Sunday 9th March 2025 is Covid Day of Reflection.

Oreo

Calendargirl

But 5 years ago, as now, it was all so frighteningly new and unprecedented.

Yes, reading through that list, it all looks so completely over the top. But there was no vaccine, no cure, no one knew what was going to happen.

Plus how many on GN were disinfecting the groceries before putting them away? (Not me, I never did that).

We all now know so much was wrong, but the fact remains, 5 years ago, we just didn’t.

And we were all scared.

Very true.
That’s where the inquiry comes in handy tho, to make sure we do some things differently next time round, some things faster and some things better.

How many people died, not from Covid, but because they couldn't get a GP or hospital appointment during lockdowns?
🤬

Calendargirl

But 5 years ago, as now, it was all so frighteningly new and unprecedented.

Yes, reading through that list, it all looks so completely over the top. But there was no vaccine, no cure, no one knew what was going to happen.

Plus how many on GN were disinfecting the groceries before putting them away? (Not me, I never did that).

We all now know so much was wrong, but the fact remains, 5 years ago, we just didn’t.

And we were all scared.

Very true.
That’s where the inquiry comes in handy tho, to make sure we do some things differently next time round, some things faster and some things better.

There is no point in being annoyed at the way things happened, always easy to say what we should have done in hindsight.
It was an unknown occurrence and I think the majority of people , general public and government did what was thought best with the information they were given.
Let’s hope we have learned lessons and will be better prepared if something similar should happen again.
I’m not being complacent, we lost a close friend during the epidemic and had several other events that could not be as we wished.

MayBee70

Rula

Average age of death was 82 I believe.

Had this happened pre-Internet we'd have not reacted this way. There would have been news reports, newspaper articles informing us of a contagious virus that was most fatal to older folk and no doubt we'd have been told to try to shield that age group.

Looking back it was a disaster what happened to school age children. My 2 grandsons were 11 and 10 when it started. The eldest has been having problems, not wanting to go to school, he's struggling with anxiety and many children his age are having similar issues. Lockdowns are possibly the cause

Hopefully we'll learn from this if we ever have to deal with a similar virus

But people didn’t know the average age was 82 until thousands of people had died. My friend of mine was sent to a nursing home after a fall and she died. A nurse in the next village died. She wasn’t 80. People are still suffering from long covid but they are being ignored. It hasn’t gone away. Another friend of mine has just had it for a second time and said he felt incredibly ill.

Life expectancy has dropped slightly but some of this was due to delays in treatment during the years of the pandemic rather than from Covid itself.

Life expectancy 2010:
78.7 years for males and 82.6 years for females

2017 to 2019
79.3 years for males and 83.0 years for females.

2021 to 2023
79.0 years for males and 83.0 years for females.

Pantglas2

Disagree Casdon.

Drakeford may be popular in south Wales, up north he’s seen as the man who ruined our NHS both as a health minister and First Minister and we’re still paying the price!

In rural Wales he’s known as the plonker who went to Builth to tell Welsh farmers he had to justify any financial assistance to his Bangladeshi taxi driver!

It’s just a fact Pantglas that his popularity rose during the Covid period, from numerous opinion polls. I’m not defending him, just saying that’s what happened at the time.

keepingquiet

I don't think we were ever told not to go outside and breathe the fresh air- in fact I remember being encouraged to do so. I had lots of meet-ups with people in parks and local woodland.

Meeting up with others, even in the 'fresh air', was against the rules.

Driving a couple of miles to woodland to take dogs for a walk was forbidden but walking dogs around the neighbourhood where there might be others doing the same was apparently fine.

Disagree Casdon.

Drakeford may be popular in south Wales, up north he’s seen as the man who ruined our NHS both as a health minister and First Minister and we’re still paying the price!

In rural Wales he’s known as the plonker who went to Builth to tell Welsh farmers he had to justify any financial assistance to his Bangladeshi taxi driver!

Calendargirl

I assumed (wrongly) that we were talking about the UK.

My DD, who lives in Australia, had different rules to us.

They limited travel there for quite a while after the pandemic.

Their rules were even more stringent, power-hungry State Premiers enjoy the control over people.

I was peeved to read this morning (headlines in Observer) that the U.K. has had the worst outcomes compared to other developed countries.

Largely to do I think with the wide inequalities in this country.

Viewing life through a distorted lens. Political leaders throughout the world did what they felt would best protect people, given the evidence they were presented with at the time. Mark Drakeford and Nicola Sturgeons both saw their popularity with the public in their own countries rise as a result of the actions they took at the time, which is more relevant to how well they did, than musings with hindsight.

I found Sturgeons daily advice much better than Johnson et al. It was also signed. At least they didn’t say ‘let the bodies pile high’ or try to visit the Queen when they had covid.

