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 knew someone who is adamant he had Covid in September 2019.

I had to take my toddler daughter to the GP surgery. We parked 200m from the surgery at a car park which was on the same side of the road as the doctors. So a simple walk down a wide pavement with barriers to get to the surgery door.

But the council had decided to make that deserted strip of pavement into a one way path which ran the opposite way to where i needed to go. There were no people there and no houses so I ignored it and began to walk down the empty pavement the wrong way (60 second walk with no risk of passing anyone). I was accosted by a passing police car who made me walk 500m in the opposite direction to the next pedestrian crossing and then cross 5 side roads with a toddler and baby in order to cross the A road again (in front lorries) just to walk back on my self in the permitted direction to get to the surgery door.

I was told I was risking peoples lives but he had no answer when I explained that the risk of my children being run over crossing a busy A road 5 times in 10 minutes was greater than us giving someone covid on an empty pavement (we had all just done covid tests prior to leaving the house).

Wow

Easy to laugh now, but we didn’t really know back then. I didn’t do it, but next time we might not have the last laugh.

I remember, will never forget or forgive, the stupid government thinking it was ok for DH, a doctor, to work on Covid wards without proper PPE.

It really did seem by the end of 2020 that the government were indulging in sadistic edge play.

People also forget that restrictions were still in place in some settings in 2022 - late DP tested positive for Covid after being rushed in for a brain bleed in late January. He got through the first operation, and I was able to have one call with him, but visiting was forbidden for 2 weeks. He deteriorated, had a second bleed that basically rendered him brain dead, and died in the third week, which meant I could sit by his unresponsive side while he breathed his last, but I would have done anything to see him in the few days he was lucid, worn a bloody hazmat suit if necessary. Still sore about that, as he was boosted a week before his collapse, and I'm not vulnerable. It was cancer, only discovered at post mortem that had metastasised, but for a while I lived with the anxiety that it was something to do with the booster.

For me lock down really was an eye opener, same for my sister. We both worked in management in different sectors of hospitality. 60-70 hour weeks, only at home to sleep. I ended up signed off with severe stress just before lockdown as the doctor said he would either have to sign me off or I would be in hospital with exhaustion within a month. I was, in hindsight, very ill.

That summer was amazing for us because it was the first time for years we had anything like a proper break and reset. I had been suffering weekly migraines for years and didnt know why. Never had a single one in lockdown but had 2 my first week after we reopened. So we both took a long hard look at our careers and decided to step down. We are both at non management level now and our health and mental health has imporved massively.

BUT we both know that we were very lucky to have that and that others didnt have it so good at all. Oh, and I agree about those fucking videos, I refused to do it in the end. Luckily our school was very relaxed about home schooling, just said to do what we could and not to worry too much if we couldnt. Again, I know how lucky I was to have that.

I think its not so much people who, for whatever reason, enjoyed lock down. Its the ones who think that we all should have done and if you didnt then you are a miserable bitch who didnt take advantage of the time and make the most of it.

Bearing in mind this is the United Kingdom - a nation built on PG Tips, a poster was told teabags were not essential.

It seemed that the majority were disinfecting their delivered shopping before allowing it through the door.

There was a brilliant one about an allotment - an MNer was wondering whether she could go there and cue loads of crying and shaking and tearful declamations of her as a murderer. Someone memorably wrote in all caps “WHO CARES ABOUT YOUR LETTUCE!!! LET IT ROT!!!!”

Generally there was an awful lot of use of the phrases “thrown under the bus” or “thrown to the wolves”. I think every single demographic on MN felt they’d been thrown somewhere. If not then they were on their knees. No one was was standing still normally.

Yeah this. I have 2 young children with an underlying condition that, at the time, was thought to be very high risk. They isolated.

it turned out the risk wasn’t high, but I’d far rather have reacted to what was thought to be the risk, than have under-reacted and it turn out to have been serious.

I think this is the worst one of all 😱

I remember the pictures coming out of Northern Italy. The fashion houses with lots of Chinese workers. The hospitals overflowing. That was went mass hysteria and the complete overreaction set in.

