When was the moment you realised covid was serious?

[namechanged984630]

For me I think it was when it hit Italy, so early
March. Until then I really believed it'd be a storm in a tea cup like swine flu.

I remember certain songs I was listening to as I refreshed the news in early March that still give me the heebie jeebies even now.

And I remember taking my dog for a walk at some lakes a few miles away (so drove there) and wondering, on about the fifteenth of March, if it might be the last time for a while. When I was there an elderly man said to me that it was nice to get out to forget the state of the world, I'll always remember that.

I remember seeing the Wuhan hospital be built and only paying the vaguest amount of attention. So arrogant to think it wasn't a problem for us!

Not my experience directly but a doctor friend of mine told me that for him it was when all the male infectious disease specialists at his hospital shaved off their beards on the same day.

I realised in January last year , when I heard about the mysterious illness in China spreading like wildfire, and killing people. I told my sister I was really concerned about it, She said I had too much time to sit and think and should go out more. She apologised for that after our mum died during lockdown last year, alone and Ill

@Oversize

There was an interview with Jeremy Hunt where you could see the fear in his eyes. He looked terrified and he used to be Health Secretary.

That was the moment for me too. He looked absolutely terrified and that was the moment I knew this was serious. I never thought I'd see the day that I wished Hunt was health secretary but for a fraction of a second I really did, if only because he appeared to be the only one taking it remotely seriously.

@Wam90 thankfully yes, although she has been left with long covid, and I suspect a dose of PTSD too. It’s the long Covid bit that frightens me now, after watching her struggle for so long :(

@Workyticket

When they shut the pubs in Ireland days before St Patrick's day.

Im not even Irish but that was my 'oh fuck' moment

Same

Sometime in March when my weekly shop arrived with 7 items in. Just 7. I had no food in to feed my children and scrabbled round local shops grabbing what I could. Terrifying. I remember starting a thread back then asking if people felt it was the end of life as we know it... I was ridiculed!

I remember discussing it at pick up at school. Friend was a nurse in a nursing home. She was very worried if Covid got in it would be body bags lined up on the lawn. They’d had a visit from Drs with emergency meds and told they probably would be on their own from then on.
The home did incredibly well at keeping from taking patients from hospital and no Covid got in.
Another local home lost a lot of residents, 5 on one night.

Late January 2020 when the first case was identified in the UK in York - due to go to York with my son for a uni interview, hotel and train tickets booked - big £££ outlay. But decided not to go. Friend said we were stupid to blow out the trip, he went on holiday a couple of weeks later returned home with Covid and died in March 😢

When my husband came home from work the first week in March saying the NHS had approached them to enquire how many body bags they could produce that met a very strict criteria, in a very short turn round time. The last time that happened was when Ebola struck in Africa. All production moved onto this order within days.

I'm a hospital doctor. I was on mat leave at the beginning of last year. I went into work mid-Feb for a pre-return to work meeting and there was a little portacabin set up in the car park labelled "Coronavirus testing pod." Posters around the hospital advising travellers from certain provinces of China who had symptoms to get tested, nothing for anyone from anywhere else. At the time I thought it would probably be like SARS/swine flu and die down by the time I went to work in April.

Then the e-mails started coming. Fit testing, PPE drills, new equipment, intubation simulations. Plans for ICU expansion and staff redeployment. I was asked what roles I would be willing to take on and remember asking not to be sent straight into ICU - I'm reasonably experienced in Intensive Care but hadn't worked in that unit for 5 years and didn't want to get thrown straight in there. Then we were getting daily numbers updates. I spent the last month of my maternity leave watching them steadily climb and dreading what it would be like when I got back.

This was all a gradual creep of information, but the one thing that really opened my eyes was a shared post on a doctors facebook group from an Italian ICU doctor. It scared the hell out of me more than anything else.

That little Coronavirus pod stayed in the car park till a month or two ago, though it had long since stopped being used as they scaled up their testing facilities. There's still one of those posters in a little-used corridor, telling travellers from Wuhan to go to the special portacabin if they have a high temperature - it seems so outdated now!

Just searched my messages, 12th feb was when I started discussing it with friends and had already bought a few extra bits for the cupboards by then. I went to a funeral the day after Boris said not to go to the pub but they'd stay open. The wake was at a pub and no one else was there, we also didn't hug anyone. Was very weird. That's the first time it really impacted me, but at least her funeral went ahead relatively normally.

