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!

Oh god so many things.

I remember the insidious creeping dread; every day from February seemed to inch closer to disaster, just waiting for it to hit our shores in earnest.

Watching the chaos unfold in Italy and the helpless dawning realisation that it was a case of when, not if, for us - and with no idea of just how bad it would get.

The empty shelves, seeing an elderly man wandering the aisles aimlessly looking bewildered …

It actually makes me feel a little panicky remembering the feeling even now.

We went out for lunch for my dad’s birthday about a week before lockdown - I was reluctant to go as I was already starting to panic - but I remember a sort of forced jolliness as we all tried to pretend things were ok. I remember saying goodbye in the carpark and we all sort of stood there for a surreal moment … and then hugged, implicitly aware we probably wouldn’t see each other again for a very long time.

The next moment of panic came during Boris’ speech with the line ‘some of you will lose loved ones before their time’. The sheer horror at the fact that by this point there was pretty much fuck all we could do. The inevitability of it. I cried to my brother on the phone that night, convinced my parents were going to die.

So sorry to those who have lost people

Jan 2020

My partner was grumbling about the "overkill" of press coverage and I remember saying, "no, this one's got legs". And I don't think it's anywhere near over. Maybe by end 2022

Jan 2020 . I flew home to the U.K. from Asia and felt extremely ill a couple of days later .
Doctors in 2 hospitals absolutely bewildered at my symptoms etc … “ this is an illness we have not seen before “ after testing for everything imaginable.
Subsequent antibodies test confirmed Covid.
Massive thanks to the NHS who were exceptional in the care they gave .
They had no knowledge of the virus but treated all my symptoms diligently as they presented.
I’m an Italian speaker and watched the news from there in horror .
How our government didn’t act sooner I will never understand.
Total incompetence and negligence.

We lost 3 relatives to Covid .

Being in the waiting room of our local large hospital's A n E in the middle of the night and realising there were no junkies and alcoholics in it! I think that was on my third A n E visit that month so around the 18th or 19th of March. And I had to stay for hours because I had a severe nose bleed and I couldn't leave until the rapid rhino's were pulled out of my nose and they saw the bleeding had stopped! I have never been seen by a Dr in A n E so quickly either. And when I asked for a paper cup for a drink of water and was told to hang on to the cup because there was a shortage of them in the hospital and they only had one packet of them left! But the scariest thing was seeing about 20 empty trollies lined up against the walls with no patients on them! I knew then that they were expecting something like what we were seeing from Italy.

I knew from mid January we were fucked. I have a very paranoid - but also very smart and world news savvy - pal and she was sounding the alarm from early on. Then some of my doctor pals started getting very twitchy soon after her, so I started closely watching what was happening in China. Very sorry to be proved right

January 2020 for me, I was monitoring the news from China and the rest of Asia and knew it was going to be bad. I couldn't believe it that we only started taking it seriously from March.

I'm pretty sure I had Covid mid Jan 2020 too. It was just after my birthday and I'd been out with friends (live in a tourist hub) and remember trying to convince myself it was fine, I was being paranoid, and everyone would think I was mental for not going out because of what I was reading about in

Cut to waking up a few days later just completely floored, it was like I had rocks in my chest and couldn't lift my head off the pillow. I never, ever get sick. My DH was overseas so I would drag myself down the stairs to get the kids to school and then crawl back under the covers until I had to get them again. Eventually managed to get to GP, negative for flu and strep. Was given Abx 'just to be sure' but didn't make a dent. 10 days later I was fine. Kids never got sick.

The whole thing is fucking mad

End of feb. My friend and I went for drinks and we were actively sitting away from people.

First week of March I was already wearing gloves and surgical masks thinking I was being OTT.

We ordered masks for our family on Dec 31 2019 according to Amazon, and then our shopping started having a weekly bottle of hand sanitizer and slight increases in cleaning supplies in January as we anticipated a rush.

What a fun NYE I must have been having

I started seeing the ambulances and emergency vehicles all the time and they weren't using sirens because the roads were clear. It was the second wave.

I'm mostly alert to what's going on around the world. We've had a few potential threats the last few years and I knew that eventually we'd have a real threat.

