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Wildest memories from the COVID-19 pandemic period?

During second lockdown i was transfered back to the main campus of work.
Shortly after. The testing station at school and colleges was started.

I was teams called to ask as i am a member of a large first aid organisation do i know" how to clean like nurses. "

I should of said no, and not mention i was a qualified covid vactonator.
I ended up doing the online testing courses. Working out the layout of the testing area, put it together and train testers. Then be on call to answer question and look at 'borderline' tests.

Just as testing started i was told i was going to be a fogger ( aerosols antibacterial) operator as well.

Every time i would appear somewhere staff and/or students would look worried as i was the bloke that dealt with covid.
 
Matt N said:
In hindsight, I do wonder; was all that anxiety really worth it?
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Hindsight is 20:20.

When faced with an unknown threat, it is always more sensible to be over cautious than under prepared and ill equipped.

Although your father felt as though "the media" was whipping everything into an unnecessary frenzy and people were taking it far too trivially, it's important to remember that we were dealing with something novel and something new. We knew absolutely nothing about it, and the bits we were learning each day still weren't enough to build a decent picture. Your father had a gut instinct, a feeling, but had no empirical evidence or experience to draw from.

I wish that more of my friends, who came of age in the 80s and the 90s, were more cautious. I regret that they didn't listen to advice, that they weren't clever or prepared. They listened to their guts and now many of them are no longer with us.

Only those who survive a pandemic get the privilege to double question their actions and wonder if they should have taken more risks.
 
An elderly lady in local posh sheltered accommodation decided the rules weren't for her, and continued going about her daily social routine of cards/bowls club member meet ups, behind closed doors.
"Stupid rules, they make life not worth living."

Poor Marjorie, there is no fool like an old fool.
Dead of Covid just before the first round of vaccinations.
 
Crap for the keyworkers and the dick waving contest it created.

Biggest load of tosh ever. The only thing anyone in the NHS EVER wanted was for people to just follow the rules.
 
Another one is the press and BBC pushing schools to reopen instead of continuing online learning.

I thought online learning worked well if they were doing live sessions but not having live sessions may have been what may have raised the concerns.

I somewhat believe that there is a lot of resistance to change the schooling system from the traditional system that is in place since the industrial revolution which was designed to produce obedient workers rather than creative minds or those who are our future leaders.

I think this debate may go off topic if I go into the school system too much 🤣
 
Leigh said:
Crap for the keyworkers and the dick waving contest it created.

Biggest load of tosh ever. The only thing anyone in the NHS EVER wanted was for people to just follow the rules.
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The only thing I wanted while working in retail was for people to follow the rules and to not hoard stuff. Did they listen to that? Did they fuck.
 
Matt N said:
If any of you fancy any entertainment, here’s TST’s 2-year, 435-page thread in Corner Coffee regarding the whole saga: https://towersstreet.com/talk/threads/coronavirus.5379/

It’s really interesting to see what was being said at the time and how people’s predictions played out. I

In hindsight, I do wonder; was all that anxiety really worth it? Should I really have been so anxious to so much as spend time with family, or go out and live my everyday life? I’m not so sure.
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First few pages are an interesting read! Still, I stand by what I said at the time...

pluk said:
Why worry about something you have no meaningful control over? You might get it, you might not. You might already have it, you might not. If you do get it you might be ok, you might not. Life's a lottery, chill out an enjoy it.
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Oh, and speaking of hoarders...
Our freezer broke, just as covid was popping its head up after Christmas...
No freezer for a year!
 
The virus itself was crazy how random it was.
Couple of examples:
102 yr old tested positive. Slight headache.
Obese, wheelchair bound, asthmatic, insulin dependant diabetic. Bit of a cough.
My mate, young, fit healthy, in her twenties. Ended up hospitalised!

Weird virus.
 
Going to Walibi Holland in 2020 during the few weeks of summer we were allowed to travel, and @AstroDan and I having to sit on the floor in the restaurant by Speed of Sound because of a lack of tables thanks to social distancing.

IMG_9653.jpeg

Photo credit to @Dan who managed to get a table.
 
rob666 said:
Oh, and speaking of hoarders...
Our freezer broke, just as covid was popping its head up after Christmas...
No freezer for a year!
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Our fuse box started packing in around the end of June that year. Fortunately just as there was starting to a bit of leniency on lockdown so we were able to go out for the day whilst the Sparkies rewired the entire house.

Then work said I had to go back before we'd had chance to replaster.
 
Having just had another look through this thread and seen a few posts I missed, I’ve thought of another odd memory I had from the pandemic that might be a bit more unique to me… the odd mismatch between England and the other devolved nations in terms of restrictions.

Now, I know that the high level restrictions were very similar during the locked down periods; stay at home where possible. However, the small print very much differed between the two. For example, when England had “the rule of six”, Wales had “the rule of six excluding children” and Scotland had “the rule of eight”. Or when England had the tier system, Wales had a completely different “alert level system”. Or when England was saying you could buy a certain item in the supermarket, Wales was cordoning those aisles off. Or when England was saying you were allowed to drive further for exercise, Wales and Scotland said that you couldn’t. Or when England was telling us to “stay alert”, Wales and Scotland continued to say “stay at home”.

