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?

They need to get rid of it or it won’t have any impact the next time.

I think slipper and 'leisure wear' manufacturers were behind it all 🤔

I don’t get how it feels so long ago, and like yesterday at the same time. Did they furlough the passing of time as well?

But I do miss it sometimes. Nowhere to go, nowhere to be, all time of the world on my hands. Like being a child again, when sky is high, days are long and weekends are endless. Now it’s all just a mad rat race rush with not a moment to spare to take a breath.

That was Michael Gove.

The reason it stuck was because not once, in all of his subsequent tv appearances - which were many - did he bother to clarify.

Nobody else in government bothered to do so either.

At some point I have no doubt he, or someone else involved at the time, will use "but but we didn't say that was a rule" as an excuse for something.

My GP surgery still has the Covid signs plastered everywhere. Together with the plastic chair chained to a pole outside where you had to sit and wait to be called in for your appointment. I remember walking past with my dog on many occasions as seeing people sat there in all weathers waiting to be allowed into the surgery.

I also recall a rather heated discussion with a man who hadn’t read an article in our doom laden local rag properly and was trying to tell me that 20,000 people in our little area were infected. He couldn’t comprehend that this would mean at least 20 people living in each property to make up this number. His view was it’s what the paper said so it must be correct!

I don’t think anyone with a disabled child or loved one will ever forget the news that their child wouldn’t be eligible for a ventilator should they catch it and become seriously ill.

Have a new born just as lock down was announced, and towards the end of the year my ever so lovely neighbours making a snide comment around my parents coming to visit and it not being allowed. However there was a support bubble for anyone with young babies which I took great pleasure in telling them about.

There was a poster on this very forum who suggested that people be 'financially incentivised' to let authorities know if a neighbour had more than the 'permitted' number of guests around for Christmas. In other words, paid to spy and inform on your neighbours. I'm pretty sure this person was serious too. That's the kind of weird and nasty time it was.

I've just remembered the QR codes. There was I think a thread on here where people admitted they just took photos of them - that got heated.

Imagine having to stay home cos someone who happened to be in a restaurant on the same day as you had tested positive for covid, but you could sit next to someone on the bus and be oblivious

The plus point of the socially distanced queuing was the chance to have a go at those people who insist on standing with their toes virtually in the backs of your shoes, breathing down your neck without feeling unreasonably awkward about it. Didn't quite make up for wasting 2 hours a week queuing just to keep the bloody fridge stocked - often with food I wouldn't normally touch because there wasn't a huge amount of choice, at times.

This thread is making me laugh.

I remember posting that I'd gone to the supermarket twice in one day and a queue of posters lining up to tell me how many people I'd killed.

Apparently there's a thing where noone can remember things that happened in 2021.

If you come across some footage (YouTube videos etc) from that time it’s so cringe how people were behaving (Gal Gadot anyone?). I thought the whole hysteria was ridiculous (although I understand the fear that people were vulnerable and dying), but having to walk round supermarkets one way etc was madness. Even at work I was told off for removing my mask to drink some water!

One thing I know, if it ever happened again I think people would just tell the government to eff off with their distancing and isolating.

I definitely took photos of them. Noone in the restaurants gave a shit.

Questions: where do I begin?

Were the crying nurses actors?

Why did Greta Thunberg go silent during the pandemic? Did the adults pulling her puppet strings decide she wasn't the "fear of the day", and give her some time off? Why wasn't she telling us "you see, it wasn't so bad after all, not flying for a while?"

Why was the "nu" variant renamed "omicron?" Were they afraid that Saint Boris would do his Little Britain impression, and say "alas, we have a nuuuuuuuuuuuu variant?" like Marjorie Dawes would say "we have a noooooooo member"?

Why didn't the Bible burst into flames when Saint Boris swore on it to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? (Privileges Committee hearing)

Any of us can be sent to prison for lying about the small matter of who was driving a speeding car. When will Saint Boris be prosecuted for telling much bigger lies? The oath he took (see above) was binding. Ditto Tony Blair, for that matter, with his big lie about weapons of mass destruction.

Why did the government decide that frightening the pants off the public was the right thing to do? What happened to "keep calm and carry on"?

Why did it occur to NOBODY that lockdowns lasting months on end would cause massive, massive harm?

Why was plastic waste suddenly not an issue, as environmentalists had been preaching and moralising to us about using less of it? All those masks in Greta's oceans.

Had nobody in government heard the story of "the boy who cried wolf", when it came to deliberately spreading fear and panic? I will never believe in any "emergency" or "crisis" again in my life.

The vocab! Nouns as verbs, to handsan, to bubble. to mask up, Probably more.

People in Gazebos peeing themselves rather than use a toilet.
Orderingn a drink in a pub if seated. Did one cheek on a barstool count as seated?

@Brananan oh yes absolutely

So many nonsense rules

Remember the shops with the boarded up aisles of 'non essentials'? There was a post here where someone said she was in the chemist's to buy 'essential' medicine and wondered if she should stroll all the way over to the cosmetics aisle and buy a tube of eyeliner.

The consensus was that no, she should not. Because that would be selfish.

I have a friend in my village who was 90 at the time of the pandemic. She thought it was all total bollocks and kept going out in her car and helping others. She never once got anxious over it.

I can remember frequently telling my children that when they are older the Covid pandemic will be viewed as an event of mass hysteria where the measures/ restrictions were largely ineffective and in the long term will cause more deaths than they save.

But people will counter that it is easy to say that now with hindsight. And that they should remember that this isn't hindsight and that a lot of people were pointing this out at the time.

I enjoyed lockdown. I had a baby 3 weeks before it all kicked off. My husband ended up off work for several months The weather was lovely so we went for a long walk along the river every day. We were quite happy in our little baby bubble.

I'm disappointed in how things have been in the aftermath, like no lessons were learned. I had hoped there'd be understanding that things had now changed.

We all WFH and now we're used to it and found ourselves more productive, they want us back in the office for no reason 5 days a week.
We made our kids and teens miss out on real life for months and now criticise them for being anxious and unable to cope with real life.
We banged pots and pans and applauded the NHS and now whine that they don't deserve the pay rises they've earned.
We made a big fuss of key workers and then went straight back to treating them like dirt afterwards.

It's like we made all these sacrifices to keep the older generation safe and at the end of it all, they called us lazy and told us to go back to exactly how it had been before, as though it all never happened.

Had nobody in government heard the story of "the boy who cried wolf", when it came to deliberately spreading fear and panic? I will never believe in any "emergency" or "crisis" again in my life.

Me neither

Do you remember the person worrying about catching it from a gate?

A very dangerous person. With a brain.

I left the village FB group because people were questioning where she was going and what she was doing.