@Finewineandcake

I work for a Chinese company teaching children online (or I did until last week when everyone in the industry lost their jobs, pretty much).

In January, our support staff were working from home. I could see the numbers adding up and was worried for my coordinator. He assured me he was staying home. My students began to look listless. Their parents were sometimes frantic. There was so much we couldn't talk about because they never went anywhere. Everything was a sore point because they were trapped. I had to teach many classes about what they liked to do at Chinese New Year right when it was effectively cancelled and they were heartbroken. They were increasingly depressed and pale. People forget online teachers are there and it was clear that tensions were often running high in many homes.

I couldn't quite believe the British government were just going to watch Covid enter the country. At that stage nobody knew it was already here. I couldn't quite believe my children would be going through a very similar experience within weeks.

As China's lockdowns were ending, suddenly my own children were staying home raising hell outside my door when I was teaching. My students began to relax and some began to go outside. Parents began to reach out to myself and my colleagues, offering to send us PPE (our students were from wealthy, well connected families). We're not allowed to exchange contact details but some of them tried so hard to help. I realised that we were in big trouble because we were now being offered PPE by people who had personal experience of Covid and clearly thought we were extremely vulnerable as a nation.

The death rates quickly confirmed that, sadly.

Several things. Schools closing was a big one. Stay at home announcement was another and the letter in the post. By the time lockdown arrived I already had covid but more seriously my friend had it at the same time as me, we got it at the same place, and she was hospitalised twice at a time when there was no covid testing unless you’d come from a particular country because of shortages. We both ended up with covid pneumonia.

I’ll never forget when the numbers of daily deaths started to go down and I said something like “only 400 deaths today” and was horrified that somehow we had become so used to hearing over 1000 deaths that 400 seemed low.

When I realised that holding my nan’s hand and saying goodbye to her when she died was a privilege. When attending my cousins funeral for a proper funeral and goodbye felt like a privilege. My family experienced a lot of loss in 2018 and I never thought that things like that would be considered a privilege but now I do consider them to be exactly that.

I also still can’t believe I switched from an online degree with the Open university to a bricks university only to end up doing an online degree anyway because of covid 🤦🏼‍♀️ I know it can’t be helped but I was like seriously?! I could’ve saved myself a whole lot of time and effort!

Mid January. Not officially, as the government position is different on that, but we nearly had to close due to lack of staff - there were multiple kids in hospital with severe chest infections/breathing issues who had already been off in November with flu (and recovered fully) whilst the staff had been largely unaffected by the November flu (vaccinated, I guess), but were then out of it for at least a week.

It meant that my ears pricked up immediately when they started muttering about some new illness, as the first kid in hospital had relatives visit from overseas for Christmas and the community was a very tight knit one that would have met up over the school holidays.

When I was visiting my Dad with a heart condition in the ICU on 2nd March. I was chatting with one of the nurses about it and whether to cancel our Easter holiday plans. He said it was “very concerning” and he hadn't seen anything like it before. He also wasn't planning on travelling to his home country in case he couldn’t get back. I also overheard the staff talking about the plans for testing and isolating a suspected case.

March 2020.
I caught covid and it developed into long covid. But nobody had a name for it then. All I knew was I had had covid and now wasn’t getting any better.
And whilst I wasn’t getting better my friend died very suddenly from sepsis after having covid for a few weeks. He was fit, young and healthy. He wasn’t in the danger zone demographics.

When I was in Italy and the Italian government locked down 16 towns.

Christmasfairy2020

“Its not serious its a load or rubbish“

Seriously?. And I take it there is no climate change issue either?. You should be ashamed of yourself

When they closed Tenerife down last March and we were evacuated home

Actually I thought it was a bit overkill for 5 cases

The schools closing and food shortages

There's still one of those posters in a little-used corridor, telling travellers from Wuhan to go to the special portacabin if they have a high temperature - it seems so outdated now!

I found two of these posters on a notice board in an empty office at work last autumn, one for Wuhan and an updated one with Italy and South Korea added. It seemed so quaint, knowing what we now know.

Fine wine and cake
I’m so sorry x