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.

My GP surgery still to this day operates with a buzzered door. You cannot walk in so everything has to be over the phone. I’m 3 years I have only managed to actually see a GP in person twice despite having health issues. The rest has been over the phone. The surgery is completely empty every time I am buzzered in with plastic screens dividing seats.

They own 4 surgeries in the town and all
of them are operating in the same way still.

Are they more annoyed? I hadn't seen those posts. TBH I tend to take it as read that the government's behaviour pissed people off, unless they say otherwise. A rebuttable presumption kind of thing. Because they really did tick near enough every box!

When 2 women were arrested for walking with a takeaway coffee…apparently it counted as having a picnic and not daily exercise - WTH 😂

Oh yes. The singing rule.

One of my teachers had to come to me and confess that she'd led her class in a rousing Happy Birthday because she'd forgotten the rule.

I remember taking a class outside and standing them in a circle facing outwards so they could safely sing.

Absolute madness.

@GrannyWeatherwaxsHatpin Totally agree and i would like to add organisations like the NHS Confederation and BMA to that who were all for these restrictions and now have the absolute fucking temerity to moan about obesity

Really? I missed that. Yes, that's rather a piss take. I've no objection to people having been full throatedly in support of any particular restriction, but own the consequences.

Whenever new restrictions were announced all of the journalists on BBC asking "why aren't we doing more?".

A friend commenting on how ridiculous it was that we had to put on a face mask to stand up in a restaurant but could take it off when we sat down and me patiently trying to explain the reasons which seemed obvious to me.

My friend and I being shouted at by the cashier for not socially distancing in a queue in Wales in Aug 2020, we had been staying in the same holiday cottage for a week!

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.

A friend of mine (not in the UK) was so anxious that her dc didn't leave the house for 2 years. 2 whole years! They didn't go anywhere at all. Not even to the garden.
In any other circumstances I'm sure social services (or equivalent) would have been called.
These kids now seem to be so anxious and seriously introverted. They've got no friends at school at all. It's so sad.

This exactly @Fotophrame, or that it didn’t matter that teachers were having to go in and work in very close contact with people with no PPE or any health and safety measure, just so parents could work from home.

All the people on here from Cornwall telling us 'please don't come '. Sorry, I forgot you owned the place.

Not sure if this has already been mentioned but didn't one council put a dye in the water of a local beauty spot - turning the lake murky green or something - to dissuade people from visiting/stopping to admire the natural beauty.

Whenever new restrictions were announced all of the journalists on BBC asking "why aren't we doing more?".

And the 'gotcha' questions to politicians: "Can you rule out any further lockdowns or restrictions?" And, of course, the hapless sod would have to say no, in the same way that they couldn't definitively rule out Earth being hit by an asteroid tomorrow.

The inevitable headline would then screech "MINISTER REFUSES TO RULE OUT MORE RESTRICTIONS".

All GP surgeries where I am are the same, about three chairs with tape everywhere and about 2 max people waiting at any one time. Yet A&E is rammed with people sitting on floors and trolleys with patients, many vulnerable and Covid-susceptible, in corridors with every Tom Dick and Harry sauntering past. It's bonkers.

Yes, that would have been Derbyshire police: https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-derbyshire-police-dye-buxton-blue-lagoon-black-to-deter-gatherings-11964966

I really hope all these threads are archived somewhere so that historians of the future can see covid madness in all its technicolour glory...

I live in a tourist area (not Cornwall) and the main issue with the government allowing travel to tourist areas was that the council's in those areas hadn't reopened all of the services and facilities such as public toilets, street cleaners, etc and a lot of the tourism-focussed businesses hadn't reopened yet either. In our area we had a sudden influx of people, no public toilets for them to use, hardly any parking as a lot of the council-run car parks were still cordoned off, and very few bars/restaurants/entertainment places. There was a lot of kick-off over people literally shitting in carrier bags and leaving them on the beach, parking across people's driveways or blocking their back gates (a lot of the flats down by the sea front, the upstairs flat gets acces via a gated yard, block that gate and they can't in or out), litter everyone because of greatly reduced street cleaning, bringing disposable BBQs to cook food due to the lack of food venues (the sale of them is banned in this county because of the wildfire risk) and leaving them lying around smouldering.

It wasn't so much a flat "don't come at all" as a "don't come yet, we're not ready for you and the government didn't think of that when they told you to get yourself away".

Groups of people praised for being 'compliant' like we're dogs. People saying that the Germans, French or whoever are 'more inclined' to follow rules than Brits are.

Agreed! There are reasons for exemption that you may never tell your GP.

I think it's crazy that public toilets were ever shut

Speaking of the media the hypocrisy coming from the Guardian now really is something to behold.

The 24 hour news channels are a blight on humanity.

People with IBS Crohns colitis. Not even these.............people cant shit to a timetable Public loos should never have been shut

I started listening to talk radio (now Talk TV) when they pulled the November 2020 lockdown They were the only place discussing the consequences of lockdowns

Oh the Graun was the worst, it was real bell-ringing the-end-is-nigh stuff. I stopped reading anything except the recipe section!

I started buying Private Eye after Cummingsgate. Stopped when they lost their shit over masks

DON'T KILL YER GRANNY

remember that. It came unstuck when the government realized that grandparents were childminders and if you couldn't see granny you couldn't work. Much back pedalling from Drakeford in Wales.