It's been five years since the pandemic and I have questions

[BaggyTrousing]

• will Paddington ever be investigated for his role in the departure of our dear old queen?
• was the woman who wrote "and the people stayed home" ever taken to task for her contribution to the awfulness?
• what about that nurse who was roaring about bread in a supermarket car park? Hopefully shunned and avoided at least
• how do you all feel now about protecting the NHS?

I can't get that to work for me.

Well that's good then. That's the support they need.

The problem with pasta availability was panic buyers clearing the shelves. The same happened with toilet paper and various other products.

This led to the supermarkets instigating their own rationing, saying that customers could only buy 2 or 3 of a particular product at the same time. However there was nothing to stop you coming straight back into the shop again and buying another 2 or 3. Many people did that.

It wasn't panic buying though was it? They looked into it and what it was was everyone putting one or two packets extra in their regular shop in case they suddenly had to isolate. So not panicking, but buying a little more than normal.

Trouble is that with the way supply chains are in the UK, ie very responsive but not a lot of stock hanging around, that caused shortages. So instead of changing the supply model they restricted the end consumer. Meaning that people then bought the absolute maximum they could (psychology of scarcity) and it developed into a vicious circle.

And instead of criticising the people in charge of logistics, who could see exactly what was happening but failed to solve it, we all turned on each other and called each other selfish.

I may still be working through the pack of soap bars I bought in Costco in Feb 2020. There's two left to unwrap. I got through less than usual in 2020 as there was nowhere to go once lockdown happened. I hasten to add that I also bought my bogrolls then before it was trendy and they were all the rage in the March.

I'd like to ask how peoples' sense of taste was so badly damaged by a virus.
I present exhibit A: a 2020 Christmas decoration... (allegedly...)
So many terrible poems and pieces of "art"

It was the cheap laughs and satire that lugged me through two years of depression. I had some dark thoughts, especially in winter-spring 2021. I alternated between anger and total emptiness. So many rules or "rules" made no sense, but challenging them just lead to abuse. It was a hideous virtue spiral that had a huge amount of collateral damage

It's now been 5 years since I saw MiL. She only died just over 2 years ago, but the travel and carehome restrictions dragged on until she was close to death and becoming very confused. By the time family visits were finally permitted, she'd forgotten who her family were and it would have been cruel to the DCs to see her in that state and DH preferred their final memories of her to be as she was at home in autumn 2019. We had travelled to see her in summer 2021 (first week borders reopened), but only DH could visit in that health setting and it was far too long before strict visiting restrictions were eased.
She couldn't be preserved. Terminal decline was inevitable. Restrictions made her last two years a lonely existance and accelerated her decline, socially and through access (lack of) to ongoing health care in 2020. Clearly it wasn't only the NHS with issues with routine health provision.
The only mercy was that she had a normal funeral. The heavily restricted, socially distanced funerals of 2020/21 were unnecessarily barbaric to bereaved people.

And I’m guessing the rationing was a huge problem with large families, hence why they walked straight back in again possibly.
Ration books next time then 😳

We compared my pics from shops here with my family's pics from their shops in CE and their were stocked. They were in stricter lockdown from the start and went in week or two before us (hence why I knew to hit a library and cash and carry week before lock down here was even announced).

Let's not forget people posting pics of their 10+ packs of 24 rolls and talking about having to stuff tins and dry goods under beds because they had no more space.
It was panic buying.

It's always toilet paper. Any panic buying is pasta and toilet paper shortage in shops.
I still remember wondering how much people shit and maybe bum showers might be better for them....

This.

I remember a work colleague at the time laughing about the fact her husband had filled their garage with packs & packs of toilet paper.

I was secretly thinking What a tosser.

I do not remember that. Its bloody awful.

@BogRollBOGOF I’m so sorry

I suspect there were many people like your MIL and it absolutely boils my piss that these situations were treated as if other forms of suffering/causes of death just didn’t matter as long as they didn’t die of Covid.

It is. We need a content warning on that video.

That's one of the layers that made me so infuriated and angry at the time. There's so many ways that humans can suffer, and the excessive and drawn out extent of the restrictions failed to eliminate most of them and made many worse.

Meanwhile all the scaremongering has dented my relationship with DM. She'd just had some non-critical health issues which being older are slower to get through, and again the disarray of the NHS has made worse. She wasn't unreasonable to be alarmed, but the length of discouragement of social contact turned weeks to months to years, and it's fucking hard to communicate with a deaf technophobe who lives at a distance and has bought into the media scaremongering that her DGCs are disease vectors and won't let them travel down to her and enter the house 🤦‍♀️ Her social group of 70-80yos never regained their social momentum and took years of their social energy. They do still meet but it's lunch/ afternoons early and as a collective lost the drive for evening activities like the theatre. Plus some didn't survive the restrictions period anyway because lockdown doesn't stop heart attacks, strokes or cancer.

I remember early on saying that all lockdown was doing was shuffling the cards of death and illness around... oh that comment did not go down well to put it incredibly mildly.

Oh well another stupid rule... why in certain cities just before the Tiers phase, was it safe to go to a cafe, but not sit in someone's lounge 🤦‍♀️

Why could 6 people from seperate households go to the pub together for a few months, but it was illegal for 2 families of 2 households to go for a walk outside together? Which one really was the higher risk?

