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?

However, one good thing that came out of lockdown for us personally- before anyone jumps on me - was home education. DS thrived being educated at home so we never sent him back.

What a fascinating thread, the huge number of posts in one day suggests people feel strongly about the topic yet it never seems to be discussed in real life.

Also the number of people who claim to not have engaged with the madness, banging pots, losing their minds judging others for having 2 walks a day etc.

Thats not how I remember it, the vitriol for the few who could see the madness clearly was poisonous and I am grateful for the anti-dementor threads, and few lockdown sceptic voices in the media that helped me retain my sanity.

That's rubbish

Well if I had crashed or broken down then the police/recovery guys! It was madness.

Getting out of the house for a drive was a matter of survival for us.

I did one pot banging session , just for the opportunity to wave at neighbours. Tom made me puke from day one.

Dominic Cummings driving to test his eyesight, conveniently to his parents. That angered me.

Discovering the nudge theory on here and investigating.

Can we agree though that doesn't negate the fact that it was a fucking crazy time and a lot of people did follow the rules, for a lot of reasons.

Nobody's really saying the people who followed the actual rules were crazy though, are they? I followed the rules, because they were the rules. The clapping, curtain-twitching and ranting about people being virtually murderers for going out for more than their allotted hour etc weren't part of the rules though.

You managed to express this a lot more eloquently than I did! Agree with you 100%.

Human kind salivates at the thought it can lord it over someone else.

People did it at the time and others are doing it now.

It's just luck which side you're on at any time - because for some reason everyone always wants to pick a side.

This thread is the pits. People clearly haven't learned anything from it at all! That's life, hindsight eh, it was all for the best, we'd do it all again, la la la...can people really not join the dots and think about WHY our politicians, the best informed people in the country, weren't worried one bit about socialising, not wearing masks etc? Or why the TV was full of the rich/famous/important just going about their business, moving around freely, taking their international flights? As for 'the NHS would've been swamped' - don't get me started! 'Stay at home, protect the NHS' was a catastrophic message. Thousands of people died just because they didn't want to be a bother and stayed at home 'till they were at death's door. The NHS is supposed to protect US! I was angry about that messaging right from the start! So soo much of it was really obvious, blatant lies, I dont think you had to be a bloody genius to see that even at the time. But you could only rebel in tiny ways. The awesome power of the media, and of fear, and of the mob. Combined.

@AstralSpace your post is so hyperbolic. When you are dealing with mass populations, there is little option but to impose fairly broad, all-encompassing rules, which unfortunately, will have deleterious outcomes for some.

There were some tragic, awful situations, there really were (I knew a couple whose son died by suicide close to the start of the lockdowns. So had all the funeral restrictions imaginable - essentially no attendees, then nobody able to come and visit them in the torturous months afterwards. They both nearly went mad from grief, and now are both unwell themselves, I really feel precipitated by grief and loneliness).

But this was a completely new situation, that the world was ill-equipped to deal with. Governments had to make decisions and impose clear, unequivocal rules - if you had allowed for discretion, it would never have worked.

In Ireland, I feel the Government broadly did aim to do their best, upheld the rules themselves in most situations (certainly none of the shocking contemptuous partying of Downing Street) and provided clear messaging. Of course there were internal disagreements among experts, and equally, the rules did not impact everyone equally - that was hard.

Same. There seems to be a view on here that any of us who voiced any concerns at the time didn’t follow the rules. I did. The actual rules, not the insane ‘rules’ that people on here made up for some weird reason.

@WoshPank agreed but the number of people who would have died of Covid without lockdown would have far exceeded those using DA refuges.

Lady at number 2 in our cul de sac still isn’t speaking to most of the road for not being prompt enough to come out and clap.

Easter eggs - Cadbury wanted to avoid waste so delivered them to local hospitals. They gave us 10,000 eggs - we had 2,300 staff 😬 it was quite an effort to share them out in a covid safe way. We stored them all along the board room wall so saw them every morning at our covid management meetings.

Yeah so i didn't do a lot of the shit like:

• quarantining my mail
• clapping on my doorstep
• wiping my shopping down
• judging anyones shopping etc

We did a lot of rule bending especially after the first big lockdown eased off. I chatted to my neighbours across the garden and went on more walks etc than were allowed. I never had shopping delivered.

The main big thing we did was exercise a lot of caution around the elderly. I collected shopping for an elderly neighbour and we were extremely careful about any time we were in a healthcare setting.

To be honest though, i really objected to the impact on children and did everything in my power to limit how much mine were affected by it.

It was nuts alright, but it wasn’t ok to say so at the time (not on here anyway - I tried).

Can safely say I didn’t bang a single pan and carried on my life pretty much as usual (I’m massively antisocial at the best of times so no change there).

I did have a rainbow in my window but it was this one. Only took it down recently.

My mother in law's hospital appointment was put back so long that by the time she got diagnosed with cancer it was terminal.
So sorry for your loss.

Yep I did the same at roller disco. Long before covid obviously. Thought I'd relive my youth as well. Fell over, smashed my head onto the wooden floor. Gave myself bad concussion and came close to breaking my neck. 8 hours strapped to a spinal board with a big rigid plastic neck brace on was definitely not my idea of fun. Safe to say my feet will never be setting foot in a pair of roller skates, roller blades or ice skates ever again.

Brilliant! 😂

Who actually had the pan bashing idea in the first place? It’s such a specific and odd suggestion, we can’t have all collectively decided to do it at once. Very curious to know who it was…

We were discussing it yesterday. Husband saw two incidences of road rage in our town. He was saying people are still so angry and rude. So different from pre covid.

Some people are certainly more impatient and rude generally.

We followed the rules, though we didn't do the clapping etc., but it didn't bother me that people did. I thought it nice if they wanted to do that.

The only thing that really, really made me mad were the lies (what I firmly believe were lies), telling us that it all happened because "someone ate a bat in China". I wanted the truth, the whole truth, and I still don't think they've told it.

It started in Italy, no?

DD had to have an official email from her university giving her permission to travel back there via public transport because I wasn't allowed to drive her and take her brothers Welsh police got rather scathing talking about it being a family day out claiming I was trying to make it a holiday 🙄 I'm a single parent I couldn't hand them off to anyone so she took the train with her email in hand she got challenged they seemed disappointed she was a legitimate traveller

I washed one delivery because it was all over the news the depo it came from was shut due to 90%(?) Of the staff tested positive they were only cat litter trays so we gloved and masked up soaped and rinsed them and disposed of the packaging the delivery drover text me later saying he tested positive too we avoided it that time

My biggest lesson was family cannot be relied upon and strangers can be kinder than you think

I can't quite believe that there's someone on this thread who's genuinely arguing that pregnant women/maternity wards had the weakest case for more relaxed rules.

My poor sister had to be told she was miscarrying for the second consecutive time, with no support (herself a midwife).

ALL pregnant women are vulnerable which is widely understood, whether high risk physiologically or not. The ridiculous Mat Ward restrictions and rules meant fathers missed their babies births, and mothers missed much-needed support (which is shocking when when you consider maternity services are in such a woeful state that it's admitted that partners/family are relied upon to provide support to make up for lack of staff).

Birth partners/fathers being absent majorly impacted the mothers, their babies and the fathers themselves. Not just one person unwell and sadly unable to receive visitors.