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?

My kids missed out on precious years with their nana who was diagnosed with cancer pretty much as soon as lockdown ended. She died within the year. My mum stopped going out as much and I think it has aged her/ accelerated her dementia. We all got Covid anyway. Kids all have development and mental health problems. And for what? To stop some 85 year olds
dying of a virus that probably would have been killed by the flu anyway within a year or two. Yes it was a ridiculous waster of our time. The first lock down in March understandable and worth it. The successive lockdowns most definately not.

The vaccine triggered my chronic psoriasis. I'll never get rid of it now. The pressure to take a barely tested vaccine was madness imho.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing. It was an unprecedented situation and people were very scared.

Some old bag?
Perhaps she was a frightened pensioner

I didn't do any of that and I'm pretty sure my neighbors probably judged me at the time, I went to work, went shopping and the only change was not going out

I had to stop myself posting on here to disagree with the crazies as anyone not toeing the line was rounded on

I remember on particular bonkers thread about going for a walk in the country and not touching the gates. I wonder if all the shopping washers and clothes quarantiners realise how mad they were

The conspiracy theorists and those who went to the extent of washing their shopping are two extremes. Most of us were somewhere in the middle and just got on with it.

I didn't clap or draw rainbows but I did follow lockdown and distancing rules. No, I don't feel much differently in hindsight. It's easy to forget now, with a vaccinated population that has built up immunity, that covid was a very nasty disease that killed huge numbers of people even with lockdown measures. Without lockdown and distancing, even more would've died and the NHS would've been swamped. Almost every country had a lockdown of some description, we weren't the only ones. It bought time for doctors and scientists to work out what they were dealing with and for effective treatements and vaccines to be found. You are always going to get those who take it to extremes, but on the whole, no, I don't feel stupid or feel I would have done much differently in hindsight.

I did none of those things. We just kept to ourselves and enjoyed the peace and quiet really, and left everyone else to do whatever they were doing. At the time I thought everyone out on the doorstep banging shite out of pans was deranged.

People were doing what they were told to do. I don't really think there's anything cringe about it because you didn't know there were parties every other day at number 10 did you?

Hindsight is wonderful isn't it?

Before we knew how covid was transmitted and before there were vaccines it was very scary for many people. Collective clapping, and the like, helped people feel less alone and to get through things.

I lost around 2.5 years of my life to helping my DD through MH issues massively exacerbated by the pandemic. Just getting through each day was a struggle.

People went collectively a bit mad tbh, understandably so. The groupthink and eagerness to dob neighbours in was a bit scary though. Amazing how quick people turn against one another.

Which is why I am glad I didn't do any of it

It was clearly ridiculous at the time. The hysteria on here was hilarious if it wasn't so worrying.

It'll be an interesting case study for future social scientists in how to control and manipulate the population through fearmongering.

I don't know what you are talking about? What evidence do you want? What evidence don't I have? It sounds like you know nothing about the subject under the discussion, and just think that throwing in a stock phrase like this somehow answers the point. It doesn't.

If you have something to say, then say it. What evidence don't I have?

It's the fact they restricted outdoor exercise where it was safest and that led to the mental health issues of hundreds of thousands!! It was shocking

What annoyed me most was that in the actual rules, it wasn't restricted. The law never said anything about only exercising for an hour, for example. Politicians went on to news shows and said things that were not in the rules but were then repeated as if they were ("I'm out for my daily hour of allowed walking"). It really pissed me off at the time.
If they wanted to make it a rule you could only exercise for an hour, put it in the law. Don't pluck it from the air in a news interview.

It is only madness in retrospect (and some of it wasn’t that mad anyway).

It was a collective response to health and livelihood being possibly irreversibly changed. There was so much which was unknown at that time.

Also, it was a bad virus then. We have all been habituated to it now, and people think that we overreacted, but the facts say otherwise.

I clapped and I enjoyed it, don’t regret it at all or find it cringey really. Mainly because it was nice to stand on the doorstep and see people and smile and wave and have a quick chat.

I didn’t spy on anyone though, was not bothered at all how many times someone went outside or if they went to the shop just for chocolate.

The thing that really fucks me off the most is not being able to watch my DS in his first Christmas nativity. Our school only does them for reception so he’ll never get to do it. Also wasn’t allowed to go to his first sports day, which made no sense at all considering I stood in the playground with the very same parents every single day. Even worse was watching the Euros at the same time and seeing how many “important people” were allowed to fly in from other countries to attend a football game. Absolute joke.

I appreciate I’m lucky that this is all I have to moan about though.

I know a couple of people who have got lifelong autoimmune illnesses since the vaccine. Of course it could be a coincidence but the timings seem to fit. DD got multiple pulmonary embolisms and will be affected for life, went from a healthy 18yo to a very sick young adult with 3x autoimmune illness diagnosis (and counting) and on blood thinners for life.

I was dismissed as an uneducated bigot who wanted to kill grannies when I pointed out how dumb it all was at the time. So I have very little sympathy for people only now realising they made twats of themselves.

My wife and daughters did the clapping for the NHS religiously. I refused to join in, even though the NHS literally saved my life at the start of the pandemic. I massively appreciate the staff that work in the NHS but I found the clapping thing cringeworthily patronising. How about we just show them our appreciation by paying them what they're worth and funding the service sufficiently so that they can do their jobs effectively?

As a "key worker" it was nice to be appreciated for a while. Our crew room was plastered with all the lovely messages from our residents.

I didn't do any of that ridiculous clapping shite or put signs up in my windows.

But what it did remind me is that we are only living in a civil society because we have everything on hand all of the time. The minute there's a hint of panic so many people went batshit crazy stock piling and fighting over things. We really are not much different to animals when things are scarce.

I do remember my husband fretting one day because he wanted to go out on his bike, but we'd already been out with the dog.

You could spend days out on the moors where we live and not encounter another human, as I pointed out to him and told him he was being daft.

When I'm drowning in a caseload with a half staffed team of colleagues and getting the 97th memo this week about how we can't afford a pad of post-its in the Trust... the memory of those claps will pay all the bills and fix the shitty building falling apart.

Yeah. Claps. Woo yeah. Claps. Pay all the bills those do.

Same I tried my best to avoid any sort of band wagon! I followed the rules but i absolutely spent Xmas 2020 with my family.

I'm not in the UK (had left about two months before the first lockdown) but even leaving aside UK-specific stuff like clapping for the NHS, I don't recognise any of this behaviour. I obeyed lockdown and distancing guidelines, but didn't condemn neighbours for anything, think about the 'essential' quality of Easter eggs, or get antsy about sitting on park benches.

One friend in the home counties was reported to the hotline by her previously civil next-door neighbours for staying out running past the allotted hour for exercise when she had just come home from a hospital shift where she lost her first Covid patient. They had left her a note on her front door to tell her they had done so.