Covid Lockdown - 5 years today

My main memory is seeing that there are two types of people in this country(world): those I am happy to live in the world with and another big group who are chavvy vvankers. The idiots who wouldnt stick to the rules or wear masks and gave smart ar.sed and/or threatening answers when challenged about it.
These two groups are clearly politically divided, too. We know who would vote for Faridge/Trump - its the same losers.
 
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Laughing said:
My overriding memory is of the government trying to make a buck on the back of people health.

10's of thousands died because the government couldn't resist the gift.

Asredastheycome is still paying for the greed of the very rich.
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Sorry dont get that reference to me. Please explain. Unless you are talking about my post about my niece.
 
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Remember going into work (hospital at the time) and being a bit naffed-off with fb posts about "we'll get through this" comments and photos of furloughed folk basking in their sunny gardens with a beer in hand.
Purely jealousy you understand...
 
MoggasDog said:
My main memory is seeing that there are two types of people in this country(world): those I am happy to live in the world with and another big group who are chavvy vvankers. The idiots who wouldnt stick to the rules or wear masks and gave smart ar.sed and/or threatening answers when challenged about it.
These two groups are clearly politically divided, too. We know who would vote for Faridge/Trump - its the same losers.
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People who had consistently voted in tory governments over the previous decade standing on their doorsteps to applaud the NHS.

Breathtaking hypocrisy. But then people are idiots.
 
We were very lucky and had a good lockdown, especially the first time. The weather was great and we took our daily allowed walk / cycle ride. It was great to explore back streets that were deserted. No aeroplanes, no noise at all. What we found were lots of folk pottering in their gardens, all grateful for the chance of a distanced hello and friendly chat. It was lovely.

But at the same time, we were also aware via social media that many friends were really struggling with the social isolation. At one point Mrs V said "I wonder if there's anything we can do to help cheer some of them up." Whereupon we came up with the idea of an online positive news mag, all colour and light. We did it as a one-off but got so much positive feedback that we kept it going at an issue every month throughout covid for over 3 years. Got to interview loads of great people and organisations who just were making a difference in some small way. We featured Nessy Hunter (Steve Feltham, who spends everyday of his life up there living in his van looking for her), the people behind Maggie's Centres, the 3 Dads Walking, a certain Mr Nichols about the Bradford Park Avenue ground excavation .... we even interviewed The Wombles! But most features were about ordinary folk doing good stuff that made a difference to others.

By the time we wrapped it, we were getting people writing to us from all over the world - Australia, the USA, Canada, Asia, all over Europe including many Eastern European countries. We even got someone from some tiny island in the south Pacific. In the end it had become a full-time job and we wrapped up last Summer - it was time to get back to real life and work. Loved doing it though and I look back on it with really fond memories.
 
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Food delivery options improved dramatically in my part of the world.
Restaurants and hotels had to introduce takeaways and deliveries to make some money.
Most have kept it going and probably realised they had been missing out on a chunk of the market.
Sometimes you just fancy homemade steak pie with potato and veg as opposed to a doner kebab.
 
It's mad how that was 5 years ago, but I suppose it doesn't feel that long as it was a couple of years after that before things got back to near normal again.

I had a nice extension built a year or so earlier than the lockdown, so I could WFH with a nicer view into the garden, through some nice tri-fold doors.

Then when lockdown came that changed to watching our lass sunbathing and playing with the dogs in the garden almost every day whilst I still had to work (and paying out furlough for staff). I wasn't jealous at all
😆

Lockdowns were 100% necessary, to slow the flow of cases into the NHS, no doubt about that whatsoever. Probably didn't really reduce the number of people who actually caught covid, but being able to delay a lot of that until after vaccines and to spread those cases out was a literal lifesaver.

What was daft was the half assed nature of it, still allowing flights from abroad all the way through, and the lead up to the lockdowns was an absolute farce. There's zero chance the government were fully following the advice of science, and because of that it ended up undermining the science. We're going to pay a big price for that the next time something like that comes around, especially if it's more serious for younger folk.

The biggest eye opener for me was how thick people were and how bad people are at understanding stats and risk.
 
I found lockdown 1.0 OK to be honest. I started WFH (and have continued to do so since then on the whole), the weather was great and I spent time with the wife and kids a lot more than I would usually be able to.

