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?

I was terrified that my mum would die in the beginning and that drove a lot of my sticking to the rules, and feeling upset with people didn't. My mum was high risk with really severe asthma so I was 100% convinced if she got it that I'd lose her. Thankfully she was fully vaccinated before getting covid for the first time. I also found a lot of ableist attitudes to the whole thing quite upsetting. As if people dying from covid was just tough luck and instead of staying in we should just have survival of the fittest.

What I always thought was bonkers though was all the contradictory rules and the tiers and the time when you could go to a football match with thousands of people, but my brother got kicked out of hospital when his child was born. None of it made sense to me at the time when the rules started to relax but weren't fully gone.
Don't even get me started on when my child went back to school for one single day after Christmas and then schools shut again. What on earth was that??

So yes, a lot of it was mad but the fear of covid itself was real for people with a vulnerable loved one pre vaccine. I had a vaccine as soon as I could.

Great post @Whoknows101, it gets to the heart of so much of this.

I remember having several conversations with my older children during the lockdown saying that in years to come people will look back on the Covid lockdowns as mass hysteria and that it will be justified by others saying that "it's easy to say that in hindsight" whereas the reality it's not hindsight- there were many many people pointing this out at the time except that because of the mass hysteria they were shouted down as Covid deniers or anti vaxx or tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists.

None of that is a reason to be ageist.

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

This is interesting, what happened?

Not thrown under the bus. More, also asked to weather restrictions that would have been unimaginable a few months previously.

I think everyone who went through a major life event during that time will remember forever the impact on them.

For me it was my DH leaving me and the baby in recovery, the tiny covid funeral for my dad and breaking the rules by hugging both my mum and my sister when he died.

Wasn’t everyone alone?

People were dying alone, like the 13yo boy who died alone in hospital.

100% this.

I didn't do the clapping but kept isolated. I bought too much in the way of canned and packet food but other than that, not much changed. I'd been having groceries delivered for years before Covid.

Omicron is much less severe and much more transmissible than the other variants. It very quickly overtook the other variants meaning more people could get covid without getting seriously ill.

Combined with vaccines and increased immunity from previous infections it changed covid to the more minor, run of the mill illness it is today. Most covid infections now are of an Omicron variant.

Yes thrown under the bus. Deprioritised. Access to basic support removed and their mental health disregarded because hey, covid.

Thanks, I didn’t know that. By the time Omicron arrived I’d had Covid twice and the vaccine, so had become quite blasé.

That was true of every group with every imaginable need. Those decisions were taken for a reason, and the reason wasn't "let's throw pregnant women under the bus".

Absolutely we saw how easy it was to make people inform on others, how to turn on others.
Nope I dont forgive or forget I have the true nature of a lot of people now.

The mawkishness was intense. Especially the way everyone kept comparing it to war and singing "we'll meet again". In a way, I was glad to be locked away from all the nutters.

I do cringe a bit. I remember posting on here asking if I'd be okay to drive 16 miles to my parents as they had my DDs baby clothes and equipment that I needed for DS.
What was I thinking? I had to pick it up anyway! We didn't do the clap (mainly because the neighbours insisted on banging pans waking DS up every time), didn't quarantine shopping or post, shopped for things that were probably non essential but we did observe social distancing although bubbled with my parents ASAP. We did ignore the Christmas rule though and met up with the family for 3 days.
It was a scary time though. Has screwed up so many kids education and health.

Why sneer at the people who followed them, trying to do the right thing, rather than the people who made them in the first place?

It absolutely was not true of every group, and that fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the situation.

We (society, led by government) made a choice about who to prioritise. So for example we chose to take action that increased the risk to those living with abusers. We chose to take action that increased the risk to people who needed provision of regular HV appointments. We did these things because the idea was that it was the least worst option. That the damage to these groups was justified by the benefits to those most vulnerable to covid.

What you are doing here is saying you think that was the right choice, that it caused the least damage. It might've. Can't rule it out. You're entitled to take a punt on that, but it's a different point.

Not been on Mumsnet long but it seems some people take smugness to a whole new level.

I was always in the shower at 8pm, so i missed all the clapping and whatnot.

People tell me that i didn't really miss anything!

I always thought it was hyperbole. I sodded off to the American Wilderness, walking from Mexico to Canada, where I didn't see people for days at a time (did a lot of walking though) and was called all sorts of names on social media for not "staying at home".

The most bizarre thing was reading the news every ten days or so when I came to get resupplies and thinking "I really don't get it".

Still don't!

No one bashed pans in America though. Suppose that's the lack of NHS!

@ShinyEspeon Why sneer at the people who followed them, trying to do the right thing, rather than the people who made them in the first place?

I'm not sneering at the people trying to do the right thing, after all they had no choice, the restaurant staff was unable to serve them. The point I was making was the madness of it all.
I said a lot of rules were badly thought out. Rules like this made no sense what so ever

I feel guilty about this because so many people lost the lives, the lives of loved one's.

But, I absolutely loved lockdown, the clean air, the refocusing on what really matters. And, as a massive introvert, not feeling guilty about not socialising. That spring was gorgeous.

But like I said I feel bad for feeling this way.

What do mean by no evidence whatsoever? There's plenty of evidence that lockdown saved lives. If anything, the UK delaying the first lockdown cost lives. What I can't find is any reputable studies that claim they didn't.

As others have said, for many of us, it wasn't hindsight though. We knew at the time it was all nonsense - but others not only REFUSED to hear it, they were actually very nasty towards those who said exactly that at the time. That won't be forgotten.