I was alert fairly early on but misjudged how serious this was because the governments seemed very slow to act. I think prompt action would have made a huge difference. I hope we've learnt from this but I'm not that confident that we have.

I have a small business and one of the products we sell is a hand sanitiser. We had only sold 5 since 2017, then on one day in March 2020 I had over £2k worth of orders, just for hand sanitiser.

I live in Perth Australia and in the beginning I thought that we would all be fine as it was only in Wuhan and so far away from us - I wasn't worried at all, it was just a flu bug after all. (famous last words!)

When it ramped up we were all given laptops at work in case we had to WFH.

Then in March 2020 and lockdown happened, watching people panic buying really shook me up.

I also recall getting upset at seeing how many people lost their jobs literally overnight. The news channels were all showing people lining up at the Centrelink office to try and apply for benefits. Everyone looked so desperate and frightened.

Our Premier and Prime minister would give regular updates and my husband would always watch these on TV. One day I was in my office and I heard my DH talking on the phone. I went in to the living room and will never forget his face when he told me that he had been stood down from his job. Thank God we had the government Job Keeper payment or we would have been in serious shit.

Normally when something bad happens and it's on the news, you can change channel and see what is going on elsewhere in the world.

But with COVID it was everywhere and whatever channel you put on, there was always something about COVID, death rates and dramatic footage of other countries and how they were dealing with it. We were torn between wanting to turn off the TV and wanting to keep it on so we didn't miss the news.

Like many others, I never thought it would still be going on now though, not nearly two years on.

Saying that, we are so lucky in Western Australia to have not been really hit with COVID as yet. Our Premier doesn't hesitate in doing snap lockdowns when we have had cases.

But with how things are going in NSW, QLD and VIC, it does feel like it is only a matter of time before we are hit. I hope I am wrong though.

But on a positive note, my DH and I have both had our second Pfizer jabs on Thursday so I am grateful for that.

When there was a patient on my ward with suspected covid but we didn’t get a chance to swab her because she died within 10 minutes of her repeat chest X-ray being reported showing the changes that were linked to covid. I’d just returned from maternity leave and we had no idea what we were doing PPE wise. I remember being told that if she needed a swab she needed to move wards and if we’d done that she’d have died in the corridor. 💔. I think this was end of Feb/ beginning of March.

Italy was scary because it's a developed, rich country. You don't expect things like that to happen there. It seems like the infrastructure ought to be able to handle anything but it was overwhelmed.

I don't think that I've ever been scared of covid as such. I assumed I would get it at some point and probably be fine. I do know people who have had it and been fine. But it's serious the pressure that it puts on the health systems and the risk it poses to clinically vulnerable people.

I think the moment it affected me personally apart from some job related stuff was when my young, healthy cousin died suddenly (not from covid but potentially from a reason relating to lockdown) at the end of last year and we weren't able to travel to the funeral. There were probably 10 people in the Chapel of rest. There would have been so so many people who wanted to pay their respects. We were promised a remembrance party once restrictions eased, it's been nearly a year and no sign of when that might be something that happens.

Now my granddad's health is failing, MIL has had some health issues and it's been so tricky to coordinate things for either of them. We live abroad and haven't seen our families in nearly 2 years. I worry there will be more funerals we can't attend.

Also due to give birth any day and I probably started taking it a bit more seriously when my doctor was explaining to me why it was important for my contacts to get vaccinated (vaccine was not then approved for pregnant women) because my organs are already under strain being in the third trimester and there were certain treatments they wouldn't use on me. That would have been this spring probably.

I do remember DH came home from Korea in February 2020 and had a cough from the plane and we all joked about it thinking it would be like swine flu.

And then in March someone I know was posting on our local group about where she could buy dust masks as recommended by her doctor and I thought she was being totally ridiculous and wondered how a dust mask was supposed to protect anyone from a virus. I was quite anti mask for a long time (but have always worn one when required) and only really came around to the idea once those graphics were posted showing how they can reduce the spread in enclosed spaces. They have been needed since that April here, and proper FFP2/medical masks only since February of this year. No more cloth ones. I have bags of cloth masks that I don't know what to do with.

