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. 💕

These posts have bought back so many memories.

I totally rolled my eyes at the nonsense we were supposed to follow: walk in the direction of the arrows, why ? Because covid only flows one way?! Is that why sweden didn't suffer as many deaths? Because the covid germs there follow the ikea type arrows?.

And wearing a mask when you walk around a restaurant but not when you're sitting down. Utter nonsense. It brought out my rebellious streak.

At work I'd see prison leavers very very adamant that they wouldn't go back to prison as they were now locked up 23.5 hours a day so it wasn't as comfy as they were used to. I saw offenders fake covid test results so that they could miss appts.
We'd have loved to be furloughed. I desperately wanted to put my feet up. I remember neighbours who wouldn't even usually say hi to us, be clapping for the nhs. Hypocrisy at its finest

I can see the point in not sending an 80yo with Covid to icu. It’s not ageism, it’s thinking about what’s in their best interest and whether they’re likely to survive it.

my dad developed lymphoma at 69yo and needed a stem cell transplant. They harvested his own stem cells. They told him if he was 70yo they wouldn’t do it as that was the cut off. Then he had to wait for a “bubble room” to be free at the hospital as he’d need to be in isolation for I think six weeks. He was waiting months, he turned 70 so that was that. He never had the transplant and died a few months later.

And yes I would go as far to say it wasn’t worth locking down with the resulting decimation of the economy, education, mental health, businesses to save mainly elderly people who would probably have died in a few years of something else anyway. Harsh but true. And my mum died of Covid in her 70s and I still think that.

Butter in coffee is a thing in some countries so not that mad.

It was a tongue in cheek comment although it was unfair how many broke the lockdown. And selfishly spread the virus.

Exactly. It was selfish people like that who contributed to the London lockdown in the first place.

@whippy1981 do you live in a very cheap area indeed , had a huge deposit or bought with a partner or bought shared ownership in a very cheap area because otherwise I can’t see how on earth you would have got a mortgage on £18k

My sister went for a distanced walk with another family ( twas allowed at the time). Friends dc slipped on a river bank, my sister was the nearest adult and tried to grab the childs hand and pull him up . Unfortunately he screamed that they couldn’t touch hands cos Covid !
He slowly slid further and fell in the water . Totally avoidable. Such fear instilled in kids was so awful.

Nope bought alone and had a small deposit to put down. I still live alone. My employers wrote to the bank and told them my wage was due to go up a few months later as I was going from part time to full time and they accepted my new contract and boss' letter and let me have it. As I don't spend lavishly I presume that supported that given that I live like a student still. I didn't stretch to what the banks would allow me to borrow either. They offered me 50k more than I borrowed.

Well that's positive at least! The number of people who think we have a vast army ready to patrol every street corner never ceases to amaze me.

As for selfishness, for many of us the term essentially lost meaning through overuse during the pandemic and reached trope levels. And no, I don't live in London.

That’s a terrible thing to happen. And the Covidian Puritans would have gloated “this is precisely why you should have stayed the fuck at home, because you might accidentally burden the NHS”.

Perhaps N&J, Princess NN, zebra woman et al, have disappeared into the ether, because if they were still commenting on here, they’d have their arses handed to them on a plate for being so drastically wrong and instilling anxiety and fear. I forgotten about ‘baked in’ - that was a favourite of N&J’s IIRC - and the previously mentioned ‘it’s going to be absolute carnage!’

On another note - the arrows in shop aisles. I remember popping into Tesco Express about 8pm one evening. I was the only shopper in there…I got told off by an employee for walking in the opposite direction of the arrows in an aisle. Sheer absurdity!

I'll concede that, but I have no doubt COVID was entered on many, many death certificates incorrectly to boost the figures.

Omg I remember those two!!

