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 GP, dentist, hospital board all send me texts the day before an appointment asking me if I have symptoms of COVID. How would I know?

I worked in a pharmacy. Still remember being told I would personally be responsible for killing babies because we could not get supplies of calpol. People were nasty. I cried in the toilet that day. Panic buying got out of hand.

Life in general was pretty much the same for us... all 4 of us ... me, dh, dd18 and dd19 at the time all worked in key worker positions. Get up, walk dog, go to work, go home, eat, sleep. Weekends spent as a family, just less visiting friends or other places.

if covid or the next pandemic had affected the under 10s In the way it had affected the over 70s would we still be saying that it was a waste?

Every single child in the country was not isolated. My DD is a teacher and worked all through the lockdowns, keyworkers children and vulnerable children were in school, if the children she taught weren't keeping up with their work they were brought into school. It is pointless having a discussion if you just make things up so I will leave you to it.

Things went a bit mad in places. But I don't think the ones trying to do the right thing and appreciate NHS workers and the like are the ones who should feel shame. The people doling out dodgy PPE contracts to their friends are the ones who should do that.

I remember going back to work just after the first lockdown

It was insane

We could walk down from the top of the kitchen but couldn't walk up again

We could work arse to arse,but couldn't turn round at any point

We couldn't go near the office where the top bosses worked but they could stand there shouting at you

I remember doing some tidying up on the dining area,when a lovely gent walked up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder

My boss went mental as I'd not left 2 meters between us-the gent walked up to me!

Another was the track and trace-one bloke refused to leave his details as 'the fucking csa will get me,i have 18 kids and they will make me pay,the government are not finding where i am!',boss going mental at me and telling me (I'm 5'7 and female) to kick him out (a 6'2 built like a brick shit house bloke)

If I'd tried,he would have kicked off (I refused-Oddly boss didn't come out and deal with him either once id refused)

We had so much hand sanitizer stolen,we ended up buying massive cheap bags of it from b&m

People spitting at us went up and so did people shitting in the toliets-not in the toliet but all around it

We where not allowed to have a drink-we had to provide our own (fine) but we where not allowed to go get them to drink them

We had to use a bowl to take your money and to give change when serving people-we still had to touch the money to put it/take it out of the till

We had to spray the canopies outside on the tables and use blue roll to wipe tables down (much whinging from boss as we used too much)

Unsupportive bosses who would make up and then change on a whim,their own rules to suit themselves

All madness

Some people even had the vaccines! Absolute madness. It’s all crazy.

"I agree with absolutely everything you’ve said but I don’t know anyone who thought the clapping was helping the NHS, was it not more to show appreciation?"

The same people who showed them so much appreciation wished them out of their jobs if they didn't take the vaccine. Madness.

Agreed

I do recall one weird thread where some dickhead was frothing at someone going to the shop for milk because 'it wasn't essential' (they had water in the tap). Apparently you were only allowed one shopping trip a week and if you forgot something then bad luck. 😂

Probably not. My sons neighbour has a residential home nearby. The hospital board emptied beds for covid patients. He lost 26 inmates in a month. He was broken as were the staff. He cried in the garden my son said.

It would be more sensible to protect the under 10s than 70+ in my mind. But still I'd have probably have needed to have seen bodies in the streets before supporting lockdown to the extent it was at times.

Most of the blame has to go to the government for their complete lack of pandemic planning despite a pandemic being well overdue and tip of the national risk register. Massive shower of shites.

All I can say is if I'd had a glimpse of this post in Jan 21 I'd have found the next year or so a lot less stressful! Interesting to see how many have changed their minds. Still quite a few in the "if only we'd locked down sooner" brigade but definitely fewer it seems. Happy times.

There is a lot of people who enjoyed it because working from home etc, except there were vast swathes of people who work in food industry, power industry, refuse supermarkets etc not just NHS, who kept the country going.

Weirdly a lot of people think it's just NHS who were working.

Many of these people didn't have opportunity to work at home so they had to go to work in buildings with hundreds of people for minimum wage, but weren't allowed to go to pub after that as it's dangerous.

@Devonbabs that's really well put.

It was an air-borne virus and that's about all we knew, for a really long time. Human nature = stay the fuck away from threat = here we are, 2024, still on this earth.

@Annielou67 I agree. We didn't know that it wasn't going to be ebola or worse.

I do think you can divide the world into people who have the imaginative intelligence to project possible outcomes and those who can't. I know that's going to fuck a lot here right off, but I think you could see that very clearly at the time. It didn't occur to some people to worry about what wasn't known or to try and find out and understand as much as they could of whatever evidence was available at any given stage, and it did to others. The latter group were more likely to take the fact that we knew nothing very seriously indeed.

In my experience it did correlate to an outward-looking, 'liberal' personal constitution that is interested in the world beyond their own experience. People who already knew about Ebola for example because they don't just read about world events that affect them personally - or about the plague because they're interested in the history of humanity and social development - were shit fucking scared tbh. And with good reason - as I said, we didn't know if it was going to be plague-like.

Plenty on this thread are basically saying 'look how right I was to not have the intelligence to imagine how bad it could get.'

Hindsight's 20/20, for the blind.

This. Times a million

The good news is I now know precisely which village idiots/school parents are the people to be strenuously avoided.

The neighbourhood policing was a real low point. I doubt those self-appointed arbiters of local morality who rapidly took it upon themselves to give orders, tell people off, inspect their shopping baskets, dictate who they talked to and report them, had ever felt so important since their school prefect days (or ever will again). I despise those people - two or three school parents in particular - and to this day avoid them like the plague.

As for 'shaming' my household for refusing to clap like performing seals on our doorstep every week, that sort of wankery only makes me double down in my determination to do (or not do) precisely as I like in my own home.

A place in the industrial area a few miles away were even letting off a fucking air-raid siren every Thursday at 8am. Goodness knows where they dug up that little relic.

They were horrible days, the like of which I hope never to witness again in my lifetime. The compliance of the populace with every order issued from no. 10 apparently surprised even the government.

I do not see that as a good thing.

It was madness! The police turned up at my door one night because a neighbour saw me carrying a crate of beer into the house and assumed I was having a party!

And to all those saying that the 20 year olds who died of Covid were at risk, yes of course they were. But the risk was statistically very, very small. We don't close motorways because some people die in car accidents, we consider the risk overall to be worth taking. Or, as Lord Sumption (poster boy for sceptics) put it, "there's more to life than the avoidance of death".

“Plenty on this thread are basically saying 'look how right I was to not have the intelligence to imagine how bad it could get.'”

This times a million.

@AreYouVeryAnti

They were at risk because hospitals were buckling. They had insufficient staff and resources to care for all patients. Therefore a 20 year old requiring treatment for ANY ailment was not receiving adequate care.

@WinterDeWinter yeah the people who didn't support lockdown are all selfish morons who don't know anything and have never heard of Ebola 🙄

Perhaps they were willing to take the risk with the virus because they don't trust their government.

You know, the government who tell us that the world is overpopulated and there's a climate crisis on the one hand, but then lockdown "to protect us all"

I believe they were trying to take peoples freedoms away. At one point they were trying to prevent you from going to theatres, pubs, cinemas etc if you didn't have the vaccine.

"You know, the government who tell us that the world is overpopulated and there's a climate crisis on the one hand, but then lockdown "to protect us all"

QED.

@Dacadactyl

Well thankfully, most people across Europe did support and adhere to lockdown rules. And took the vaccine.