors with masks on.

Try telling 10 year olds who haven’t seen their friends for ages that they must keep their voices to a “non spraying” volume!

A lovely little bakers opened just before lockdown and when it reopened again it was really busy due to people both wanting a nice treat and also helping an independent local business . The local FB group had a post from an old misery complaining that cakes weren’t essential to buy and people queuing up on pavement outside were putting others lived at risk just to stiff their faces with unnecessary calories - happy say she got the absolute arse ripped out of her.

Posters above have also referenced the lack of loos - it's called the "urinary leash". You can only go so far or for as long as your bladder allows.

Not so bad if you're a chap and can pop behind a tree, much more of a problem for women and even more of a problem for those with disabilities: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/dec/01/the-urinary-leash-how-the-death-of-public-toilets-traps-and-trammels-us-all

I don't doubt that closing public loos was a deliberate way of restricting people going out.

You're welcome. And I'm sorry to hear it wasn't well publicised, it is a shame some people will have missed out on this at the time.
Thank you for such a lovely reply too.

There was also the issue that after the welsh firebreak, each individual council was responsible for deciding what groups could return in which buildings!

It led to a lot of inconsistency

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54107456.amp

I remember when England got through to the delayed Euro 2020 final in 2021 and local councils were telling pubs they had to stop customers cheering shouting hugging as celebrations.

Visions of 100’s of football fans clapping politely and not moving from their chairs if a goal went in

Yep that's another excellent point and no doubt it restricted some people's access to exercise. Pregnant women in particular, as well as the groups you mention. Access to the outdoors became a privilege.

In addition, it was a matter of deliberate government policy to try and make people feel more personally afraid. With that in mind, of course some of them were going to be too frightened to go out and about for exercise and fresh air. It's not like we ever did a risk assessment about the impact of those nudges and policies on eg people with health anxiety and MH issues.

I think the point to take is that even if unvaccinated care workers were being objectively idiotic, that still didn't mean we could afford to lose them. We knew very well there weren't a cohort of willing vaccinated carers waiting in the wings.

The utter madness of Chester FC being fined because stadium events were allowed in England and in Wales there was a max of 50 people allowed.

The border between England and Wales runs through the club ground.

https://amp.theguardian.com/football/2022/jan/07/english-football-club-warned-for-breaking-welsh-covid-rules

In addition, it was a matter of deliberate government policy to try and make people feel more personally afraid.

And that was one of the (many) unforgivable things that happened. I had an acquaintance who became so frightened of the outside world, having shut herself away, that she developed full-blown agoraphobia. Another had a young child who became convinced that birds were the germs in the air that were coming to get him. Another still restricts her life and won't go anywhere indoors without a mask on because she's convinced it isn't safe, even though she's perfectly healthy.

The damage to people's mental health is just mind-blowing.

It is. Long lockdown, as it were. And it was so avoidable. We could still have had restrictions and taken more care over people's mental and physical health.

People put on weight for similar reasons to increasing alcohol consumption and hitting out at vulnerable with escalated DV

Lockdown meant heightened stress and poorer mh, I’m surprised it’s news to anyone tbh

The clapping. But in a different way for me. I was then a social work team manager. Also at work 'front line' throughout. I made the mistake of walking through our village just as the first clap was happening (on my daily one hour walk after work with the dog). I'd left my lanyard ID on just absent mindedly. The posh pissed woman down the road thought it was an nhs one and started banging her wooden spoon on her jam pan and cheering me and got everyone else to do the same. I was cringing that everyone thought I'd timed my walk with my id on in order to get some sort of standing ovation! But worse still when I said, ' im
Actually not NHS. Im
A social worker' they all abruptly stopped clapping and looked disappointed 😂 which actually annoyed me 😂. A few weeks later it got switched from clap for the NHS to clap for frontline workers or whatever we were called so I finally felt validated 🙄

Thank you, she's an all round lovely person.

You can bet that as soon as households could mix, I had the DC round there for some catch up babysitting 😀

We could still have had restrictions and taken more care over people's mental and physical health.

Absolutely. For starters the government could - and should - have made sure that there was no ambiguity with messaging and "false rules" (such as the 1hr exercise) were squashed immediately. The police should have had very firm guidance as to what they could and couldn't do with regards enforcement. And it should have been made very clear to people that there was a balance to be struck - yes, it was important to limit the virus' ability to spread but exercise/protecting mental health were important too and here's how to go about it. Vital services such as GP surgeries should never have been allowed to close their doors. Generally, crap things happened when there was a void in rules and messaging.

I get that they were caught on the hop and they were probably terrified that any message other than "STAY AT HOME AND DON'T KILL GRANNY" would lead to the thin end of the wedge in terms of restrictions being disregarded but I can't believe that no-one in government or academia said "Hang on, there's more to this than flattening a curve".

On the academia front, I still can't believe that a cabal of voices - Ferguson, Paget, Indy SAGE and the like - were allowed to have such public dominance. Researchers' roles should have been to report to government on their specific remit and then to allow ministers to make decisions based on all the academic viewpoints. NOT to be giving interviews to the press about what they thought should/would/might happen which fuelled the hyperbolic headlines that did so much harm.

Can you imagine 500 years from now when historians are studying this period and scratching their heads about the significance of the scotch egg in documentaries. "In the early 21st century, during a particularly virulent outbreak of covid, people would carry around eggs wrapped in pork meat as a defence against germs. They would also gather in household groups, 2m apart, and bang together pots and pans to ward off the evil spirits that they believed would cause harm to their healers. Ritualistic masks were worn in public spaces and they would annoint their hands with scented alcohol as a sign of their devotion to the gods of Corona".

I will say that Indy SAGE aren't the government's fault. Boris Johnson is responsible for a lot of things, but it's not him who kept putting them on the telly.

There's a good point to be made about people continuing to sit on SAGE proper whilst engaging in various outside activities though- including being on Indy SAGE at one point. There never seemed to be any real discussion about what constituted appropriate behaviour for unelected experts with that much influence over policy.

People with mask icons in their Twitter bios. Arseholes.

The SNP actually seriously contemplating cutting lumps off the bottom of classroom doors in every school for ventilation. Like, fire doors.

I'll never understand why people who were against lockdowns are more annoyed at Indie SAGE for having opinions than they were at the government who imposed a "lockdown" on us then carried on regardless themselves.