I do have one overriding memory though which was not a pleasant experience.
As a volunteer Blood Bike rider, on one of my shifts I visited James Cook Hopital as I did every night. When trying to access the hospital through the normal door I was stopped by a security guard while a bed rolled past me with a very ill looking individual on it. Seeing that bed being pushed by 4 people with full hazmat suits on and red 'hazard' warning signs really hit me hard. It was like I was in some kind of post apocalyptic movie.
Other than just seeing stuff on the news it was my first experience of the real impact the virus was having on people and society as a whole.
 
BigAl76 said:
I found lockdown 1.0 OK to be honest. I started WFH (and have continued to do so since then on the whole), the weather was great and I spent time with the wife and kids a lot more than I would usually be able to.

I do have one overriding memory though which was not a pleasant experience.
As a volunteer Blood Bike rider, on one of my shifts I visited James Cook Hopital as I did every night. When trying to access the hospital through the normal door I was stopped by a security guard while a bed rolled past me with a very ill looking individual on it. Seeing that bed being pushed by 4 people with full hazmat suits on and red 'hazard' warning signs really hit me hard. It was like I was in some kind of post apocalyptic movie.
Other than just seeing stuff on the news it was my first experience of the real impact the virus was having on people and society as a whole.
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Aye. My two daughters spent their lockdown working at Roseberry Park, 12 hour shifts in full PPE. I still don't know how they did it but I was - and am - very proud of them both. They reported that Cleveland Police parked outside the unit in force (pardon the pun), every week, all sirens and full lights, got out and applauded the staff. It really made a difference to morale in the unit - that is until Priti Patel made a statement after lockdown that they wouldn't be getting a pay rise that year because they were 'unskilled'. Evil witch.
 
Probably the oddest time of my life. Walking to and from work with only homeless people and street community on the streets. I think what I took from it was the connection to friends and the few family I still like, not being able to hug anyone for months on end. I really really missed the gym too, not being able to go was so hard as it's great for my mental health.
 
It showed up how terrible our government was. Covid rolled towards us through Europe overwhelming lots of health services in our peer countries, and Johnson was caught in the headlights.

In an alternative universe, if he had any competence at all, he would have formed a national government put all party politics on hold, embraced a proper state of emergency, and come out the other side as the hero he clearly thinks he should be. But he's a narcissistic idiot, so he didn't and we all suffered.

First Lockdown was good and bad. Work wise all my clients disappeared into furlough so I was raising invoices month on month without doing any actual proper work. amazingly they were all honoured, probs due to claims companies could make of government, but there was a lot of uncertainty for everyone I worked with. Doing everything over teams and zoom was soul destroying from pretty early on and I still hate that way of working now.

We had just got the keys to our first house in Jan 2020, and had to gut the house so we were in a race against time to move into a house with a working bathroom before lockdown kicked in. We spent most of that first lockdown in a building site, but as all we had was time on our hands and we could only spend money online or at B&Q we actually cracked on through a hell of a lot of work we would never have done if we both had to be clean, showered and out doing our usual working week.

We were able to keep ourselves to ourselves, chip away at our house, and then sit in the back yard with beers, stinking away. I shaved in the kitchen sink for an entire summer.

My sister had her first child in the middle of lockdown and was pretty isolated on the maternity ward, while her husband could only sleep in the car. Lockdown really affected my Dad who got very nervous about meeting the rules and regulations, even when the rules and regs couldn't keep up with the new knowledge about the virus. We made the best of it, but knowing they had a grandchild they couldn't reach out and help with really upset them. My wife's grandmother had died just before Covid and her funeral on 17 March 2020 was a big affair with lots of guests. Her other grandmother died a few months into Covid Lockdown of unrelated illness, but had spent her final months in isolation in a Middlesbrough care home surrounded by make shift plastic screens, waving to her sons through closed windows. Her funeral was a case of managing the numbers and making decisions on who could or could not attend. They'll never forget that experience running alongside Johnson defending Cummings doing as he pleased in Barnard Castle.

Second lockdown was a result of too many people throwing away the progress made and the politicians thinking about their own poll numbers. Absolutely insane rules about keep social distance in pubs, but schools couldn't go back. The bubble system was a farce, Eat Out to Help Out (which I took advantage of at the time) seemed to be the license people needed to ignore the rules for good, which meant that lockdowns became less effective, especially in big cities like Manchester.
 
Similar to other people, was great for us.

