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?

That lot just saw it as a way to make money, a sort of Covid cash point, they will never be held accountable for the stuff they got up to. I remember at the time thinking that this was such a serious situation that even a creature like Johnson would step up to the plate and show true leadership, but no, it was just an excuse to ransack the coffers, give money and contracts to mates, to flout the rules that most of us stuck to. The things that have come out about what they said and did has been awful and I bet we still don't and never will know the half of it.

It wasnt really clapping the nhs it was a way for people to feel less isolated amd have a quick chat to their neighbours.

While I don't disagree, I'm still aghast that it didn't occur to people that chatting to their neighbours was not forbidden. You could stand outside your houses and chat at any point. We didn't need Boris and Matt to tell us when we were allowed to chat. THAT'S what I always found so disturbing - that so many people just rolled over and agonised over what was "allowed".

Hear hear. Also, the way people acted you would be forgiven for thinking that prior to covid no one ever died, everyone lived to be a million, full of the joys of spring, never had any issues blah blah blah. It was as if some people suddenly realised they were mortal and it scared the snot out of them so much that they couldn't actually access their brains.

People who died due to the lockdowns were just as dead as people who died from covid. The difference is, covid was an illness that unfortunately spread. Lockdown was a conscious choice, something that didn't need to happen.

The worshipping of a characterful old geezer for walking round his garden. Jeez, we even named a nearby hospital after him! What was that all about?

I didn't do any of that.

Yes I kept trying to tell my friend just use fairy liquid.

The NHS is swamped now.

I'm still shocked that many parents actually had their children jabbed for Covid when they were the least at risk group and it didn't prevent transmission. The basic idea on all vaccinations or jabs is that they confer a benefit to the recipient.

Interestingly children are at more risk of serious illness or death from chickenpox but few vaccinate their children for it. Also part of the NHS logic for not including chickenpox in children's regular vaccinations is that if they did so then there would be children going round with chickenpox with no visible symptoms that could then lead to higher cases of shingles in the elderly.

Once again children and the younger generation were sacrificed for the older generations.

I rather think you will find the balance is still covid caused rathe more deaths than all the additionals caused by lockdowns

The underfunding of the nhs is also causing a lot of cancer deaths - don't blame covid for political failings

The reduction in standards for education is also a political choice as to how to recover from covid and lockdowns

We weren’t allowed to wear uniforms or scrubs outside the hospital on pain of death! We had to collect clean scrubs every day and bag them at night. So they may have been clinical staff you saw. The early hour was useful for some of us.

I think lots of people on this thread are anti-lockdown generally and they're not just talking about clapping and banging.

Personally, I found it pretty excruciating, yes. But I was also seriously, seriously grateful to all people who were at best working incredibly hard in fucking grim circumstances, and at worst putting their own lives on the line. I wanted them to feel the support and gratitude we all had, and no-one came up with a better idea.

Yes, and when my DD went back to school the constant enforced anti bac-ing left her with raw, bleeding hands, which ended up infected and she had to take 10 days worth of antibiotics. I tried to send in our own gentle emollient soap to use instead but that wasn’t permitted.

@Calliopespa

"Yes I kept trying to tell my friend just use fairy liquid."

You were smart - the detergent would breakdown the virus walls. That said I don't expect anyone listened to you though.

I hope your uneducated lucky guess works out so well for you next time

I lived on a big development at the time in a tiny flat with no outdoor space - they’d roped off the shared garden bit but it was melting in my flat so I ducked under the rope do a little workout for 30 mins. Anyway someone called the police on me 😂and then when the police turned up & did nothing because I wasn’t breaking the law, came out and screamed in my face.

This man, of course, had a house so had a garden where he could exercise & had no appreciation for how tough it was being cooped up in a flat all day long.

The main thing I cringe about was the way people turned against each other & moaned on Facebook / reported to the police etc. Soo pathetic !! I remeber on one local Facebook group someone saying people out running should be wearing masks so they didn’t breathe on her while she did her walk - the entitlement was just astounding

When I look back it was utter madness.

I remember we drove to a village near us just to have a different walk and I came up with a "back story" that I shared with my husband and kids in case the police arrested us en route for taking an unnecessary journey. The village is a 20 minute drive from our house 😂

If anti bac has sufficient alcohol in it then it does kill viruses

The funniest thing that happened to me was in a cafe. I'd been asked to use hand sanitizer as I entered, which I had but I realised it was strong smelling and being prone to migraine headed directly for the loos to wash it off. The same women had followed me and was waiting for me outside the loos demanding I used sanitizer again.
I told her I'd used sanitizer then washed my hands, how clean did she want my hands to be?!
She insisted I needed to use it because I'd touched the bathroom door and berated me for not carrying my own since I struggled so much with the stuff on offer.

She continued berating me all the way to the table about how it was her job to keep everyone safe, including me. It's a good job she didn't know I had escaped out of my tier for the day.

After that I carried a bit of water around in my bag with a drop of lavender in case I ran into any more crazy sanitizer ladies.

Although it's yet to be proven the vaccines we're harmful to children

@Youdontevengohere

And as @Calliopespa pointed out the soap would have actually worked in combating a virus.

I'm puzzled about why people couldn't see this - I mean it says anti bacterial on the sodding label.

‘rewrite the narrative’

I wasn’t on MN during Covid but just had a look back at some threads and I think perhaps a lot of comments were 🤪🤪🤯, given the reality that we later saw.

Those comments can’t be rewritten, they are all still there.

My only regret is that I wasn’t on MN

I was looking for something on facebook earlier and stumbled across a post where a parenting group had descended in to chaos over a parent taking their child to see Santa 1 mile outside their council area when we had the tier system. It does make you think “ did that happen? was it real?”

I'm sorry for your loss. I think it contributed to my father's death too. But that doesn't change the fact that it undoubtedly saved millions of lives across Europe.

In terms of public health policy it was the right thing to do.

i have a vivid memory of the scenes on TV from the Italian hospitals and knew we were in for something unknown (this was in Feb 2020) and at the time I could not understand why this country which has a natural advantage because it is an island was still letting flights in. We could have saved a lot of lives and brought some space to plan the national response if we had locked down hard and fast at the first sign of how serious this was going to be. The way I feel now after the way our government behaved was that if we ever face a similar situation I will not be nearly as respectful of any rules. I and everyone I know stuck to them while the very people who made them were doing as they pleased. The Test and Trace service should have been given to local public health teams who know the demographics and geography of their areas, not handed out like sweeties to private firms with no medical background or knowledge, 37 billion quid to the likes of Serco who have demonstrated blinding incompetence in every government contract they have ever been handed. That Dido Harding has never been held to account and seems to have escaped all scrutiny.

@Allfur

"Although it's yet to be proven the vaccines we're harmful to children"

Personally without any evidence otherwise I would agree that the covid jabs were not harmful to children but at the same they didn't give them any benefit.

You may as well have jabbed them for yellow fever because living in the UK they were also at a low risk from that.