To look back on the things we did in lockdown and cringe?

[Applescruffle]

Isn't it all just really cringeworthy when we look back?

The clapping on our doorsteps, all that false commradarie and "we're all in this together" and the drawings of rainbows in people's windows?
Condemning our neighbours for buying Easter Eggs because they weren't "essential" and wondering whether we would get arrested for sitting on a park bench?

At the time I, and probably loads of us, thought we were doing the right things but doesn't it all just look so false and hollow now when we look back and see that number 10 were having parties and Dominic Cummings was running around the country testing his eyesight? My kids missed out on so much while this was going on, my mental and physical health has still not recovered from the effects of lockdown, and for what?

Know what I mean?

Maternity units will have women well into their 40s, in fact. And older mothers being higher risk, they'll have needed more appointments than the average pregnant woman.

But generally, if you're going to make a claim that they were more able to cope with appointments without support, that needs to be evidenced. Especially as they were potentially experiencing something other patients weren't.

So as I said, pregnant women and new mothers as a cohort were treated badly and thrown under the bus during the pandemic. Even if you want to set the whole thing up as a comparison with other ill people, which I don't, it is plain fact that there were some things only pregnant women and new mothers experienced.

I look back at an incident with DD in a different light with hindsight. Lots of people round here clapped. Adult DD is a nurse and her bedroom was at the front of the house. After listening to it after a gruelling day she stuck her head out of her bedroom window as the clapping was tailing off and shouted "Just shut the fuck up and give us a fucking pay rise!"

At the time I was a bit embarrassed as I thought it was uncouth plus there were other peoples DC on their doorsteps and she had shouted fuck at about 1000 decibels (twice!) I imagined a MN thread about the rude nurse at No.27.

Now I'm fucking clapping her for doing it!

Sorry but whilst we are on the topic of cringe moments during lockdown. We must never forget Gal Gadot: Imagine 😂

I'm so glad that things have returned back to normal. Not all that nonsense talk of the 'new normal' and how we would never again be able to meet in large gatherings and festivals and things would be a thing of the past.

I did both. I was classed as ECV, however I saw my consultant December 2019 and they said that I wasn't according to them. Although am slightly more vulnerable. It can live on surfaces, so that did actually make sense. I still did childcare for my DD and lifted my GC over the play park railings. I had to use buses. Goods were coming from China and being sprayed before being put out. At that point we didn't know how long it did survive and didn't have treatments. We were also trying to guard against mutation.

It made more sense to me to take the precautions that I did, but ignore some of the rules.

Good for her

Yeah my partner who I spent time with on a daily basis was apparently " dangerous" as soon as they announced lockdown. Serious what a crock of shit Didn't take a blind bit of notice of that one.

And I actually worked throughout covid mainly delivering stuff to those staying indoors.

Still not had covid

My mum died during it but not from it. She kept ringing the doctor but they wouldn't see her because covid and sent antibiotics regularly for chest infection. Which did sweet fuck all for her heart failure.

The absolute spite and smugness on Facebook (mainly from our local village group sadly) was one of the reasons I left social media and never went back. There were weekly admonishments for the those (like me) who wouldn't do the fucking ridiculous pot bang. We had a neighbour at the time whose son would get in his car and sound the horn continuously to "do his part". There were photos taken of interlopers into the village daring to come through on a walk or park their cars in the public car park. There were people dobbing in those doing more that one walk a day. It was horrible.

@WoshPank

"Restrictions put some people at risk, just as surely as not having restrictions did/does. There's no way to protect everyone. All we could do was choose which groups to protect and which ones to expose to greater risk."

With an average Covid death age of 82 the group we chose to protect was the elderly and group we expected to take the downside was children and younger people through disrupted education, increased national debt, mental health etc.

This was a choice that largely the nation was in agreement on "at the time ".

Oh yes. I remember one thread where a woman was literally torn a new one after she admitted wanting to sit in a (recently re-opened) virtually empty cinema without a mask on.
The vitriol aimed at her was something else!

We never did any of those things, thankfully.

i honestly didn't know people were so strict with it all until i read it on here, i thought the media were just sensationalising, because nobody around me seemed to care.

We didn’t do the clapping in our road - we all took the opportunity to sit outside and chat to the neighbours, while having a few socially-distanced drinks!

I'm going to leave it here, but I just want to be extra super duper clear that I'm not saying it wasn't immeasurably shit for many pregnant women, I'm just saying I thought the restrictions we faced were reasonable in the broader context of restrictions faced by other groups and the general population.

As I said in a previous post, covid in general was a problem where there were no good outcomes, only less bad ones and I think that nuance is often missed on these threads.

I think looking back a large number of people now feel awkward or embarrassed or gullible or misled / conned about their behaviour during Covid and now would rather not talk about it or admit.

