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. 💕

Remembered another.

In the early days before testing NHS workers were told if they had possible symptoms of covid they had to take 2 weeks off. Fully paid and wouldn't count towards sickness recording. Some people took the piss I'm sure but that's a different issue.

But there was a post on MN from someone whose neighbours were NHS workers and had mentioned they were off sick because of that policy. And were enjoying the sun, drinking in their garden and the poster was rage-filled because she now wouldn't use her garden or let her kids use it because the neighbours were chatting and laughing outside and she thought if they had covid it might drift over to her garden and infect her and proposed that anyone with possible symptoms should have to stay indoors completely.

She had lots of supporters.

I had many friends working in the large city hospital which was virtually empty. It was the second wave in the winter where shit hit the fan.

But in the early days there were bank staff having to be furloughed, almost nothing to do and staff taking home carrier bags full of food and other donations from well-meaning local businesses, takeaways and private citizens who assumed from the news they were all on their knees. And a lot of takeaway food that went to waste.

When they could have done with that help in the second wave, most of the public were over it and just wanting to get back to normal.

I am so glad all that tedious nonsense is over for good.

Which hospital? DH is a doctor who worked on a Covid ward in central London and they were overwhelmed and used every available space to convert to Covid wards with operating theatres becoming ICU to try and cope with the numbers of patients. They used a children’s playroom as triage.

That's exactly what I mean.

You do realise England exists outside of London right?

So true. And we knew this at the time.

PHE research in mid 2021 said average adult weight gain was half a stone. Most of us eventually got covid, Omicron if not before. On a population level, those few pounds extra on average could've had a real impact on how severe the impact was: we know that obese and overweight people were at greater risk. And then there's the impact on childhood obesity too.

We didn't have to do these things either. Lockdown could still have meant encouraging people to get out for exercise and fresh air. Those who needed to rest whilst out could have been reassured that the police wouldn't be able to fine or harass them for it. It could've been made clear that people in more crowded areas were able to travel further than their local parks for exercise if that's what they needed to feel safe.

ChatGPT isn’t a data source - do you have the source or the original data and how it was gathered/defined?

It is hardly surprising if a 1918 pandemic resulted in more deaths and more younger deaths. Life expectancy was shorter in the pre antibiotic, mass vaccination and public health care era and in 1918 absolute poverty was widespread. At that time Spanish flu was the “catch all” for death certs if there was any suggestion of infection. In the early stages of the pandemic there was considerable caution about putting covid as cause of death (in some cases politically driven).

To say that attempts to prevent spread of infection were not needed because insufficient people died is rather like saying that the money spent on Y2K projects was wasted because they successfully prevented widespread technical failures (an argument I’ve heard frequently over the years).

Not on here, but I remember entering a local shop for ‘supplies’ and a man and woman had a huge row because one of them deemed the other had got too close.
Shops were eerily silent at that time so everyone heard the whole thing.
Fabulously bonkers!

@HazelKoala I don’t think that was the case everywhere though, I have several friends who are nurses plus 1 a doctor who were definitely up to full capacity - they had no reason to lie - where there was a big difference is very few elective OPS so a lot of the nursing staff were reallocated- my friend did say they were up to capacity but more staff because of this and some staff had much less to do because you can only use so many on several Covid wards plus ICU etc ( for which you need specialist skills)

Other parts of the country were also overwhelmed and hospitals had to transfer patients around the country. Where are you talking about?

Anthony Gormley springs immediately to mind seeing that photo!

In the event of another pandemic the Government of whichever party need do nothing, leave it to MN to deal with it, all the experts seem to be here!

Of course it wasn't. And I didn't say it was. What I said was there were huge variations across the UK but the assumption by many was every NHS hospital was,on the verge of collapse and they weren't.

You can still access the weekly dashboards by area of the country online, there were huge differences in infection rates, admissions, and deaths.

I remember Mumsnetters being terrified to order anything which might have come from China which ruled out a lot of Amazon.

In my local supermarket, a guy wearing an actual gas mask shouted at me because I inadvertently walked near him. I told him to get a grip.

A woman who regularly walks her dog up my road in a small village is still wearing a very substantial mask today!

