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Original poster

COVID cringe memories (light hearted)

1000 replies

Floogal · 14/08/2023 13:52

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.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
19
Minglemangle007 · 14/08/2023 16:34

I'd forgotten about all the people who bloody loved it! Berating anyone who left their house more than twice a week or took their dog for a walk morning AND evening. Monitoring every movement and car and ensuring benches had police tape across them.

Pub near me constantly got reported and every week the landlord would be on social media explaining that yes, it had been observed that there were 10 people in the garden, that they all lived there and no, they couldn't go home as there were no bloody flights to Australia and where exactly did people think "live-in staff" actually lived!

GrannyWeatherwaxsHatpin · 14/08/2023 16:36

And the checking-in app. There were some much trumpeted data about how many times it had been downloaded but I'd have loved to have seen the stats for unique/first time downloads. Because I'm sure a LOT of people downloaded it, signed in to comply with The Rules, then deleted it immediately. I spent a lot of time standing outside the pub waiting for it to finish downloading yet again...

What was utterly mad about the apps was that they didn't distinguish between two people sitting either side of a wall. Yes, the signal would be weaker but if the two phones were still close enough you'd get a ping. A friend isolated for 10 days after she was pinged, even though she hadn't even left the house on the day of the "contact" so there was no way she could have been infected.

Apparently this was acceptable collateral damage Hmm

TennisWithDeborah · 14/08/2023 16:37

I used to do the clapping because it was important socially to my elderly, isolating neighbours who didn’t really get the chance to see anyone otherwise. But yes, in retrospect it was cringeworthy and I say that as someone who is so grateful to NHS workers.

Boots taped off the non essential items in my local store so customers couldn’t reach them. They included batteries. A small thing, but daft.

And yeah, the Easter egg thread on here in April 2020.

lovewoola · 14/08/2023 16:37

Oh & I remember all the posts saying Londoners were invading the North. I suppose some. people did wake up & act out their GOT fantasies but the majority were just going to the home/families.

bookworm14 · 14/08/2023 16:38

CoffeeWithCheese · 14/08/2023 16:30

...and here we go...

It was inevitable they’d show up.

EbiRaisukaree · 14/08/2023 16:38

hamstersarse · 14/08/2023 16:32

@EbiRaisukaree

If you think clapping, arrow systems, whether a scotch egg was a substantial meal or not, even whether closing schools made a difference to the death rates, that is fine. I don't think much of it made any difference at all - that is my opinion - and you can see this based on countries that didn't have such harsh restrictions. Covid was going to covid, and the lockdowns were always about slowing the curve not stopping the curve. Some people are vulnerable to respiratory illnesses, it happens every year with flu. God forbid I may compare it to flu....but hindsight and all that wink

My post mentioned or dealt with none of those things, many of which were ridiculous. It was in response to someone saying that mitigation measures weren’t needed. I am always interested in what everyone who states that thinks should have happened instead, and if they can extrapolate out what the results of doing nothing would have been.

YetMoreNewBeginnings · 14/08/2023 16:38

Roosmarjin · 14/08/2023 16:33

The debate in some FB running groups. The one hour exercise I seem to remember was advisory. In one group we were just told to be sensible (ie no driving to the arse end of nowhere) and another, people took that to be the law.

Tiers. I remember something (England) about pubs shutting at 11pm.

The one hour thing was literally Michael Gove on breakfast tv and someone asking him his opinion on how long people should be out for.

We isolated/shielded very carefully, and we still do to an extent (as we did before) because of DDs vulnerabilities, but that drove me made. There was never, ever a 1 hour rule and yet the media, and social media, was full of it.

dahliadazed · 14/08/2023 16:38

I always used to keep my distance when out walking, the pavements near me are very wide with grass verges so it’s easy. I would often see a couple, the man looked as if he was recoiling in horror whenever he had to walk past me or anyone else. I still cringe when I see him.

Agree the clapping was cringe worthy. I never joined in as I couldn’t see how it helped, it also seemed like a way for people to get together as people would hang around for ages after chatting.

CandyLeBonBon · 14/08/2023 16:39

The rise and rise of TikTok.

That is all

Mariposa26 · 14/08/2023 16:39

Benches cordoned off and not being able to sit down on the grass even if you were on your own. The police were moving lone sunbathers along in London.

ClawedButler · 14/08/2023 16:40

lovewoola · 14/08/2023 14:44

The mumsnet threads of posters arguing that really nothing is essential (I'm sure someone said nappies weren't at one point).

yep & bread & milk I think.

Yes, I said that I was finding it hard to get the essentials like bread and milk, and was informed tartly that these are NOT essentials.

chicjen · 14/08/2023 16:41

"You're on mute!"
"?"
"You're on mute!"
"Oh! Sorry I think I was on mute there"

Every. Single. Day. 😄

lovewoola · 14/08/2023 16:41

@ClawedButler 🤣🤣

chicjen · 14/08/2023 16:41

Oh and that man who joined a zoom meeting as a cat and had to go "I'm not a cat" 🤣🤣🤣

JauntyJinty · 14/08/2023 16:42

The people that claimed it was only safe to wear surgical masks for a short time or they started making the Co2 levels in your blood start to rise and you pass out.

