Do any of arch-lockdowners regret it?

[Refractory]

Just that really.

I haven’t really been on MN since 2020 because I found the near complete support for lockdown far too upsetting.

the lockdowners in my life seem to not think about it much. For them, it’s just over.

with hindsight do you wish you’d been more sceptical?

would love a civil conversation about this.

I think the arch lockdowners were the ones who saved the lives of the people who broke the rules.

No I don’t regret it. It gave my mum an extra 18 months on this planet and she didn’t have to die alone on a ventilator through a screen. Worth every second.

The schools should have returned in June

that was unforgivable

Nope. It should have happened earlier.

We should have locked down earlier and been stricter. My dad died of covid.

We were seeing images of Italian bodies, of full morgues etc. they did the only thing they knew helped. It got out of control in the end because of inconsistencies with them trying to make the public happy and have it both ways. I hugely feel for the people who were impacted so horrendously from it but I hate people trying to pick it apart with hindsight

I’m so sorry for your loss ❤️

My elder daughter’s second child was due in April 2020, booked in for a c-section. Obviously my son-in-law wanted to be there for the birth so after discussions with the consultant and midwife it was agreed that myself and my husband would isolate as soon as possible - we actually did this before Boris the clown told us to, so that I could go look after their 18 month old daughter. We also decided that I would stay with them from the night before she had to go in, until 2 weeks after my daughter and grandson came home. This was in case they brought Covid from the maternity hospital.
My younger daughter had 2 young children also, she was furloughed but my son-in-law was an essential worker so he was the ‘errand boy’ for all 3 households, fetching anything we needed. He came in no contact with the public through his job, worked alone, had full PPE from the start and stripped and showered before seeing his family.
My 2 daughters are also best friends and found it so hard to be apart from each other and each other’s children.
i was heartbroken when I left my eldest daughter, we all cried not knowing when I’d hold that days old baby again, read stories etc to my granddaughter, help my daughter after her c-section - I’ve been involved in all my grandchildren’s lives (I now have 5) and looked after them when my daughters went back to their jobs after maternity leave.

i started to think - surely as none of us are going anywhere, seeing anyone, going to the shops etc then how on earth can we catch Covid, and more importantly how could we give Covid to each other, where would we ‘catch it’ from?! We were led to believe that there was this invisible monster just waiting to get us at anytime and anywhere - it was on surfaces, it was on your delivered groceries, it was on your post, it was on your door handles (whether anyone had touched them or not!) - we were advised to wipe everything with antibacterial wipes, leave the post unopened for 2 days. It was complete madness! I said very early on, if it’s so contagious and lurking on everything then why haven’t supermarket staff been dropping like flies?! It must be airborne just like colds and flu, and if you touch your nose/sneeze then touch something which in turn is touched (very quickly afterwards) then you will get the virus, whether it’s Covid, flu, the common cold. I was right, I figured it out way before it was admitted that that’s how it was spread.

From that moment on I did everything to keep MY family safe - we didn’t eat out to help out in the August, no we kept to ourselves but were scared to break the rules, scared if we did that a neighbour would report us. Ridiculous really as we couldn’t be expected to make the right decision for our family but people were expected to go to work and miraculously Covid wouldn’t get them!

My now 4 year old grandson has had problems socialising, he wasn’t taken to the shops, a cafe, soft play, get together with children the same age - it’s had a profound effect on him. By December 2020 my daughters were allowed to form a support bubble, for families with babies under 1 - so for 8 months my daughter just had to get on with it, bringing up a baby with no extended family support.

I was my younger daughter’s childcare ‘bubble’ - how I was supposed to change my then 2 year old grandson’s nappy at a distance I don’t know. I changed him, cuddled him, comforted him, all close to me.

Then of course we found out about Boris and his cronies having parties etc, basically putting two fingers up at us, the great unwashed. I am so angry that they have got away with this.

Would I follow rules like this again? NO WAY!!!! I would do what I thought best and what my family thought best (we’ve talked about this many times over the last 4 years), we’d keep ourselves safe thereby not being a danger to others and spend time together as a family.

(Some of my family caught Covid, some didn’t (within the same family group - figure that one out) but not during any of the lockdowns)

I worked for the NHS during covid and if you broke the rules and ignored lockdown I most certainly do judge you and think you are a complete cunt!

I thought we should have reacted to the crisis earlier. in spring 2020

I was always a bit sceptical about the furlough schemes but I could see that the government wanted to support business, which is a positive.

I thought that once the initial crisis was over, we might have gone back to a more normal way of being more quickly, with precautions in place. I think masks do help stop spread a little bit.

