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?

@fatshamedbyfamily
we started too late.

We didn't close boarders quickly enough.

We didn't implement masks and social distancing quickly enough (remember Boris and his hand shaking?)

And there was the help out eat out in summer 2020. We were literally encouraged to gather.

If it had been more robust earlier if the testing was implemented quicker it's likely the lockdown wouldn't have needed to be so drawn out and a lower death toll.

No it isn't "another thing" - it is the same thing

This is exactly why we had to follow the rules, the slower it spread, the less overwhelmed the NHS would have been, the more possible it would have been to keep other services open.

We should have shut down earlier and harder, and protected the NHS better - but at least we did what we did, which was better than nothing

The constant rolling death toll on the news, was for that very purpose, I think. What purpose was it supposed to serve, if not to scare the living daylights out of people. No wonder so many people suffered from such severe mental anxieties. So many people, and teens are still suffering from the fallout, of that time, and now the NHS does not even have the resources to deal with it all.

Yes I think a lot of people look back at it from the perspective of what Covid is like now. Yes it would have been mad to have lockdowns because of the current mutation of covid particularly when we have all been vaccinated but when it was new, it was really dangerous.

It was a strange time. I think there were lots of very different experiences.

Weirdly, for me, a lot of the insanity passed me by. I was working a lot of hours - my assistant had been furlough (cost saving), so I was doing two people's jobs but WFH.

DCs (adult, locked down with us) and DH were working in a supermarket and starting work in the early hours.

When DH and I were not working in our jobs we were working on our allotment which was a haven of sanity.

There wasn't a lot of door step clapping around here. And I don't know anyone who made banana bread!

Absolutely.

I clapped, and the children next door drew a rainbow that was in the window.
I don't regret adhering to the rules at all, we simply didn't know enough at the time, and it was frightening?
Now of course it's easy to look back and think that was all mental, but I don't regret how I was at the height of lockdown at all

We can see how other parties tackled it by looking at Sweden. At the time sensible people were saying see what they are doing differently and can this work here? But again we were dismissed as crazy COVID deniers
The pandemic response in this country also didn't follow the previously agreed plans which would have been very different to what actually happened.
It just felt like (and still does in some cases) too many people loved the drama of it all without thinking about the huge ongoing consequences of what we did. There were alternatives ways but we weren't allowed to talk about them (see The Great Barrington Declaration as an example)

Yeah I haven't forgotten that parliament voted against giving the nhs a pay rise and actually clapped and cheered when the vote didn't go through not so long ago before covid.

This. The lockdown was unfortunately necessary (I'm not saying all of the restrictions or timings were correct, but broadly we needed to reduce transmission). The rainbows and clapping and all the rest were tools people used to cope with an unprecedented situation we couldn't have seen coming even a couple of months before.

We did the rainbows and the teddies in the windows as our toddler loved spotting them out on our walks but none of the rest.

The hypocrisy of Downing Street doesn't make me regret my own actions. My family and I did the best we could with the information we had at the time. That our government couldn't do the same reflects on them and their immorality, not on me.

We just didn’t do most of those things.
We stayed home from school and work and didn’t see family but apart from that we carried on as normal as possible.
So many people just lost all common sense and perspective.
I hated all the rhetoric as if we were at war and I was ‘front line’ teaching. I believe my kids came through it relatively unscathed partly because we worked hard to be as normal as we could.
I know this was hard to do for many.

People who broke the rules were responsible for a certain amount of spread, but the fact that a certain proportion of people are ignorant, arrogant, and think they know best is well known, and factored into the calculations. The number of people who broke the rules was very predictable and part of the models.

I often look back on some people's Facebook pages and see the insanity they used to post.

I fell out with a few neighbours, because I called them out on their hypocrisy when they were moaning about other people on road breaking rules but they were doing same theirselves.

What a load of shit this thread is.
A virus comes along that is literally killing at an exceptional rate, that we know nothing about, that we don't have a cute for, and we are wrong for listening to pandemic experts? Get a grip.

It's absolutely shit that our leaders at the time are dickheads. I didn't stand and clap, because to be honest I couldn't be arsed with that crap. I did go out to buy Easter eggs. But do you know what? I still think the country, in general, did the right thing. That virus had every possibility of killing children, healthy adults, disabled people, the elderly- we just didn't know. Some of the rules were batshit, others were not.

The only thing that should be different next time is to hold our government accountable for their actions through the time too.

Initial restrictions and lockdowns were needed and we complied.

The doorstep clapping, drawing rainbows etc was bonkers and we ignored all that nonsense.

It really did - and even though I thought it had gone quite mad at the time, I was still really sucked in. I had DS2 in Feb 2021 and remember:

• Reading threads about how insanely selfish and stupid anyone 'deliberately getting pregnant in a pandemic' was and really getting myself upset about it. My first child took 2 years with three miscarriages along the way so I absolutely did not have the luxury of time, but I got really worked up reading about how I was a terrible person who might as well have just started punching nurses if I was so determined to further burden the NHS.
• MN being a big factor in my decision to stop sending DC1 to nursery once I was on maternity leave (which I had to start early for medical reasons), again because I stupidly kept reading threads about how awful it was that the nurseries were still open and how insane/selfish/hateful towards nursery staff parents still using them were. I hobbled around for 6 weeks with a 2.5 year old and SPD so bad I struggled to walk and looking back I have no idea why!

Obviously it was my fault for reading all this stuff, but I was pregnant, vulnerable and emotional and it really affected me.

It was also only really when DC2 got to the age that DC1 had been in the first lockdown (just turned 2) that I realised just how bad/borderline neglectful our parenting had been in the first lockdown as we were both trying to work full-time with a toddler and no childcare - I actually find it quite painful to look back on because I feel so guilty.

My neighbour had the good grace to apologise to me a year ago.

I was pregnant during the last lockdown but had a private midwife so her antenatal visits to my home every few weeks continued as usual.

My neighbour called the police each time, would stand screaming outside my house that it was illegal, and one time threw water at her.

She told me that it drove her inane and it’s taken a lot of h therapy to recover from.

One of my favorites is before and even now people say we can't trust the Tory's.

Yet with this people were hanging on their everyword and doing what they were told even though it made no sense.

I think we just didn’t know any better and followed the rules for the ‘better good’. Yes some of it was cringy but it’s done now x

My nan died in a care home on the same day boris and his mates were having a grand time pissing it up.

She'd spent all of lockdown all alone with dementia, wondering why we'd all suddenly abandoned her.

The day she died we were allowed to see her only once for 15-20 min, masked and gloved up so she had no idea who we were; I was kicked out by a nurse for taking my glove off to hold her hand.

Her funeral was a tiny pathetic socially distant affair; no hugging or comforting each other allowed, we are a massive family but you'd have thought she didnt have a soul in the world.

I'll never forget covid / lockdown, and I'll never forgive that silly smug fluffy-haired roly-poly c**t either

It is on eo fhte perennial puzzles of UK political life. The majority of people don't agree with their policies but keep voting them in.