Why could 6 people from seperate households go to the pub together for a few months, but it was illegal for 2 families of 2 households to go for a walk outside together? Which one really was the higher risk?

I remember trying to book an afternoon tea with a group from 2 households (us and husbands parents) but there were 7 of us.

They said we couldn't book as there were 7 of us, fair enough. I asked if we could book a table of 4 and a table of 3 so we could at least be in the same room and they said No 😂

Clearly I should have just booked a table for 4 and another for 3 and that would have been fine as long as no family connection mentioned.

I remember in mid March 2020 DD has a cough that would not subside. It got so bad one evening it sounded as if she was struggling to breathe a bit. At the time we were told not to visit our local A&E unless it was a literal case of life or death. So I called 111 and after a few questions they said I should call an ambulance. The ambulance arrived 2 hours later. It then took another 30 for the paramedics to come to our front door. Both men were dressed like spacemen. They had huge body suits on with helmets and face coverings. This was apparently the requirement when attending to a suspected Covid patient (at the time there were about a dozen reported cases in our area). I’ll never forget DD’s face when she was woken up to find these two men in her room. They were both lovely. One was from New Zealand the other Australia. I remember one saying he had no idea when he’d ever be able to go home and visit his family.

I just remembered all of this yesterday when talking to a teacher at DD’s school about illness and absence and she casually said it’s fine for pupils with Covid to come to school if their symptoms are mild and they feel up to it. How times change!

Funny how attitudes have changed. Anyone who dared criticise the rules on here are at the time of Covid, were really laid into and labelled evil granny killers.

Now there is almost unanimous agreement that a lot of it was very silly.

The amounts that were allowed were still enough for a large family for a few days. The problem was that the panic buying hysteria fueled itself. Even people who weren’t originally panic buyers soon realised they needed to stock up when they saw something in stock, because next time they came there would probably be an empty shelf.

My neighbour, who is a nurse, has told me how many incurable cancers they ended up dealing with, because many people either didn’t turn up for screening or report unusual symptoms as they were more scared of Covid than they were of routine check ups.

You only have to read the transcripts of Matt Hancock’s WhatsApps to realise how we were all played and covid was so politicised. The whole world fell for a mass sociogenic illness - history is littered with examples.

Yes, Covid exists, yes, it can be very serious for the elderly and immuno compromised but even at the time, Whitty confidently stated that for the vast majority it would be a mild inconvenience, but that message was quickly drowned out by the shouting hysteria and the fact it didn’t suit the narrative of the time. Even at the time I questioned the logic and raised the point that resources should have been directed to those who were vulnerable - not shut down all of society - but inevitably I was accused of being heartless and cruel. I even had one individual attack me online and say they, ‘hoped I’d die of Covid’!

What do you want me (as a daughter a of mother who "sadly died" because she had covid, whereas as dad just "died" because cancer wasn't "sad" enough), to do? Sit in a corner weeping and wailing for the rest of my days? Fuck that shit. If people found humour/happiness at that time, then good for them I say. All the posts of "tell that to the bereaved" that were rife on here was infuriating... using our grief to score a point or shutdown a conversation was a low blow. If people want to find humour in the madness that was going on then fair play to them. The bereaved didn't need "telling" by anyone because, guess what, we already knew.

@Porridgeislife I had a lockdown baby too and it makes me so happy other people with newborns at the same time managed to enjoy it. Unfortunately it was shit for me, my mum lives a ferry away and didn't meet her grandson until he was nearly 18 months old and being locked in with zero support from wider family and useless husband sent my mental health plummeting and majorly contributed to my divorce.

@the80sweregreat I remember seeing that and was so incensed I did the same and sent a stinging email to my (also Tory) MP. He replied in quite careful language but DH, on reading it, said that reading between the lines our MP thought Cummings was a c**y but obviously couldn’t say it. Our MP is fab, even for a Tory.

Why could 6 people from seperate households go to the pub together for a few months, but it was illegal for 2 families of 2 households to go for a walk outside together? Which one really was the higher risk?

The lack of any sort of logical thinking absolutely drove me insane. And any criticism of it was shot down in a hail of accusations of granny-killing. It made me realise that the problem with common sense is that it ain't as fucking common as you'd hope.

There was definitely a lack of logic in some rules.
DD and DS couldn't mix at school but as soon as they left the school gates they could walk home together, (after leaving via different but adjacent gates 5 minutes apart). They were mixing with classmates all day but then as soon as they left the school gates they couldn't walk home with them

The Great Barrington Declaration gave me hope, but it was trashed by Fauci, Collins and their arse kissers, and the people who wrote/signed it got cancelled, muted, and accused of "misinformation and disinformation" Fauci totally killed the dialogue between scientists. Same regarding the origin of the virus. Collins agreed initially that the lab leak was a posibility, he got a call from Fauci and suddenly the lab leak was conspiracy theory
It was such a crazy time! The common language changed. The likes of social distancing, safe & effective, misinformation, disinformation, isolation, flatten the curve, still grate my brain

yes, I remember seeing a video of one funeral - all the chairs were spaced two feet apart. Son went to comfort his widowed mother and the director/celebrant told him to step away. Utterly ridiculous, as if he wouldn't be hugging her the moment they stepped outside, and the celebrant themselves wasn't in any more "danger" from two people standing together breathing at them than two people standing separately.