I probably have slightly more personal experience of this than some on here. I live in England, but only around 6 miles east of the Welsh border. During the height of the pandemic, I attended sixth form at a secondary school less than 1 mile from the border; it was jurisdictionally in England, but had a Welsh postcode and was for all intents and purposes in the urban sprawl of a Welsh border town. At times, keeping track of which restrictions were English and which restrictions were Welsh was confusing; for instance, we in England would hear Boris’ briefings on TV, but then we’d receive a stern bilingual letter through the post or targeted ad on YouTube from the Welsh Government spelling out completely different guidance. Or I’d have chats to people in sixth form that would reference the guidance in England, only to discover that they were under completely different guidance in Wales, and we’d all be a bit confused.

I do wonder in hindsight whether the devolved nations should have had as much power as they did during COVID or whether rule creation should have been centralised in Westminster for the entire country. I’m sure Wales and Scotland felt like they had their reasons for imposing the restrictions they did, but at times, it did feel as though they were just being different because they could. Why, for instance, did Scotland need to adopt the rule of eight instead of the rule of six, or why did Wales need to exclude children from their rule of six? Or why did Wales need to adopt a completely different “alert level system” as opposed to the English tier system? I do wonder if the difference between the devolved nations caused unnecessary confusion, in hindsight, and I wonder if some centralised decision making in Westminster may have been better.
 
Let's see... I was in an Animal Crossing: New Horizons stupor then a Simpsons binge-watch stupor, bought a case of Da Luca Prosecco just because I could, spent my shifts either packing council food boxes or making silly work videos and one long not silly work video and co-ran the TS Quiz Nights. And that's a quarter of what my memory is willing to remember right now.
 
It was around February, 2020, if I recall correctly, when the first reports came out of a terrible virus in China. I knew from how bad Swine Flu was not to underestimate it. There was a sense of it sweeping across Europe, and I remember the imagery of people confined to their balconies in Italy and Spain. Most of my workmates were not bothered about it, to be honest, but I had a great sense of dread. We had to keep putting palette after palette out, and the customers were stripping the shelves bare.

Then, Lockdown was announced. Even though I was bothered by the virus, something rankled about seeing Boris Johnson telling me to stay indoors. Not that I had any intention of mixing with anyone, I just don’t think the Government should have that kind of power over us. People were painting positive messages on stones and leaving them in the woods, and there was that concert where pop stars performed from their homes. Most people really were indoors. Although I wasn’t being paid Furlough, I used the time to roam the countryside, learning all the local footpaths, and also read a lot of books. It was a nice, innocent time that I’d like to go back to, in a way.

As the year went on, things became more sinister. Police used drones to harass dog walkers in the Peak District, and others were fined for sitting on a bench or going for a run. I started to stray further afield myself, and was shadowed by a police car and Apache helicopters. To me, things didn’t add up. No one I knew had been ill from Covid, or had anything remotely like what was described. I continued to go for walks, and saw people had stuck stickers onto sign boards saying “The media is the virus”, which I didn’t understand at the time, but I do now. Then there was the talk about how many people the Government were going to “allow” us to mix with at Christmas, which was outrageous. I was in favour of Social Distancing and respecting others’ space, but not to the extent that the State can enforce it.

2021 arrived and the injections were rolled out. Much of the world descended into tyranny, with many governments introducing jab mandates. Bodily autonomy went out the window, with so many “nice, liberal” regimes - France, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Joe Biden’s USA - thinking they could tell you to inject something into your bloodstream.

And so here we are. A great many people are ill and injured from the injections - at least certain batches - and no one in authority seems very bothered. Where once they claimed every life was important (and I’d agree, it is), it doesn’t seem to count when it comes to the jabs. I think many of us are shell-shocked. Fear was deliberately induced in the population, and we all know what happens when you’ve spent too long in fear - you don’t think straight. We will probably never know the truth about which pathogens may or may not have been circulating during Covid, but I hope we have all learnt to be a bit more sceptical and questioning. Whatever you believed, though, I hate seeing people being nasty to others about it. We were all forced into a stressful situation where we had to make some big decisions, so you’d think people could put themselves in others’ shoes a bit more and just be a bit kinder to each other about it.
 
There was this pretty wild thing that I remember. You'll never believe this one, right. You'll swear I've made it up. I had to go to work as normal for 3 months whilst most of the country got paid by the government to not go to work for 3 months. I know, pretty unbelievable, yeah? Definitely still not bitter about it.
 
I walked into a room with 2 others, disposable dust suit on and big mask with filters etc looking like we were decontaminating site and scared half the room to death as this was during a BoJo briefing. That was fun.
 
I work with the worried elderly.
My wife picked up a nasty bug at work last week, non covid, but infected her throat badly...three covid tests and two masks in use this week so far for me at work.
This naughty bug hasn't gone away, our lovely doctor also warns that we are only one step away from a possible stronger evil variant that could start the ball rolling all over again.
Lovely.
 
Martin said:
Wasn't there like a week in lockdown 2 or 3 when Wales decided you couldn't buy alcohol or have it delivered after like 7PM? Probably the funniest of all the rules tbh
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They did decide that women’s sanitary products and baby products and such weren’t “essential items” and cordoned off the corresponding aisles. They, understandably, got in a lot of trouble for it!
 
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