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Original poster

If someone said to you last March...

225 replies

Wowcherarestalkingme · 04/03/2021 19:02

That this would go on for another 16 months would you have believed them? Did you think a year ago that schools would still be closed, businesses going under left and right and still having to wear face masks all the time?
Do you think it would have affected your behaviour in the first lock down?
I was just thinking today that it’s coming up to a year when lockdown was first announced and I truly believed at the time it would all have blown over by Christmas. Never did I think we would still be where we are a year on. And thank goodness for the vaccine!! Just interested in peoples thoughts on how they felt a year ago to now really

OP posts:
RuleWithAWoodenFoot · 04/03/2021 20:55

You should watch Pandemic at no47 which was on Ch4 last night. Filmed in the first weeks of lockdown, ordinary people. Was a non horrific reminder.

CathyorClaire · 04/03/2021 20:58

I thought it was the most bonkers over-reaction I'd ever seen (am old) and still do.

History will judge us harshly.

ChameleonClara · 04/03/2021 21:03

Modelled based on what?

How can you model transmission post vaccine?

You can model anything.

They take the most up to date info/data/estimate they have on transmission in vaccinated and unvaccinated people. There will be maybe more than 10 million unvaccinated people right through to 2022, as children can't be vaccinated. Plus refusers. Plus those unable to.

Everything available on the SAGE pages of gov.uk website.

Mmn654123 · 04/03/2021 21:03

@Wowcherarestalkingme

That this would go on for another 16 months would you have believed them? Did you think a year ago that schools would still be closed, businesses going under left and right and still having to wear face masks all the time? Do you think it would have affected your behaviour in the first lock down? I was just thinking today that it’s coming up to a year when lockdown was first announced and I truly believed at the time it would all have blown over by Christmas. Never did I think we would still be where we are a year on. And thank goodness for the vaccine!! Just interested in peoples thoughts on how they felt a year ago to now really
Yes Yes No

But apparently I was a ‘pessimist’ gleefully trying to destroy people’s mental health when I said some semblance of normality would be 18-24 months away on a thread that asked for people’s views on how long COVID and lockdown would last.

MarshaBradyo · 04/03/2021 21:05

sorry, but 15,000 deaths with a fully active economy is peanuts. Or is that 15,000 with lockdowns?

Chameleon is it without lockdown

notrub · 04/03/2021 21:08

A LOT of people knew it would last a lot longer than 12 months, but the press gave them VERY little coverage. IN particular the BBC liked to interview covid sceptics regularly, but people like Richard Horton never even got a mention.

My hobby is social dancing - they took a poll last March on when people thought things would be back to normal.
About 1/4 said by summer
About 1/2 said 6-12 months
About 1/4 said 12-24 months
I was on my tod with a >24 months estimate.

End of last year, when they announced vaccinations would commence early this year, I got hopeful that my initial estimate was pessimistic and by Summer '21 we'd get our lives back.

Now I think my initial estimate was spot on.

the80sweregreat · 04/03/2021 21:10

I didn't think they would lock us down. Then the news came out about Italy and the press and tv presenters did go into overdrive. The schools shut earlier in NI and I did start to panic a bit.
I also imagined more police patrols or road blocks ( !)
Seeing empty shelves in the supermarkets did make me a bit uneasy. I had many sleepless nights honestly believing this was some kind of Armageddon.
I didn't think it would go as long as it has done especially as the summer did feel a lot more ' normal' but I did read threads telling me it would go on for two years I know that people on here are clever! The variants and mutant strains are a concern still.

AIMummy · 04/03/2021 21:10

@Quartz2208

Yes a thread I posted on last year popped up when I said that pandemics tend to last 18-24 months so I expected it would be Summer 2021 before we were looking positively towards normal with 2022 being more likely.

I didnt see it being quite as bad in the New Year though as it was

Same although I also read that second waves in pandemics tend to be the worst (something about humans get complacent after the first wave) so I was expecting a bad winter.
lljkk · 04/03/2021 21:11

Weren't we really told until 12 April 2020 or so? I never thought that was true end point.

I think maybe situation has gone about how I expected. I was appalled from the start because the controls are inherently unsustainable with no kind of defined end point when we would 'know' it was ok to stop restrictions.

Good news is vaccines have been so successful.

I also heard about expected another wave in end summer, Warwick, some Uni? That isn't making sense to me but WTF do I know.

MarshaBradyo · 04/03/2021 21:14

I also heard about expected another wave in end summer

Move missed this admittedly but wave if what? Cases yes but deaths?

Nanalisa60 · 04/03/2021 21:16

I just can’t believe how long this has gone on for, , I remember in the summer when things were getting a little bit back to normal my son told me we would be back to square one bu Christmas!! I said no this is the end of it!! What a idiot I was!! I really hope the vaccine is going to keep working!! As this is no way to live!!

timesofchange · 04/03/2021 21:18

Last Jan/Feb I thought the UK would go the zero covid route. By March it was clear the UK either thought it had superior immunity or would aim for herd immunity.
That policy went badly wrong, but when cases were very low again in June/July, the UK had another opportunity for a zero/low covid route, which again I was surprised the UK did not take.
When the next lockdown in Nov/Dec showed a decline in cases, I thought it might continue, but no the UK lifted that lockdown leading to a twofold doubling of already high cases.

