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!

My fiance was having an operation in mid March and I couldn't get any hand sanitiser anywhere which caused me great anxiety. After his surgery, the Dr informed us that evening that he had been informed he was the last patient he would be operating on until further notice (I'm still very overhwhelmed how lucky we were compared to lots of people on waiting lists).

When we came home that evening, I remember turning on the news and it felt like the world was changing. I looked outside our window to a very silent street and there and then realised that something very bad was happening. Two days later Boris made his announcement and my family business closed for the first time in over 60 years, I couldn't stop crying.

For me, it was the panic buying and empty shelves. I was terrified, it brought it home to me that most people were selfish fuckers, happy for others to go without as long as they had what they need. I continued to hate people's behaviour as it went on, with all the judging and snitching and curtain twitching, "stay the fuck at home" "so and so went out for a walk for more than an hour" etc. Then came masks and the awful judging of people who are unable to wear them. I even got threatened with physical assault on a local page - for going to work. (My job was "allowed" but apparently deemed "unnecessary" by this person, and I was apparently endangering lives by continuing to work. well it was pretty "necessary" for paying my mortgage and feeding my kids!!)

I was never scared of catching it, no idea if I have had it or not tbh - I was only ever worried about what it would do to our family finances and the wider economy, jobs etc. Due to what DH does for work, we lost about £20,000 in income in 6 months thanks to lockdowns. We almost lost our house. I feel mentally scarred by it all tbh

When we had huge supermarket queues, essential shopping only and schools closed

When the schools closed. Sending the children home that afternoon not knowing how many of us would survive. I know it's been bad but it could have been so much worse.

When I heard that people were dying of it in China. It doesn't have to affect you to be serious.

For me it was when the schools shut. I just remember thinking but they can't close the schools, you don't close schools.

Also when Ireland looked down a few weeks before UK. If Ireland closes the pubs before st Patricks day then this shit got serious.

I banned from work a colleague who had been on a trip to the far East. Flying back from Singapore. I was tracking daily the covid cases website, it was going exponential.

Everyone thought I was overreacting. My point was, what if I'm not and he infects us all? Well I did tell him not to come in, days later we went into lockdown. Nobody at work had the guts to say, ah looks like you were right.

The amount of money the government has 'found' is astonishing. Just goes to show that austerity was purely political.

Whenever a virus gets my attention, I start playing Pandemic again. Which apparently I downloaded on January 31st - seemingly to divert myself from Brexit.

(for those that don't know - it's a game where you play the virus, choosing how it mutates and trying to avoid detection - when Omicron emerged, it looked like someone had saved up all their mutation points to spend at once)

I was asking people at work to report where they were coming back from holiday as per the guidance in Feb, and was getting side-eyed. But when people were talking about lockdown, everyone was looking out of the window as if it were forecast snow, or as if there would be an air-raid alarm signalling that we all had to leave.

Then on March 16th sent the most melodramatic text of my life telling everyone to come in and pack up their desks the next day.

I went to a seminar mid January 2020 and it was discussed.

They described it as a spark that could set the world on fire ....

I knew then

I was at home one night almost two years earlier. I was about to go to the local cinema alone that night but I luckily checked on their website and it was closed. Ended up drinking white wine and watching a film at home on my phone instead.

I was heavily pregnant in March 2020. We were being told everything was fine at work and to basically carry on as normal but wash our hands lots (this was in a hospital!)

I didn't realise my last day at work would be 17th March. Chris W said on the 16th March that various groups including pregnant women should stay at home. However, at home I was very much in my little happy bubble. It’s seemed like covid was in London and very far away from me.

At the end of April I ordered something from Argos that I had to collect from Sainsburys. It was the first time I had been out for about 6 weeks except for a couple of very brief trips to the corner shop.

I pulled up in the car park then I thought I was going to cry as I realised that people were queuing with their trolleys round the car park. There were marks on the floor telling us how far to stand apart. Everyone was silent. Marshall’s outside. Hand sanitiser. Screens put up inside. People obviously nervous inside. It was like i had suddenly woken up and the world had changed.

My husband was really really ill in late November. It started off as a cold and just became worse. I called the ambulance for him and the paramedic said whatever it is, it's nasty and took him in. Couldn't work out what it was and the test for flu was negative. In time he recovered. I then got it and I was heavily pregnant at the time. Every time I coughed I full on wet myself but thankfully I was fine and so was the baby.

Looking back we know now that was covid. But we didn't at the start of the pandemic and I was absolutely petrified. I had been following it on Twitter from when the first pictures came out of China and started to slowly distance us all from every one.
I pulled the kids out of school 2 weeks before they was closed and every one laughed at me. I still have the video on my phone of my friend turning up at the school gates with her kids and filming empty roads, an empty school playground asking what the hell is going on. Next day it was announced schools were to close.

When I found myself, still not having cottoned on emotionally, but having grasped that stuff was bad, intellectually, called my "expat in a backwater country" only sibling and begged them to please come home because mum and dad were getting on in years and if the virus didn't get them, the stress induced heart-attacks over having a child in such a place just might!

It was at that moment that I - on a personal level - grasped how serious this was: I had just asked my sibling to give up on their life's dream of being a "forever 15 at heart" nomad because I needed another adult with me!

@Xigris - I'm just reading classics for something to do and just read your post thank you for all you and the NHS done at the time and do now.

Ditto what @Mintyt said
This thread gives me the shivers though

Reading all this and having spent the last week in Lombardy and in the region of Bergamo makes me so sad .The Chinese Government have so much to answer for but it looks like they are getting away scot free. It is just not right.

When I was trying to book my brothers funeral before lockdown had actually started but it was very difficult as no one was sure if we could attend and we could not book anywhere for the wake. It was so eeirie and sad

When Ireland closed their pubs a couple of days before St Patrick's Day

Watched it being announced on the news and thought "oh fuck"

When I just popped to Tesco a few days before they announced lockdown and it was insane. Massive queues, shelves empty and an elderly man crying because it was worse than the war and he'd accidentally joined a self serve queue and didn't know how to do it. He couldn't cope with the thought of queueing again. I just turned into a checkout lady for him. In hindsight I should have bought more then :D

I posted on this thread in April last year. Today I tested positive for Covid. When lockdown happened I had surgery for breast cancer and a year of active treatment afterwards. It was repeatedly drummed into me that I could not risk getting Covid as a cancer patient and I have spent all this time avoiding it. Sod's law that I only recently stopped masking, because of the heat.

I feel fine, heavy cold territory. Nothing that would have been an issue pre pandemic. However, it has somehow triggered a trauma response and I'm very tearful and shaky. This is not like me at all and I wonder if it's triggering because of what I've been through. I sort of powered through and now having tested positive I feel I get "let go" if thy makes sense? I think we must have a nation of people with PTSD

One thing that has stuck with me was in the beginning, I'd called my mum as I was having a bit of a panic about it and she said "don't worry, it's just going to be like the flu" to which I replied "since when do they close borders because of the flu?" and she went silent.
The next day she started making sure she had some essentials in the house and stopped going out if it could be helped.

Probably recording the message that all our patients at work heard when they called in. I was working at a doctors surgery at the time. Overnight we went from taking nearly 450 calls a day to less than 100.
Also when I was taking the dog out for a walk along the main road at 8:30am one Monday morning and it being like a ghost town. Picking up my daughter on the last day before they fully shut schools - I think the TA said they had 5 kids in that day.