It's a bit like having voted for Brexit.

I knew it was pretty pointless and never over took part in the ridiculous doorstep clapping, my neighbours were always outdoing each other, banging pans, reporting each other to the police for walking too much etc. totally bonkers.

I am ECV and took my kids out of school 2 weeks before the school closed. My sister has two boys who are severely autistic and she's a single mum so she took her kids out too and we formed a bubble without knowing what it was from that day. We didn't see anybody else but spent most of our days together taking it in turns to go shopping once a week ( she did most of it though). Our kids loved every second of lock down. Camping in the garden, endless bbqs, home school and making cakes and learning new skills. Luckily we had a ton of craft stuff ( I got a potters wheel for Xmas previous) and a load of diy stuff so we were kept really occupied. I have always had a big larder stock so shopping was kept to a minimum in the first 2-3 months.

Loved lockdown!

We wouldn't be were we are without vaccinations and treatments. A lot of those working within HIV/tropical diseases etc were confident of developing a vaccine, but we are lucky that the mutations didn't go the other way.

We never clapped but loved to hear the noise coming from the village.

We are reasonably rural so it was fine to be out and about. I don't think I did anything cringe except rant at someone on FB who was spouting false science. Lots of idiots suddenly thought they was expects with their F in science GCSE.

I watched on in horror at lots of stupid shit though. Mostly around prats naming and shaming on SM. Like someone posting on FB a photo of two people not socail distancing on a walk, and then the walker saying "that's my husband you F#@king stupid curtains twitching, noisy stupid cow. You should know, I live on your street" ( small village). I looked on thinking FML it's like putting an advert out on the fact that your nasty and thick.

But judged silently. In my head 🤐

I don't think anyone now would agree that was a necessary action, but I still don't agree with the people who feel the need to sneer all over threads that they wouldn't haven't dreamed of anything so ridiculous as "following the rules" or "being scared"
I would say some rules were important to try to reduce the number of deaths or at least slow the death rate down so resources could cope.

However there was a lot of badly thought out rules that were just stupid. One I mentioned earlier was about 6 lads being able to sit in a pub garden ordering pint after pint but a couple couldn't have an alcoholic drink with their meal in the same restaurant/pub and had to make do with lemonade or similar With their steak dinner.
Dead right I'm sneering at rules like this.

They were taking the absolute piss out of people!!

Yes, most people were at least willing to go along with lockdown and restrictions, if not outright supportive. When that stopped being the case, we stopped having restrictions. It's why we couldn't possibly have any now.

I don't know to what extent it was understood that we were choosing who to throw under the bus, though. There are still very often posts from people who don't appear to have clocked that it's not a moral high ground situation.

The clapping. It was toe curling at the time but even worse now.

Same. I also don’t want to be that person but I never did any of that either.

Wiped groceries ❌
Clapped for the NHS ❌
Condemned neighbours ❌

Queued for the supermarket ✅
Stayed at home when required ✅
Got vaccinated ✅
Condemned Covidiots ✅
Laughed at twatty Dominic Cummings ✅

It was an unprecedented time for most members of modern society.

The concept of individuals having to substantially moderate their behaviour when their own risk was likely to be very low, in the context of risks that were very high on a widespread public health level, was very difficult to convey. I thought the government did a poor job at the time and unforgivably the actions of some senior figures really served to pretty much irreversibly undermine the messaging over the course of the pandemic.

It was not surprising that the majority of the general public lack the critical thinking skills to grasp the fundamental issues in such an extreme and novel circumstance, hence the continued and nonsensical variations on the "I'll make my own risk assessment" theme despite overwhelming evidence that public health doesn't and cannot work in that manner in a pandemic. That was 100% predictable and not nearly enough effort was made to educate the population in ways that they would understand from the outset. That left the door open for the inevitable conspiracy theories to influence a lot of people in a short space of time.

We are incredibly fortunate that the omicron variant came along and changed the entire course of the pandemic.

It's telling that people still don't understand just how close our intensive care services were to becoming overwhelmed, and a complete lack of insight into the extent that a modern healthcare system would collapse in that eventuality.

Then you agree with me that pregnant women were thrown under the bus, you just think it was justifiable. That's an argument that could've been made without pretending they were all thirtysomething and healthy.

And pregnant women are a specific group who experience some things that nobody else does. It's therefore entirely reasonable to speak about them and their welfare specifically.

I never did any of the ridiculous clapping nonsense or put up rainbows, my kids painted some rainbows for something to do because they were supposed to be in school and I had to WFH and look after them.
I did follow all the rules at the time but do feel angry mainly at how much my kids missed out on and how traumatic it was for me to have them at home and try and do my job.
I think we did need to lock down at the time before we had the vaccine or any treatments but I think if this ever happened again schools would not be closed, at least not completely- it's made so much lasting damage to children and young people