The arrows were madness. My local big Tesco made you walk down the back side of the store, then through the booze aisle... then you could do your shop, but only go down each aisle in one direction.
But, if you only needed the pharmacy (which I did as I get my meds weekly), you could skip the queue to get in (and they rivalled Alton Towers at times), and go straight to the pharmacy counter without the whole rigmarole of a long tour around the shop first.
It made no sense.

I remember being in school when we’d just gone back in June 2020.
We had very strict protocol to keep us “safe”
in particular the head and deputy carefully measured distances between the desks and taped a box on the floor for me to teach in…I was supposed to stay in there at all times apparently.
the only problem was it was a class for children with learning difficulties.
before they had finished taping my special “box” one of the children was licking to door handle, shortly after it was finished another child pulled the tape back up and ate it then later that day a third child came and sat on my knee then wee’d on me!!
We just sort of muddled through after that 🥴🤣

i wasn’t on mn during covid but my real life experiences

we think my daughter had COVID in feb 2020. She had the most horrendous’flu’ which lingered for weeks and she was really ill for a fortnight until she seemed to pass the worst of it. She’s never been that ill before or since.

I work for a large DIY company and worked all through lockdown. Within three days we all had letters to carry with us in our cars or in our bags during travel to and from work in case we were stopped by the police explaining we were working for an essential retailer

I got spat at and called some vile names as we had a queue system outside and we asked customers to take a trolley to aid in social distancing

The amount of people who came up close to me and continued to get closer even when I stood back further

the amount of snarky comments I got from people as I continued to wear a mask as my oh and daughter were on the vulnerable list. I used to mouth ‘twat’ from behind my mask.

if anyone says to me ‘covid brought us together’ i always now reply with ‘no, it made it obvious who the cunts are’ The public became vile to retail workers

I did lose my shit in Asda loo roll aisle when the shelves were stripped almost bare and a bloke was stood with 3x4 packs. I very loudly said ‘and why the fuck are people stock piling loo roll? It leaves nothing for us essential workers’. He sheepishly put 2 packs back 😂

I am terrible for following arbitrary rules and not questioning and being a terrible people pleaser so am really quite proud that I never clapped for the NHS and also never for one second admired a very privileged white posh old bloke walking round his huge garden. My cynicism obviously competes with the rule following.

As I have no experience of using these arrows in shops what happened

• if all you wanted was a pint of milk. Did you have to follow everyone around the arrows, past the booze etc.

Or

• Were there shortcuts
• could you overtake others or did you literally have to wait for those in front of you to move on.

• What happened to people like me who would find it disgusting to have to walk through the meat section. Could areas be skipped past

Ps it’s not a test Xeno 🥴

Yes. You just knew that if they'd been alive in WWII they'd have eagerly reported on their Jewish friends/neighbours to the Nazis.

Yes, you had to follow the route at the back length of the store (and it was a Tesco Extra, so huge)... past the bread, fish, cereal, and you had to go through the booze aisle. After that, you could go anywhere but only one way in each aisle. You had to go to the end and go round the back again.... It was ridiculous.

You could only take a shortcut to the pharmacy. You could overtake people, but you would get screamed at.

You could skip the meat section, as it was just the back length of the store and the booze aisle that you were forced down... bit of a problem if you have issues with alcohol.

Oh, if it rained, the outside queue was brought indoors, so there was an Alton Towers snaking queue around the toys and homeware aisles.

A few times I had forgot to get something and didn't think it worth the ball ache to get it so went without.

I doubt some of that outside shop queuing would've lasted as long as it did had the first lockdown not been mostly sunny, dry and warm but not hot.

DH and I had a nightmare of a respiratory illness in Dec 2019.
I'd just been to London for a week and returned to our little Scottish village having been on trains, coaches, buses and tubes all over London, England and Scotland.

I'm pretty sure it must have been Covid.

Blimey. That sounds completely crazy
I feel like I’ve missed one of life’s experiences. 🥴

It was certainly something! A lot of shops still have the stickers on the floor.

I remember queuing in the snow other lockdown the queue went right around the Sainsbury’s carpark