Back to working from home, which I'd already done for years, weather was great, was bbq/making pizzas / cocktails all the time. £300 a month on fuel saved and went down to one car right before so all that went in the house and we did tons of diy/redecorating.

I got to look after my poorly 18 year old cat as a result of the permanence of WFH, so got another 2 years with him in the end and then his sister who lived another 2 on top, both of which would have been impossible

During lockdown however my mum passed away from cancer and visiting in the hospital and hospice was extremely limited which has made me very bitter about lockdown party's from Johnson and co, as I was robbed of a lot of that time.
 
We'd just moved back from the US a couple of months before, and managed to renovate our entire home, go through a couple of rounds of IVF and acquire a little girl all whilst working remotely and sitting in the garden for long weekends in the sun.

As others have said, we quite enjoyed the time as we had it relatively easy, with probably the hardest bit being my wife having to go to the hospital, in central London, for a lot of appointments without me. I think the novelty of the situation got us through it relatively unscathed, but doubt it would be the same if there were subsequent lockdowns now.
 
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I really enjoyed the lockdown. I lost weight, got fitter and didn’t have to mix with idiots.

Don’t get me wrong it was a scary time but overall I would be happy to go through it again if I didn’t die.
 
Piccadilly Day Tripper said:
It showed up how terrible our government was. Covid rolled towards us through Europe overwhelming lots of health services in our peer countries, and Johnson was caught in the headlights.

In an alternative universe, if he had any competence at all, he would have formed a national government put all party politics on hold, embraced a proper state of emergency, and come out the other side as the hero he clearly thinks he should be. But he's a narcissistic idiot, so he didn't and we all suffered.

First Lockdown was good and bad. Work wise all my clients disappeared into furlough so I was raising invoices month on month without doing any actual proper work. amazingly they were all honoured, probs due to claims companies could make of government, but there was a lot of uncertainty for everyone I worked with. Doing everything over teams and zoom was soul destroying from pretty early on and I still hate that way of working now.

We had just got the keys to our first house in Jan 2020, and had to gut the house so we were in a race against time to move into a house with a working bathroom before lockdown kicked in. We spent most of that first lockdown in a building site, but as all we had was time on our hands and we could only spend money online or at B&Q we actually cracked on through a hell of a lot of work we would never have done if we both had to be clean, showered and out doing our usual working week.

We were able to keep ourselves to ourselves, chip away at our house, and then sit in the back yard with beers, stinking away. I shaved in the kitchen sink for an entire summer.

My sister had her first child in the middle of lockdown and was pretty isolated on the maternity ward, while her husband could only sleep in the car. Lockdown really affected my Dad who got very nervous about meeting the rules and regulations, even when the rules and regs couldn't keep up with the new knowledge about the virus. We made the best of it, but knowing they had a grandchild they couldn't reach out and help with really upset them. My wife's grandmother had died just before Covid and her funeral on 17 March 2020 was a big affair with lots of guests. Her other grandmother died a few months into Covid Lockdown of unrelated illness, but had spent her final months in isolation in a Middlesbrough care home surrounded by make shift plastic screens, waving to her sons through closed windows. Her funeral was a case of managing the numbers and making decisions on who could or could not attend. They'll never forget that experience running alongside Johnson defending Cummings doing as he pleased in Barnard Castle.

Second lockdown was a result of too many people throwing away the progress made and the politicians thinking about their own poll numbers. Absolutely insane rules about keep social distance in pubs, but schools couldn't go back. The bubble system was a farce, Eat Out to Help Out (which I took advantage of at the time) seemed to be the license people needed to ignore the rules for good, which meant that lockdowns became less effective, especially in big cities like Manchester.
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You shaved in the kitchen sink for an entire summer. Jeez, how hairy are you?
 
I remember probably about the week before it was officially mandated there was an announcement on the news where Johnson basically said something along the lines of "only travel to work if absolutely necessary".

Now I work for the Civil Service, in HR and we had perfectly functional technology for working from home. No reason to be in the office whatsoever.

5 people still turned up in our office the next day. Including two relatively senior people, one of whom ended up leading on HR covid policy across government. I was gobsmacked. These were supposedly educated intelligent HR professionals with a good grasp of political drivers. They'd all seen the news too.

2 were my staff. I came very close to going full on Jackson Lamb "are you F***ing stupid" 🤦
 
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