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. 💕

Omg!!!! I hope that was the best lesson for them

Actually less than one inch OF THOSE WHO ACTUALLY CAUGHT COVID Not of the general population Many people never caught it at all. Many people who died had merely had a positive test in the last28 days of their life, even if they died of something completely unrelated. For example,e my mother had a stroke. Even when she had treatment withdrawn and was in last 48 hours of her life they were STILL covid testing her daily. If they had managed to get a positive test from her then she would've counted as a " covid death" So I'm sure there's people died from stuff that took them to hospital but because they caught the virus there even if they had no symptoms they'd also say they were " covid deatgs" Doesn't help with skewed figures

I don't doubt that. Do you expect to start working and earning what they did at the end of their working days with their experience? Work up. Save. Do not spend money like it is going out of fashion.

The way they lived and the way people live now are different. 1 TV vs TV in every room. Holidays to the seaside for a weekend vs Turkey all inclusive for 2 weeks. Most had no cars - now there are multiple per household. They handed down clothing not threw it away and bought new. Things were shared and reused. They repaired things - sewing on buttons, mending rips etc were the norm. These days those things would be thrown out.

Maybe if we didn't waste so much money on keeping up with others or for Instagram worthy posts we would also be as wealthy as them.

£150 for a vaccine - you get child benefit to pay for the child. Use it to pay for their health needs. No excuse. Bet all those you are crying poverty for have 150 quid to spare for new Shein haul when they want it.

Quite. But don't let actual facts & figures get in the way of frothing hysteria. It never fails to sadden me how people totally fail to correctly interpret data.

Actually maybe they should have. My son was locked down in London 5 days before Xmas 2020. Lots of people they knew just ignored the lockdown and went home for Xmas . He didn’t as he has a conscience - but we couldn’t see him until April 2021

And at the exact same time there was raucous Christmas parties with no socially distanced dancing going on at Tory HQ.

The Titanic isn’t exactly the same thing at all
When it comes to protecting others in a potentially unavoidable situation I believe we should do whatever we can.

Unfortunately this didn’t really happen to an extent that we now have a lot of people, young and old, with Long Covid. Living long term with the reality of other peoples personal decisions.

Agree @whippy1981

Another OAP bashing thread…..Again !

And vaccine complications ? Or is that still too taboo to mention?

There is someone near me that claimed she’d ended up in a wheelchair due to “long covid”. Recently they’ve found it’s not that at all and something entirely different and nothing to do with covid, but very serious. Makes you wonder how many misdiagnosed “Long Covids” there are. This woman suffered terribly and was never out of hospital for years, every time being blamed on long covid when it wasn’t.

I do agree with this. There does seem to be a lot of variation in terms of what Long Covid is. I wouldn’t deny someone who has become ill after having Covid though, I don’t think anyone really knows how it presents over time.

No, they definitely shouldn't have because it was a stupid idea. It's a point about practicalities, not anyone's moral take.

We have a small army, many of whom weren't even in the UK at Christmas 2020. They couldn't possibly have prevented widespread movement, much less assessed which of it fell within poorly defined legal exemptions or not. It would've been a waste of resources and a large scale demonstration of how much power the state didn't have.

@whippy1981 whilst some of what you say is certainly correct, other aspects are conveniently forgotten - average house prices in many parts of the country are 5-6 times joint earnings not 2.5 , easier to get on that housing ladder too on modest earnings , ( I had a 3 bed semi at20 ) so not having years and years of expensive private rentals ( which were way less relative to income than they are today) lots of grandmothers ( not all) were working far fewer hours and helped with childcare whilst parents worked, no paying back humongous student loans and grants and being able to claim housing benefit in holidays etc, utilities and ‘rates’ were proportionately less than they are today and so many even quite basic jobs had non contributory pensions too -

expectations I agree are much much higher -

what with paying into contributory pensions plus student loans a lot of under 40s can be 10 to 15% down on take home salaries before they’ve paid a single bill.

We wouldn't, is the answer.

Either the population will be on board with a lockdown, in which case a majority voluntarily restrict their own behaviour. Or they won't be, so it doesn't happen. The latter could happen because the public don't view the disease as serious enough to warrant it, or because it's so serious we can't have a lockdown because that requires a functioning society.

Which was just as true in March 2020. But I think the big difference currently is that the space for a pandemic where we could have a lockdown has shrunk, if it exists at all at the moment.

One of our neighbours left baked goods on our doorstep. She was bored so she baked. Me having a hissy fit about her leaving her “ Covid ridden biscuits here “ and putting them straight into the bin. I mean who, if sane, bins home baked biscuits????Plus the poor woman had Covid for the first time a year ago!!! I think it safe to say the virus really messed with my head. I desinfected the front gate and all the light switches daily.

@MumToad I did light switches , door knobs and letter box daily

I’m a nurse and remember fretting about who would look after my children if me and my medic husband both had shifts on the same day (this is when schools were completely shut). Someone on here told me that I should be prepared to leave my children with complete strangers so that I could go into hospital to work. They were serious as well. Fortunately both of our employers were a lot more understanding and we were allowed to work opposite days to each other.