The data is harvested from e.g the office for national statistics.

’everything was marked spanish flu’ doesn’t account for the spike at the time because the data is per 1000 people, meaning that regardless of the marker for death, a spike is a spike.

Not sure where I said ‘all prevention strategies weren’t needed’. The point I was making was mainly about the restrictions and impact on younger generations - this is something I never voted for, agreed to or agree with now. My priority is children and young people.

The main factor in the spanish flu being so deadly was to do with that particular strain of virus and how it was linked to the ‘cytokine’ storm immune reaction - not because of poverty, lack of nhs or awareness of immunisations.

you’re also wrong about reluctance to put covid on death certificates. According to the bma, legislation changed in march 2020 to make it easier to put covid on death certificates - any medical practitioner, no need to be present or have attended the ceased, no need for a second signature (unlike other causes of death) and up to 28 days, electronic submission.

Quite, no reluctance at all. My dad was already dying of advanced heart and kidney failure when he died in hospital. Ditto FIL was admitted to hospital with terminal cancer, sepsis (which he refused treatment for as he'd had enough), unstable diabetes and unstable AF. Both tested +ve once a couple of days before dying having been negative on admission but subsequently tested -ve more than once. Both had covid down as a cause of death though both had multiple causes listed. 1 positive test definitive, multiple negative tests ignored.

Hah, I was exactly the same! 🤣

I don’t remember particular posters but I do remember “it’s going to be absolute carnage” and “this is going to take YEARS, get used to it” posts. They were so gleeful and all the doom upset me. You’d have to wonder what kind of lives these people lead.

Yeah, same for the distances that you could travel for exercise, never existed in any of the legislation enacted in England, believe it may have been mentioned in Scottish or Welsh legislation, got cursed out quite a bit by pointing this out on a local news facebook post about reports of the police questioning people at our local beach car parks about where the people had come from.

Carnage was the Christmas 2020 buzzword from those posters. So many posts of "well enjoy the Christmas Day that you don't seem willing to unselfishly do without, because it'll be absolute carnage in January". All because some posters, many of whom had been alone for weeks on end wanted one nice day to enjoy and try and have some normality at the end of an utterly grim year.

I should really stop remembering it because even half a decade on its still riling me. But just on the off chance those posters of doom who we all remember are reading this, then you were and remain an utter disgrace. I would hope you now feel some shame about your behaviour but unfortunately I cannot credit you with that much self awareness.

@AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta I’m absolutely baffled about those who seemed to deride gleeful joy that it was all a bit of a shit show and extremely sad for many - can only conclude it wasn’t their business or livelihood and savings going to pot or they were getting paid for being off for months on end and were the kind happy in their own and immediate family company only and had plenty of space etc- my elderly fIL did comment about other elderly people he knew who seemed to actually revel in it -but then he pointed out that for many of them life wasn’t that much different - fixed incomes, not going out that much, fixating on the News - that’s him saying it - not me .

You are spot on @Crikeyalmighty . I remember a thread during the early part of lockdown 1 where someone called them out on it (and referred to the as Dementors from Harry Potter who suck the joy out of everything) and they got incredibly huffy and defensive with lots of posts about how they were "only being realistic" 🙄.

Your FILs take is an interesting one, it's certainly not reflective of the elderly people I knew who found it horrendously isolating and lonely but were of the generation where they followed "the rules" unquestionably. I think it depended on people's set ups but whatever age they were, the ones who had a secure income and obviously lack of major life change did seem to enjoy sticking the boot into those less fortune.

@AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta funnily enough I think I would have found it easier on my own - lots of quiet book reading, mumsnet- lol! And WhatsApp’s to friends and family - rather than sharing 24/7 with an H constantly ranting about stuff - I think family relationships and personalities were a big part of it too - as there were fewer external outlets and you are correct, security of income was a biggie as was whether there was a huge change to the day to day

This. As I mentioned upthread, I do find it intriguing that all the most prolific covid doomers disappeared abruptly around the same time. It’s possible they all namechanged, of course, but I haven’t noticed anyone with the same posting style. Perhaps they were just too embarrassed to continue posting when their apocalyptic predictions failed to come to pass.