I thought we should have had some form of school exams from the get go, as that was obviously such a nightmare every which way, and even with a lot of consideration being taken into account for mitigating circumstances, exams would have been better than assessed grades.

I had to shield and was very careful. I have had covid a few times now; but then I had the vaccine. I think the vaccine initiatives were really impressive.

I was also impressed at how people were so public spirited. I think most people would indeed respond in a public spirited way if we had another national crisis.

I’m in New South Wales and I feel that our level of lockdown was set about right. We could travel freely in the area that we lived in, could go to the shops, playgrounds etc. We couldn’t leave Australia but personally I was ok with that as the major restriction.
I found homeschooling hard but doable.
Victoria has much more draconian restrictions and I would have probably found them a lot harder to follow. Ours seemed to be done in a very sensible way that most people were prepared to follow.

I did the bare minimum (stay home when told, wear masks when required, isolate when Covid-stricken and get vaccinated when available).

No wiping of groceries.

No clapping for the NHS.

No dobbing in neighbours who didn’t follow household mixing rules.

I was thoroughly sick of the MN posters who became tyrants and called everybody else selfish and happily called them Covidiots.

This reminds me of NHS workers who were demanding extra blue light discounts during Covid and pretending to be frontline staff but were really admin staff tucked away safely away from patients in a separate building or working from home.

Actually, I care what @lovelysunshine22 thinks.

I think the views of our NHS workers are particularly valid. They were the ones facing an unknown virus with little protection as well as not having sufficient resources to treat the sickest COVID patients.

I think what the NHS frontline staff experienced during the pandemic was harrowing and it’s fairly shocking to see you brush off an opinion from someone who had to deal firsthand with the virus just because it doesn’t tally with your own thoughts.

@SecretSoul she doesn’t say she’s frontline or dealt with the virus first hand, you’ve assumed that.

True, but they weren’t the majority.

I’m fucking grateful to our doctors and nurses who worked their arses off in unknown and difficult circumstances.

So am I, but I doubt those people are on MN calling people cunts.

I’m in New Zealand and I still feel we got it right.

I was suffering from autoimmune disease at the time and was vulnerable and I had a parent with cancer who was very vulnerable. I appreciated the protection it gave us until we could be sufficiently vaccinated.

I started the pandemic with 8 very elderly relatives 2 of whom were super vulnerable. I ended the pandemic with them all healthy and happy.

My lovely neighbour lost her son to covid early on in the pandemic. He was an ambulance driver who just happened to have controlled type 1 diabetes. Where I work two children lost parents and one of my husband’s really good customers lost four members of staff.
All the people I know who died were early on and non white.

No I don’t regret the lockdown. I regret it not happening sooner.

My best friend is an ICU nurse and I regret how damaged she was by what she saw and how hard she had to work.

It was incredibly hard for people. My friends, family, neighbours and work colleagues were amazing.

Subsequently one of my lovely relatives has died of covid. He picked it up and died very quickly. Its a nasty thing.

I have assumed that, you’re right. That’s based on that poster’s frustration at people who broke lockdown rules. Admin staff are much less likely to be so passionate about people who put others at risk.

Like you, I was also irritated at individuals who piggybacked onto the NHS scheme when they weren’t doctors or nurses. But the majority were doctors, nurses, or others on the front line. No poibt fixating on a tiny minority of people taking advantage.

There’s always pisstakers in every walk of life. I prefer to focus on the large majority who are genuine.

We can agree to disagree on that.

I can see why doctors and nurses would still be furious at those that broke the rules for selfish, trivial reasons. And I can absolutely see why they’d be here calling them cunts - and they’re not wrong.

'Lockdowners'??

This was a worldwide pandemic of a virus that nobody had any immunity to. Therefore, the result of having no quarantines would have been that the NHS folded and people walked out of their jobs, having to choose who would die and there would have been abject chaos.

It is unbelievable that there are still people with your mentality OP. You're upset?!

My only thoughts about the Lockdowns is that initially it was far too little, far too late, which meant we had months and months of restrictions that really shouldn't have been necessary.

I don't have any views on it as being a particularly good or bad time. I'd refuse point blank to wear a mask again if something similar happened, but at the same time I miss the tranquillity of the early days of lockdown, the deserted streets and shops, people actually keeping a respectful distance for once, and the far more relaxed pace of life.

My partner was the calmest I've ever seen them during lockdown due to most of the above, what with not having to deal with a packed commute and the general public being their usual obnoxious selves, so on balance it was probably a good period for them.

Btw I'm one of the few people who still hasn't had Covid (yet) and only one of my children caught it. But that doesn't stop me realising how dangerous it was for others and how some people died before their time as a result of it.