Also remember the children that suffers the most would be probably from household with high anxiety parents feeding this fear to their children. It’s hardly surprising that some kids really suffered and it was totally unnecessary. I think the kids happiest in lockdown was where there was no big deal made of the virus.
The special needs children were allowed into school second lockdown.

Not true. Only the ones with EHCPs were allowed back, and as any parent of a child with special needs will tell you, having an EHCP isn’t necessarily dependent on the level of need, but rather the availability of educational psychologists, the intransigence of the LA and the tenacity of the parents.

And let’s not forget all the children from abusive and neglectful homes who relied on going to school for some safety, warmth and a hot meal. Once again, their ability to remain in school would have been dependent on being previously identified and so many slipped through the cracks.

That is interesting, I remember a friend getting really ill with a respiratory infection around Christmas 2019, she had to leave our pre-Christmas meal out as she was so unwell. Then in late January 2020 I had something similar, was poleaxed by it and had not felt so unwell for years. Me and my friend referred to it as the "plague cold" due to how ill it made us and how it left us feeling wiped out. I had no appetite, felt weak and exhausted for ages

@MrsFrumble And let’s not forget all the children from abusive and neglectful homes who relied on going to school for some safety, warmth and a hot meal. Once again, their ability to remain in school would have been dependent on being previously identified and so many slipped through the cracks.

This is sadly horribly true. Poor Arthur Labinjo-Hughes is just one such example.

I couldn't remember the usernames of the worst offenders (although PPs have mentioned NannyandJohn and Princess Nutnuts or something?) but I do remember the phrase 'I'm afraid' they used (again, as a PP mentions).

It never fazed me, because I find that kind of patronising guff ridiculous, but I do recall thinking that there would be a lot of people who would find it distressing.

There's no doubt that the whole pandemic brought out the best in a lot of people, but on Mumsnet there was plenty of evidence to show that it brought out the absolute worst as well.

I washed my hands so often and so fiercely that I developed horrible hangnails.

We were very unlucky to have the worst PM and government at the worst possible time. Any administration would have made mistakes but that lot were something else...

@Shodan Oh god yes, I'd forgotten about PNN too. Their use of "I'm afraid" or "sorry, no" when someone would post asking if people thought there'd be any chance of their 2023 wedding going ahead when they were anything but sad or sorry used to rile me so much.

N&J was bloody obsessed with hitting 100,000 cases and kept spouting that the resulting deaths were already "baked in" for a fortnights time.

I used to love their posts purely for their bonkers entertainment value but at a time when many people were vulnerable and looking for guidance they were also irresponsible as hell.

@lifeonmars100 they also used it for political point scoring with regards to the vaccine- the reason the EU were behind somewhat is because we were in Denmark at the time and they were not prepared to use the Astra Zeneca vax , all my vax in Copenhagen were Pfizer - whether or not one was better than the other is debatable- but it was interesting to note all my friends in UK who had vaccines post May 2021 had Pfizer - none were given AZ - for whatever reason post Brexit they were desparate to say ‘hey we are having it 1st ‘ in my opinion for political reasons

I had no issue getting on the property ladder a few years ago. I was earning 18k then. Yes property prices were much less in relation to their wages but the interest at the time meant that you were paying rates like we have not seen for a long time. We've been crying in the UK of the interest rate rises here for a few % nothing like what they experienced. People now take the maximum offered by the banks and then have no wiggle room when they need it.

People usually had interest only mortgages which also caused many people issues as they were mis-sold those and had nothing in the pots to pay off at the end. My parents had that and luckily my mum realised that it wouldn't be enough to cover it come the end and put money away. Others were not so lucky.

People do not have to pay back huge student loans either. I have absolutely no student debt. I worked full time as a student and paid for my course myself (as my parents couldn't afford it) and came away years of uni later with £0 of debt.
Why can they not graft while studying? I worked through 4 uni courses - BA, Post graduate certificates, MA and another Post graduate certificate.

Lots of grandmothers today are providing childcare which is also the same - I went to a childminder as my mother worked and my dad worked 18 hour days to make ends meet. They also had the poll tax which meant that people who were poor and had a large family were taxed a huge amount. Now we have council tax which is fairer but still not fair on those who are single occupants.

Yes rates were lower as many houses didn't have things like central heating and some not even a fitted bathroom. So of course heating the whole house didn't happen so obviously cost less! Stands to reason! Nor did they have the amount of electricals that we have now. There were no TVs in bedrooms, consoles, mobiles to charge, microwaves etc. Many didn't have a washing machine. So yeah again charges will have been less as there was less to run!

Thing is these people saved and yes they have decent pensions and people are jealous that they do not want to put in the graft that that generation did to avoid debt and build up their pot. We want instant gratification. What we are seeing in the boomers is delayed gratification. We can't have both. They have delayed gratification.