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?

Absolutely this! I simply don't believe the smug, superior folk claiming they knew better all along

I didn't know better. But I was able to apply common sense and logic to most situations.

Hated lockdowns. They were awful for essential retail workers. Having to count customers in, asking customers to stand behind lines taped onto the floor (elderly were the least co-operative). Then when mask wearing was mandatory, ask customers who came in maskless, would they like a mask. Many came up saying that they were exempt.

They claimed that they had asthma. Which being an asthmatic myself, I found that very insulting and upsetting. Then those sunflower lanyards were being abused by the deniers.

Still about 3% of customers shop with masks. Majority wear masks with nose exposed - usually wearing the disposable blue ones which are the worst type of mask for asthmatics. Apart from being useless not covering up both mouth and nose, they look stupid. Think the mask wearing for those 3%, out of that 20% probably has some auto immune issues. Rest is mental health and ‘security blanket’

Essential retail workers are the forgotten heroes of the pandemic. We got thanked for being there. Now it’s moan, moan moan.

I seriously doubt anyone in essential retail has the capacity in their MH to go through that shit ever again. If it happens again- let those who were cushty watching box sets all day long work whilst we do the cushty box set binge watching.

Essential retail workers were thrown in the deep end. Many workers when they applied for jobs probably had applied for retail jobs in clothing, gift shops etc and if had successfully passed the interview and assessments in two or more roles, probably chose the essential retail as hours probably suited them and probably got more hours etc.

If it had been the only time in Downing Street there had been alcohol and cake or any kind of celebration, you could perhaps forgive.

It wasn't, it was almost weekly or even more often.

Even on the evening before the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh.

The hospital rules were appalling though, really lacking in empathy, it's disgusting that people had to die alone. I was worried one of the kids might end up in hospital alone, not particularly from covid, but appendicitis or something random.

Every day there’s another story about the hideous effects of lockdown, this week alone it’s the long term adverse impact on GCSE results and the 30% rise in alcohol related deaths.

Me? You have no idea who I am. I once posted about my daughter being in tears because 22 out of the 29 children in her class were in school, all her best friends were sitting next to each other on their school zoom calls, yet she wasn’t allowed anywhere near anyone and had to work on her own from home while I worked full time next to her. One reply I got was ‘aww poor darling, ask her which of her teachers she wants to kill by going in to school’. She was 5. Glad that sort of post was amusing to you 😳.

My husband's daughter and DIL watched his funeral online. They phoned to tell me that they felt sorry for me because a couple of masked attendees had patted me on the shoulder at the funeral.

I was grateful for those pats, the only human contact that I had after my husband died.

A couple of months later, I had a physio appointment. My GP came in (masked) though she wasn't scheduled to see me, gave me her condolences and patted me on the shoulder.

My DS was admitted to hospital for asthma in 2021 (age 2.5) and it was a bloody nightmare. 1 parent at a time, masked at all times. You couldn't leave a toddler to go and get yourself a coffee or sandwich. I remember a kind nurse making me a cup of tea when I was weeping at 5am. I don't know which was worse, being the night parent trying to keep him in his bed and quiet while wearing a mask with no open windows, or being the day parent who had to keep him contained and explain why there were timeslots for the playroom.

Someone on here told me I was a murderer for daring to take my autistic 5 year old out for a drive to calm her down most days. We were in a tiny 2 bed flat with no garden space.

In hindsight I have zero regrets.

So, I get that it was all a bit shit and the wrong decisions were made, especially at the beginning in the UK, but 7 million people died as it is. What exactly did you want? No mitigation? I think the UK deaths would have been unacceptable to people.

But no it's about a very small group of people who had bad covid having a surprise bday party for someone and rich tories and their mates

Yeah, it is. Because they not only did this repeatedly but they lied about it too, and because of their stupidity they successfully managed to make themselves the focus for a good chunk of the grief and resentment that piled up.

And unlike those other ordinary people who didn't adhere to all the rules (disclaimer, I'm one) they were telling others what they ought to do. They presided over a system where people were criminalised for doing the same things they did. An NHS worker or Aldi cashier who went to their colleague's house for a brew when it was illegal isn't a hypocrite. Boris is.

That's important, because the more unjustifiable aspects of the rules can't be separated from the fact that the people making them weren't the ones who suffered.

I remember in Wales supermarkets and the likes of Wilko, B&M etc - taping off the non essential items, including kettles.

Kettles are 99% essential.

@Clarabell77 The excess death statistics from Sweden, various US states and various other countries tell us who the “numpties” were and it wasn’t the lockdown sceptics.

I’m so sad reading the heartbreaking stories on this thread.

Many of us didn't believe in the rules and vaccines as could see no logic could be applied. Fine if people want to get vaccinated but to almost criminalise those that chose not to? It was frightening how people behaved actually.

I think a few folk on here don’t know how it was for us at the frontline. Once the first lockdown kicked in patient numbers dropped massively on our unit. Prior to that it was bloody chaos. Close to running out of oxygen, crushing benzo tabs to use as sedation because we were running short of IV meds, nursing 3 level three patients at once and non crit care nurses redeployed to us and thrown in at the deep end.
Hate this government with a vengeance but the decision to lockdown was absolutely right.

It was scary at the beginning.. most of us knew someone on a ventilator and/or dying from it. Remember the plastic gloves?
No clapping from me though it was a very, very weird time with some heartbreaking stories.

I think there’s still a lot of collective trauma lingering around post Covid, for so many people. My mum still hasn’t adjusted back to any kind of normality - as an elderly asthmatics with chronic anxiety and OCD she sadly still follows a lot of the rules about social distancing and hardly leaves the house. We moved to a new house 2 years ago and she still can’t face the idea of visiting us yet - I’m not sure if she will ever fully recover

@Youdontevengohere it’s not really funny… that’s how hindsight works. At the time people were expressing those opinions they had no idea of the severity or outcome of the pandemic. Now, with hindsight, they do. So in this case, yes. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

This was obvious at the time though it was just shouted at and torn apart

TBH lockdown was a wet dream for boring pricks who love to follow the kind of pointless rules that if they stopped and actually thought about them would realise were utter horseshit, just because they're told to do so.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I don't think covid was invented to keep people in line, and I gratefully had my vaccines. I didn't throw massive parties or mix with anyone if I was ill. I did keep seeing my parents throughout and I don't feel even slightly guilty about that either.

Spare a thought also for how fucking hideous lockdown was for people in recovery from contamination OCD, who, having spent years in therapy unlearning behaviour like obsessive handwashing were then told actually now you have to do the complete opposite.

Yes and then I found out that quite a few of us felt like this but couldn't say a word online or in real life.
I questioned whether the world had gone mad or I had gone mad.
I really, really hope that if this ever happens again, or anything else similar, that people think critically about what's going on rather than be swept up with the deliberate fear and lose all common sense.

There are experiments that show that most people obey authority even if it means causing harm to others. I'm so disappointed that covid showed this as well.
The amount of people who reported others for breaking stupid rules and people who thought it was fine for others to lose their jobs, income and even health care because they didn't want a vaccination (one which they probably didn't need anyway due to having been exposed to the virus) was really horrible to see.
It was on its way to a real life dystopia.

People tend to have different views depending on their experience and expertise. A domestic violence worker, for example, would likely counter that you have no idea how bad it was for those who were locked down with their abusers. The whole point is, we need all the different types of expertise in the room.

Curious as to who you were potentially murdering within the safely and confinement of your car?!

Nobody will play ball a second time.

But no-one died of anything else. Covid was written on death certificates even if you'd been in a car accident. The figures were shamelessly inflated