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. 💕

I remember a school getting slated in the press when schools had to reopen to everyone because they posted photos of hoops on the ground and taped off desks and stuff, total OTT stuff. Thread on here about the article was a total bunfight between those who agreed with the Head Teacher and those who didn't.

I also remember that the summer the local beach was properly opened, (Bournemouth) it was so overwhelmed by visitors the council had to declare a state of emergency. There was a thread in chat that went on for ages, with plenty scoffing about the "over reaction" . I was like, yep, council dropped the ball but it was absolutely necessary - I live here and my FB was full of the absolute chaos and carnage.

I remember a lot of mentalists smugly asserting that they had been stocking up on loo roll and tinned goods for years in preparation for the apocalypse, and acting like those of us who hadn’t were actually the lunatics.

Oh yes, the isolating in their bedrooms of fairly young children was horrible.

The tents and the rubbish 😱, it was awful

State of emergency is so funny but i feel like I remember things being really bad and overrun with people

Not on mumsnet but I once had my neighbours call the police because I had 2 friends round during the second lockdown. I was a single parent with only a 2 year old for company and going through serious mental health issues at the time having spent about a year on my own by that point and the police came knocking on to break up a "party" and give us a warning letter (i was already asleep at the time and my friend was brushing her teeth). The batshittery was rife

Not on mumsnet but I remember one police officer not sure but a high up rank saying that they would be policing people's shopping basket so no buying Easter Eggs which were already on the shelves. Then I think he got a phone call from Priti Patel and next day had to eat humble pie or his own words that no policing of shopping baskets would be happening. Would loved to have listened into that phone call. No fan of Priti Patel but at least common sense prevailed.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I’m yes I look back and smile at some of it. But at the time we had no idea how bad it was going to be, there were horror stories from Italy, perfectly healthy 20somwthings dropping dead, China refusing to give any info. Whilst I disagree with parts (parents separated from babies in nicu etc) I can see that the unknowns made it difficult if not impossible to plan correctly and to be cautious was wise til more was known. Imagine we had been blaze and the country was wiped out

I can remember when the government announced the first couple of cases and suggested no need for concern and that the risk to the general public was very low.

I remember being really pleased when a shop near me had eggs....but slightly less pleased that there were no boxes for said eggs, they just put them loose into a carrier bag, which obviously went well, on the 15 minute walk home....🤣

The day before the first lockdown, I was working in a jewellery shop and a woman came in, deliberately coughed onto the counter and said “ I suppose you’re going to clean now”

Same. The looks we got taking out severely disabled child out on walks, and the neighbours tutting through the windows if we went twice in one day. Dark times. This is a child who can't cope with a week long school holiday, and cooped up will self injure (and injure us) to a shocking degree.

I was in the same boat, id had a breakdown and it was just me and dd, who'd just turned one 💕

I was terrified though and was one of the people washing my shopping 🙈😄

there were horror stories from Italy, perfectly healthy 20somwthings dropping dead

To be fair, if you look at the statistics, this was extraordinarily rare.

The vast majority of what the media was showing was elderly people.

@UnstableMonkey Sweden? We were in copenhagen and used to pop over the bridge once able for a bit of sanity - even if it was a coffee 10 feet apart from anyone. The schools reopened pretty quick in Denmark too and even in March a lot of the kids were in coats in playground having lessons and playtime and getting a lot of fresh air.

Yeah I wasn't against the measures, but I know some of us could've been calmer about it 🙈

Remember Eat out to help out, omg 🙄

What really got to me (for no real good reason, I don't think it was even technically against the rules) was smug conversations with some of my older, retired relatives in the early lockdown days (and there were some similar on here too, and articles in the Torygraph and so on) about how they were going to 'do you young folk a favour' and clear out of the city to spend lockdown in their second homes in tourist areas. My relatives cheerily announced that it was all good, they'd been to the supermarket and packed their camper van to the gunnels with toilet roll and tinned food and wine so they wouldn't have to go the shops again (at a time when there were genuine shortages of many items and people were being urged to only take what they needed 😡) and they'd be off until the end of lockdown. This was in no way a favour to the people left behind in the city who had no choice but to stay and work or look after kids or whatever, it was 100% a jolly for them, it probably if anything overloaded the resources of the small rural places they went to in terms of shopping and traffic on the roads and so on and if they had actually caught COVID would have made things much more difficult than if they'd just stayed put like we were all supposed to. They also got bored very quickly and were back well before the end of lockdown so so much for 'taking themselves out of the way for the duration'.... Grr! Didn't actually hurt me but I guess it's that thing of them acting so noble and self-sacrificing, you went and got pissed in your deckchair in Bognor Geoff, it was hardly the Somme!

My very own arsehole brother sparked a great AIBU and I even rang Jeremy Vine about it!!

We have 4 kids.. I had spent lock down going stir freaking crazy and was DESPERATE for a night out.. my brothers lovely GF offered to babysit when the rule of 6 came in and we could go for a meal... my brother refused to do it as he said when we did the hand over I.e when we left our house and he entered we would be 8 people for about 2 minutes!!!
He refused to babysit on that basis, I can laugh about it now but at the time I needed a night off so so badly and it absolutely broke my heart.

Jeremy Vine found it hilarious my brother wouldn't babysit and said maybe it was a lame excuse as my kids would be too much of a handful?!

Omg

When it became obvious that some of the footage allegedly coming out of China was absolutely fake, that really pissed me off.

I enjoy looking at the photos of what people used in place of face masks. The party hat and the washing up sponge sticks in my mind!

It is still a source of pride for my mother that she interacts with very few people and most of that is done outdoors. She has a bad cold at present and has attributed that to handling some boxes. Reminded me of the washing shopping threads.

I started a thread on here, I was a single parent, 5 dc in the house (and 1 adult dc who came back), 2 with SEN, and had just been diagnosed with cancer and was still wfh with no time or space.

I was having a bit of a moan about being cooped up, didn't have time to get my head around having cancer, was supporting the kids with the news while being bloody scared myself, and everything else to deal with too.

A grandmother came on and told me that I should be grateful, she hadn't seen her grandkids in 3 months and I should simply cherish the time I had in lockdown, with 5 kids, and cancer as she had it worse.

Thankfully half the thread chased her away (everyone else was coming on to moan about their circumstances too, it was quite cathartic).

Her feelings were valid, and I would have sympathised if she started her own thread about missing her grandkid, but to come onto a thread of Mums, lots with health problems and kids with SEN and berate us all for nit appreciating it was a bit much.

There were also tonnes of threads with people who had husbands/friends/ kids/hamsters who had top secret government information and told us all 🤣 I think what they all meant was they saw a post on FB and took it as gospel.

Omg what an asshole. I don't think I could ever get to the point of laughing about that.