ChameleonClara · 04/03/2021 21:19

The 15,000 is NOT covid deaths, that is a rough average UK flu deaths I was referring to for comparison. The model was 30,000 covid deaths, economy open. That is with nothing unhelpful happening e.g. variants, immunity waning.

LadyCatStark · 04/03/2021 21:23

No I thought we’d have 2 weeks off school/ wfh, 2 weeks for the Easter holidays then we’d be ‘in a much better place’ and we’d go back to normal 😂😂😂

Pootle40 · 04/03/2021 21:26

@LaurieFairyCake

Germany, France and Italy started third wave

Guessing we're 4-6 weeks behind? That's what we've been so far. Hopefully we can outrun it by vaccinating ...

Confused
notrub · 04/03/2021 21:27

Not having a go at you, but it's crazy that simple facts on covid and flu continuously need to be repeated because of the number of politicians and commentators who conflate the two.

Covid-19 has a Case Fatality Ratio (CFR) of ~2%. Yes we can quibble about actual numbers but this is a figure widely quoted.
CFR for seasonal flu is < 0.002%

[Infected Fatality Ratio (IFR) is lower because most cases do not get reported. IFR for covid is around 0.5% (all age groups), but let's stick with CFR because nobody has ever tried to measure IFR for seasonal flu.]

That means the fatality rate is at least 1000x MORE for covid-19.

That MASSIVELY offsets any superiority in the vaccines (flu typically 50-60% efficacy, covid: 80-90%)

If the country opened up fully and stopped trying to contain the virus, long before the vaccination program could be completed, everyone would get infected. Those vaccinated would obviously stand a much better chance than they would have done previously, but that benefit would be largely offset by the numbers involved.

I haven't even mentioned the issue of long-covid or mutations.....

Pootle40 · 04/03/2021 21:29

@CathyorClaire

I thought it was the most bonkers over-reaction I'd ever seen (am old) and still do.

History will judge us harshly.

Yes this.
notrub · 04/03/2021 21:30

@ChameleonClara

Modelled based on what?

How can you model transmission post vaccine?

You can model anything.

They take the most up to date info/data/estimate they have on transmission in vaccinated and unvaccinated people. There will be maybe more than 10 million unvaccinated people right through to 2022, as children can't be vaccinated. Plus refusers. Plus those unable to.

Everything available on the SAGE pages of gov.uk website.

SAGE?? modelling

Got a source for that? 30k seems wildly optimistic...

RedcurrantPuff · 04/03/2021 21:31

Hmm. I didn’t really think it would go on this long but on the other hand I looked stuff up on other pandemics and there hadn’t been any over in a few months :/

GroundingProject · 04/03/2021 21:32

@LaurieFairyCake

Germany, France and Italy started third wave

Guessing we're 4-6 weeks behind? That's what we've been so far. Hopefully we can outrun it by vaccinating ...

I think we will outrun it with vaccinations. We’re ahead of them by a country mile 🤞
MsJuniper · 04/03/2021 21:35

I was surprised people thought it was just three weeks, not in a superior way, just that I always thought it was billed as being reviewed in three weeks but was likely to last longer.

I remember packing up the classroom and having a discussion about whether to give the children their artwork etc or leave it on the walls. In the end we left it in case we came back during the second half of the summer term. No-one expected to be back before half term. We were all set up for online learning two weeks before the first lockdown as we had thought it might should happen earlier.

Looking at relatives abroad, it seemed clear that (quite apart from whether the virus would spread there), closing schools was the only thing that would force employers into flexibility around working from home.

At that point, scientists were talking about 18 months for a vaccine, so that didn't seem beyond the realms of possibility.

suggestionsplease1 · 04/03/2021 21:36

I remember chatting with a friend about the approaches that countries were taking at the beginning of April. We were sort of saying that the American approach of no restrictions seemed crazy and and risked the health/lives of so many people. Then I said I guess that time will tell... because if the UK approach means that we're still doing some sort of lockdown in five years time and in America everything has been back to normal for 3 years as the virus has run its course over a period of a couple of years, then who knows what the better approach would have been.

Flaxmeadow · 04/03/2021 21:38

Yes because back in March 2020, that's exactly what was said by the scientists at the daily TV briefings

itsgettingwierd · 04/03/2021 21:39

Not surprised at all.

Other pandemics have lasted a few years with various waves and I usually think history is a good indicator of the future.

I'm still not sure I was actually fully prepared for exactly what it entailed though with regards to limits on freedoms and closures of facilities.

notrub · 04/03/2021 21:39

Does anybody else remember watching videos of China's lockdown last January. I know a lot of people were highly critical of it.

China's result was that the lockdown ended some 11 weeks later and life relatively swiftly returned to normal. Travel quarantines were imposed and as a nation, they have largely sat out the rest of the pandemic.

Anyone regret we didn't do the same?

People cry "freedom", but personally I think that UK citizens have had to give up a LOT more than Wuhan residents ever did.

A stitch in time saves nine has never been more apt.