Never did get an answer to what they thought happened to surgeons while they were working!

GrannyWeatherwaxsHatpin · 14/08/2023 16:42

Most people just tried to get on with things as best they could using a level of common sense.

Problem was, those who applied common sense could get at best a shit load of disapproval and at worse a police fine. It was OK to walk but not sit still, alone? It was OK to take a bottle of water with you on your walk with a friend but not a takeaway coffee? It was OK to walk along a pavement-less open limit road to go to the woods for a walk but not drive the mile to the woods' car park because that meant getting behind the wheel of a car? It was better to walk the more crowded urban streets than travel out of the city to open and empty spaces?

Kabbalah · 14/08/2023 16:42

Hamandpeas · 14/08/2023 16:23

Oh the clapping. They came out on our street with their banners, clapping, banging saucepans.

Me - I sat inside with my glass of wine cursing. I worked at a GP surgery doing 60 hours a week with little to no NHS provided PPE. We had to rely on the partners to buy decent PPE and the kindness of patients to provide us with decent masks, etc. And Boris, out there clapping away - I actually threw something at the tv.

The GP surgeries in my area refused to see any patients face to face so I don't where you were ?. And Boris nearly died from it, or do you think that was all a pantomime, just to gaslight the gullible?

sqirrelfriends · 14/08/2023 16:42

Blowing bubbles in the garden and hearing neighbours complaining that they could be full of covid for all they knew.

Worrying about going to the shops for something I missed as I’d already been out.

Almost running out of toilet roll because they never had any in when I went shopping.

Some knob on Facebook selling toilet roll, I can’t remember the price but I was a bit pissed off.

The clapping, and the shaming on Facebook “we didn’t see many of the street supporting the nurses today 😔 .” Fuck off Sandra, we all know you have people round constantly.

DoubleShotEspresso · 14/08/2023 16:42

Think for me the weekly guilt-tripped clapping was painfully cringe even at the time.

The Captain Tom stuff was transparent to us too-it all seemed so stage managed by the family and again cringe.

Didn't mind the rainbows at all, kind of cheered me up to be honest.

No clue who the Marsh family are but perhaps that's no bad thing?

Detested the whole nonsense of eat out to help out, to the point I had a massive falling out with a close family member who insisted on its' wisdom, which in our area proved to be a total time bomb culminating in us landing squarely in the top risk tier. This was a short time after me having to attend close family funerals, all of which were limited on numbers and not permitted signing or a wake-will never forget how sickening that felt.

The Gavin Williamson game playing with local councils was unforgivable to me, I suppose not so much cringe, just pure wickedness.

The daily "Doom n Gloom" manipulation of numbers that any 10 year old could tell you were a total fabrication.

The hospital consultant who told me " we of course appreciate special needs children are precious to their own families" when I enquired about the reported DNR orders for SEN children admitted with Covid19.

Isitautumnyet23 · 14/08/2023 16:43

People washing their shopping.
Thursday clapping.
Zoom quizzes.
The queues outside the supermarket, round the car park 🙈

Usernamen · 14/08/2023 16:44

hamstersarse · 14/08/2023 16:21

Hindsight is wonderful, especially backed up by all the knowledge we have gained since.

I know some people don't believe this but there were people who all thought it was batshit at the time, they didn't need hindsight. Chris Whitty was always very clear that "for most people this is a mild illness" but for some reason people didn't want to hear that.

This was me. Ignored the rules after the first few weeks, after it became more and more apparent that the risk had been overestimated in the beginning.

I went on holiday overseas during lockdown 1 (to a country that had lifted their lockdown already) to find a fair few Brits and Irish people in my hotel who had done the exact same thing. I left London just before it went into Tier 4 in December 2020 and staycationed in two Tier 2 areas, where I maxed out the freedoms that were shortly after taken away when the whole country was plunged back into lockdown in January - ate out lots, went to an exercise class, went to the cinema twice, went to the theatre, went clothes shopping etc. DP and I refer to that time as “lockdown arbitrage”, and it was the best of times because it felt good to stick it to the most incompetent government in my lifetime.

Ngmi · 14/08/2023 16:45

Where were you all during covid? This site was 90% stay the fuck at home while I was being called selfish for daring to be pregnant during a pandemic.

WestwardHo1 · 14/08/2023 16:46

Kabbalah · 14/08/2023 16:42

The GP surgeries in my area refused to see any patients face to face so I don't where you were ?. And Boris nearly died from it, or do you think that was all a pantomime, just to gaslight the gullible?

Show quote history

I think it's been fairly well established that Boris didn't "nearly die" from it.

User2346 · 14/08/2023 16:46

Clapping
Captain Tom
Doorstep photoshoots
Kitchen Disco
Dr Hilary telling us to wear face masks to swim in the sea.
Piers Morgan ranting “its only one Christmas get a grip” then buggering off to Antigua that very Christmas.
Clare Balding’s adverts about learning how to Whats App every morning.

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