With David Abel. We had a holiday to Asia booked so I was watching news a lot and seeing so many go down on the cruise and so ill knew it was unprecedented in my lifetime.

When Trump said it wasn't, because everything out of his mouth is a lie.

When people on cruise ships very early on were getting it and not being adequately quarantined I knew we were in trouble.

Seeing in the media that the Chinese were building a whole hospital just to cope with the virus, and I think they like build it in like 4 days? It was suddenly like “uh oh what’s going on?” This wasn’t just a virus. It was different to what we saw with swine flu etc. And the media were posting from that Chinese doctor or hospital worker saying “help it’s not ok here.” It kind of rang alarm bells like, is this bigger than they are making out? Finally I got chills when our govt announced on the tv (here in canada) “Go home and stay home” and “we are closing the borders.” Yikes.

Beginning Jan 2020. Was screaming at the tv for the government to postpone brexshit when a pandemic was on the way. Then looking in horror over the next months at the ineptitude of the government. Didn’t discuss it on the boards here at the time because anyone, who did was shouted down, often quite nastily and accused of scaremongering. Awful, awful frightening time.

I don't know why, but the first time I read a news story n it, I had a sinking feeling and thought it might get really bad.

January 2020. I was in Scandinavia, I hadn't taken much notice at first and thought probably the whole thing would be like swine flu and blow over. Then I woke up one morning and realised I had to get out and back to the UK. I arranged a job interview and looked for accommodation via the internet, secured a job by end-January, settled back in the UK early February 2020.

In the UK people weren't on the ball, many around me didn't think it would be serious. My furnishings and belongings followed me from Scandinavia but didn't arrived until March by which time the country I had been living in had already locked down....I was lucky to get out. UK was late locking down in comparison, by then I think everyone realised it was going to be serious. I am surprised how late the UK was in accepting the seriousness of it all when many of us overseas realised long before that.....

DH lost his job at the very start and we were in UAE. My family was coming out for a holiday and to help us move home as I would be coming first with DC (1x 3yo and 1x 5wk old). I just had a horrible feeling that holiday wasn't going to happen and I needed to get out of there ASAP as I thought they would close the airports and there was no way I would be left without health insurance with such young kids. My parents were mad that i essentially cancelled their holiday but I booked the flight and flew home with 4 suitcases, 2 kids, 2 car seats, pram, bassinet while DH stayed to finish his notice and sort apartment. There was no airport assistance due to covid risks so I just had to pull everything on 2 trolleys and try and stop the toddler from touching everything. The very next day with no notice they closed the airports and grounded all flights.

When my colleagues and l were told in January 2020 that all our rota had been scrapped and we would get one weeks notice for shifts only ... this lasted for a year.

We were told that we had no choice but to change onto 12.5hr shifts.

We were given a crash course in how to "don and doff" full PPE and were FIT tested for respirators.

When my work place shut (Theatres) as the anaesthetic machines and space needed to be turned into another ITU.

When my cousin who has worked in ITU as a Sister for years in London said she is at breaking point and the patients are the sickest she'd ever seen.

When DS2 had to go live at his Dads as my new rota meant he was at home alone minimum for 14hrs at a time.

When colleagues contracted and died of the disease.

...

We got down to 0 cases at one point. We are now back up to 40.

Just before Dad passed away he was in high dependency and the hospital was banning visitors.

Jan 2020, my daughter was meant to be returning to China ( where she's been teaching for last 4 years) at end of January
She was hearing of lockdowns in her city and compulsory mask wearing and we even bought a high grade mask for her flight back
However, finally all Flights were cancelled as borders closed....she's still at home in U.K. 18 months later ( but was able to teach online for some of the time) and hoping she'll be able to return to China soon, although they are having more breakouts and restrictions have returned
Worryingly when she returned to UK for extended holiday in Oct 2019, she came home with a terrible cold/ cough and temp and felt dreadful on plane home (but had been to Drs in China who had cleared her as fit to fly )- in hindsight she wonders if she could have had Covid back then, but they weren't aware of illness then and not testing . Her asthma has been worse since that illness and she's had to change/increase her inhalers