Yes, I clearly remember telling people even at a meeting at work about it. And my family. Whatever comes to the UK hits us a bit later. It was way before it was even on the news as a pandemic. I get a bad cough easily, and did not want that weird flu.

I was working 12+ hour days dealing with ASB in social housing because suddenly everyone needed to report their neighbours for a covid breach. After we received 1000 reports within 48 hours one day, with just 5 staff, we realised it wasn't tenable so stopped attempting to deal with it.

I also remember an FB group I was on, and one person freaking out that her husband had gone though a wooden gate for a field and....shock horror....touched the gate. She was convinced he had just sentenced her and their two kids to death. No amount of reasoning would work.

Oh and I got yelled at on MN for not isolating from my family when I got covid in Dec 2020. I was still trying to wfh (we were too busy not to), my husband was still using the tube to travel to work (police) and my kids were all in school which were apparently heaving with those little germ vectors. Honestly, what was the point in isolating (read, forcing DH to sleep on the couch and my young primary school age children to fend for themselves). As it stands, DH and rather kids still haven't had covid. I've had it 3 times now 🤣

I'm sure i had covid in December 2019 😬

Thing is, we DIDN’T know.

We didn’t know this wasn’t going to kill loads of us. It’s easy to take the piss now, but (another March 2020 baby here that never met a soul for six months, and yes I probably have a sort of PTSD about it) we GENUINELY believed we could get sick and die if we caught covid. I’ve posted before but I believed my baby would die and anyone thinking that’s stupid now is missing the point of how it actually was then.

People scoffing about it have five years of hindsight. But nobody at the time ACTUALLY knew things wouldn’t be catastrophic.

I do worry about the next time a pandemic comes, cos it will. Say there’s one that kills kids. Say it has 10% mortality in under 10s or whatever absolute horror that is totally not impossible, statistically.

Nobody will bother following any procedures because they’ve all decided Covid was a farce and they remember the fiasco of rule of six and all the batshittery upthread. So what happens next time??

I also remember an FB group I was on, and one person freaking out that her husband had gone though a wooden gate for a field and....shock horror....touched the gate. She was convinced he had just sentenced her and their two kids to death. No amount of reasoning would work.

There was definitely a thread on here with a major freak out about people touching a gatepost on the middle of the countryside

I joined MN during Covid.
Social media like FB was a cesspit where people would stalk your profile, comment on your profile pic, get really personal and nasty if you happened to disagree with them.
I saw so many huge fallings out between people who had been friends for years and years. I was a victim off a witchhunt on there and ended up having to stay with my parents on suicide watch.

When Bozo announced Xmas lockdown, we were in the car on the way to collect my dmum, who lived alone 200 miles from us, and had literally seen no one for months.
I mentioned this on mumsnet to be told that I should have turned around immediately and left her to have Christmas alone. By many people
I think history proved me right!

Funerals were horrific. FIL died and there were only 10 people allowed in the chapel, all the chairs spaced 2m apart. I dragged mine over to sit next to DH and got told off by the funeral director who only allowed it because I pointed out that we lived together anyway. His widow (DH step-mother) sat sobbing in her seat at the front, alone, and when someone went to comfort her we got told that if we didn't stay 2m apart the funeral would be brought to a halt and cancelled.

💕. The recalling of retired doctors and nurses too 🥺

I wouldn’t be surprised. I think this was leading up to Christmas, or a bit before. Interesting looking back, and how news spread.

Not on mumsnet but the lady opposite me who had appointed herself our street’s Covid monitor went apeshit at me one morning as I was loading the dogs into the car to drive 5 miles to huge woods where i could walk in the knowledge I wouldn’t be dodging people like the hordes walking up and down the pavements in our neighbourhood for their daily exercise. She was waving her big important notebook in my face which apparently had all the dates and times I was wilfully committing a crime. She ‘knew people’ and would be reporting me so I should be prepared for a visit from the police.
I’m still waiting.

I had enough lunacy in rl to remember it on MN. I had a friend who was wiping down her post and putting it in the garage for some sort of quarantine 😂 She was also stripping off in the hall and washing her clothes before she entered the rest of the house.

She was out weekly clapping too. I’ll admit I thought this was the cringiest, sheepiest thing anyone did.