Mumsnet during the beginning of the Pandemic - please tell me your stories of the maddest comments you saw

[mumofoneAlonebutokay]

Inspired by chat on another thread - one woman was told not to pop to the shop for milk but to put butter in her coffee instead 😄

I wasn't on mumsnet then but would love to know the maddest comments you saw?

I myself went mad during the pandemic 🙈 and refused to leave the house and judged anybody that did, I'll admit 😬😄 - I wish I'd been calmer

Please share 🥰

Edit - I know how awful the pandemic was for those who lost loved ones, and how serious those losses are - this is just about the unnecessary hysteria and comments stemming from that, not to poke fun at those who lost someone or became ill. 💕

@PyongyangKipperbang to be frank if I was trying to work from home in a too small house with several ‘home schooled kids’ plus a partner also WFH ( and possibly getting on nerves) and worried elderly parents phoning to discuss it every day , then wine o clock would be pretty understandable in the circumstances.

Omggg 😄

There were plenty of posters who enjoyed stirring up negativity and fear. They were clearly telling outright lies.

NannyAndJohn I remember with particular loathing. Her message was constantly things like "This isn't going to get better, I'm afraid. Get used to a quiet life at home, because that's going to be all there is."

That phrase "I'm afraid" made me feel stabby.

I was reading these and finding them funny but then the anger and hatred for my fellow man started coming back so I can't read any further 😤

anyone that did know anything would have been silent anyway

I can’t remember where I read about people putting their groceries in the bath to wash the tins etc.

Not online, but I work in a school and had to hand out covid testing kits to our students. One parent returned them to me with a very rangy message that the cotton wool bud things that we had to stick up our noses were a concern for causing cancer, and that I was endangering students by sending the kits home.

Did I mention this was outside a church. !

Needless to say we ran out of popcorn

Oh I quite agree. It wasnt the drinking that was the issue as far as I was concerned it, it was (as other have mentioned) the sanctimonious and smug who posted in disgust at those us hitting the wine out of desperation, boredom or both.

You know absolutely fuck all about Covid I’m afraid.

Wasn't there someone who claimed they had 3 previously healthy young colleagues who'd died of it?

@PyongyangKipperbang I remember a few Sunday mornings, me and DH starting on Bloody Mary’s at 9.30am while doing1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. I was drunk a lot. No regrets though as it got me through it!

I used to live just off the parkway and there was a ridiculous amount of police presence.

Hardly any when stabbings or other crimes were being committed in the same area, but a concentrated amount just for focusing on people who were trying to get to work or the the supermarket.

This is the lock down entertainment that I was missing 😄😄

That guy mentioned upthread who was recording people go in and out of b&m would've had a field day 😄

Who were probably marathon runners. It was always the previously, mega healthy marathon runners dropping dead in the streets.

I posted in a thread, one that was trying to argue against tight restrictions, an example that my neighbour who had a newborn (who screamed ALL night, we were in a detached house they were about 20 feet away and could still hear it with windows shut, and I mean all night) was suffering from PND and couldn’t get any scrap of support from GP, health visitor or midwife. If it wasn’t for the fact her mum came around every day to take the baby for a few hours and give neighbour a break from the screaming, it would probably be disastrous with, at best, my neighbour having a complete nervous breakdown.

I was told to call the police. I said I never would I’m not that type of person and this was an exceptional case. I was called a cunt for “enabling deaths”

My neighbour still talks about how her mum basically saved her life that summer and suffers from PTSD because of lockdown. I mean was it REALLY worth people like my neighbour and her baby being collateral damage?

Someone on here (not N&J) claimed that 12 teachers in one school died from it. 🙄

Well alcohol is. In a population of millions, there'll be thousands who are chemically dependent on alcohol to the extent that forced, sudden detox is dangerous. And the last thing anyone needed was a load of them turning up fitting to urgent care.

But so are kid's shoes!

The statistics speak for themselves. I assume you know fuck all about statistics.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/3883549-I-have-found-the-solution-to-lockdown

The famous (infamous?!) espresso martini thread. It ran for days....

I will now admit I said fuck it to the rules May 2020. Dad (93, deaf and nearly blind with a host of different conditions) had been admitted to hospital in April after collapsing with an infection that was more likely to kill him than covid because his GP wouldn't give him a face to face appointment and misdiagnosed him over the phone. He was in hospital for 3 weeks with no visitors and mum's alzheimer's meant she couldn't understand why she couldn't visit her husband who had a less than 50% chance of surviving. I went up when he came home and he hugged me so tight and sobbed that he thought he'd never see me again and I thought bugger covid I'm coming round. Right decision, he was in and out of hospital several times always with no visitors and died at the beginning of 2022. Mum couldn't have coped without regular visits.

I took my DCs for porridge in the park every Friday morning. Not a soul around but I hadn't read you weren't allowed to sit down and eat.
I did read the "sitting on a bench to eat" threads and ignored them, but I only realised it had been the regulations when they were reintroduced.

@StartingAgainFGS it’s interesting you say that - one of our friends was on tour with their band and he was struck down at sound check around 20th Feb - couldn’t breathe etc - hadn’t been ill, wasn’t asthmatic but obviously had been playing in indoor venues for a few weeks most days. He was hospitalised for 3 weeks and the doctors were completely baffled , on reflection there was a very good chance it was an early case of Covid

So many posters on here were adamant they'd had it even before the original patient zero, it was like the demographic of users was some kind of weird statistical anomaly

Under a different name I was berated for daring to question the daft people washing thier shopping, stripping off in their garages after going out and accusing people breathing on them of spreading COVID

I remember one thread about touching gates whilst on walks that was so crazy it actually made me think twice about whether I was wrong 😁

Don’t know about dropping dead but a lot of research about long Covid suggested that ultra fit people could be more badly affected. There were marathon runners and professional sports people who suffered badly from it.
Anecdotally at our trust one of our OH docs was fascinated that many of the folk on long term sick with long Covid were very fit prior.
Hoped it wasn’t going to be that kind of thread tbh.

I don't think there was much wrong with closing public playgrounds for a bit until more was known about COVID. Public playgrounds are total germ fests. Kids aren't known for being careful about hygiene in shared spaces, they wipe their snot and saliva on their hands and then touch the play equipment. And the next kid comes along and puts their hand in the snot, then sticks their finger up their own nose a few minutes later. They line up to use the slide and climbing frame and cough into each other's faces. There'll always be an element of parents who would let their obviously sick child visit a playground, who wouldn't make sure they stood a few steps away from other kids, and who wouldn't bother anti bac'ing or washing their hands when they got home.

Playground equipment doesn't get cleaned. And kids come from all over the place to use the same playground in some city parks so yes, viruses which survive on surfaces are going to spread.

It was a shame that they were closed for a while but it wasn't hysterical to have shut them. They're not the same as playgrounds in a nursery where kids were in bubbles, and staff could clean the equipment regularly.

What I still find mind-boggling was the sheer lack of common sense applied to things. Someone upthread listed a load of things which they thought were batshit but amongst the genuinely batshit ones were a couple of things which were just sensible. eg it IS quite a good idea to minimise contact with other members of the family if you have ANY infectious disease, IF YOU CAN and the ill person is happy about that. If you don't have a spare room or sofa bed etc then there's not much you can do. It's generally unpleasant to share a bed with a sick partner anyway as they're often awake a lot sweating and coughing and it's disruptive to the other person's sleep.