Pantglas2

“Some of the regulations did see people like Mark Drakeford behave like petty little dictators. “ CumbrianMale

The worst thing about him was he was very South and Cardiff centric - when their infection/death figures were atrocious he shut down the whole of Wales, saying we were all in it together, even though many rural areas in north Wales had very few cases.

When S Wales had fewer cases and North Wales soared up the scale he shut down only the north…so much for that eh!

He was spotted at a " diversity " event without a face covering. However, both he and Nicola Krankie insisted everyone followed the rules to the letter and behaved like little Gauleiters at times. It was bad enough in England, but these two seemed to delight in how many petty rules they could dream up.

Sadly, I don't think our lives have been the same since

nanaK54

JaneJudge

is it 5 years since we locked down today?

No that was 23rd March

thank you, tbh my recollections of the build up are muddled as we started staying at home much earlier than the lockdown

Such an interesting thread, of course it is all subjective, everyone's experiences differed according to their own circumstances.

I remember being scared, so scared...my DH is/was CEV and I managed to convince myself that he would die if we couldn't keep him safe. That was probably true before vaccines.

Unlike lots on this thread I actually thoroughly enjoyed the 'clapping for the NHS', of course it didn't achieve anything really. One evening someone in my village played 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' on saxophone during the clapping it was beautiful, so moving.

I lost so much time with my youngest grandson, time that can never be recovered, but acknowledge that it probably just had to be in order to keep my DH safe and well.

My condolences to those here that lost loved ones without the chance for proper goodbyes, that is so sad.

Have any lessons been learned, though? My grandchildren continued going to school because their parents were key workers. Their school was quite safe because it was an old building built after lessons had been learned from the Spanish flu epidemic. I thought that, because of long covid, more would now be done to help people with ME but that hasn’t happened. Are we more prepared for another epidemic in the future? I doubt it. We still don’t really know how this one started

JaneJudge

is it 5 years since we locked down today?

No that was 23rd March

Pantglas2

“Some of the regulations did see people like Mark Drakeford behave like petty little dictators. “ CumbrianMale

The worst thing about him was he was very South and Cardiff centric - when their infection/death figures were atrocious he shut down the whole of Wales, saying we were all in it together, even though many rural areas in north Wales had very few cases.

When S Wales had fewer cases and North Wales soared up the scale he shut down only the north…so much for that eh!

You couldn't drive two miles along a country road to take your dogs for a walk in fresh air in practically deserted woods. If you did, you'd find police waiting for you in the car park threatening to fine you.

Hindsight is wonderful. They were very scary times all over the world. The Nhs were working flat out and doing their best. The GP’s went to ground.

is it 5 years since we locked down today?

“Some of the regulations did see people like Mark Drakeford behave like petty little dictators. “ CumbrianMale

The worst thing about him was he was very South and Cardiff centric - when their infection/death figures were atrocious he shut down the whole of Wales, saying we were all in it together, even though many rural areas in north Wales had very few cases.

When S Wales had fewer cases and North Wales soared up the scale he shut down only the north…so much for that eh!

Crazy eh CumbrianMale.
I think they made up these daft rules on the hoof at times.

It was a grim time as there were so many restrictions and I recall when some of the restrictions were lifted in the summer of 2020, you had things like table service introduced in pubs, where you could wait half an hour to get a drink. Then came all the tiered areas in the autumn of that year, where you could do one thing in one part of the contry and not the other, and then back to square one in the winter of 2020/21.
Some of the regulations did see people like Mark Drakeford behave like petty little dictators. There was one ridiculous rule in Wales in the winter of 2020/21 where only the supermarkets and corner shops remained open, but you couldn't buy anything else but food and drink. Suppose your shoes wore out, sorry the supermarket can't sell you a new pair, even though there waa an entire rack of shoes. Then seemingly people who lived on the English border and could buy these things in places like Chester were often turned back by the police.

Rula

Oh I know all about it. My brother in law was in hospital due to a kidney issue when it all started. He contracted covid and died. He was 57. Friend of mine, early 60s, dreadfully ill in hospital with it. She survived but has lung scarring which has caused breathing issues and she still ends up in hospital when it flares up.

I was making the point that had we not had the Internet then we wouldn't have reacted in the same way .

The use of ventilators wasn't the way to treat this but at the time it was obviously the right way of treatment. This was only discovered months later.

But there has been a huge impact on so many areas of life post lockdowns. Which weren't all necessary.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing

I'm not sure, there was a lot of hysteria about AIDS, did we have the internet then? I think it existed but wasn't widespread. Same with mad cow disease, I remember predictions of millions of us were incubating it and would have horrible deahts.

I thought the daftest thing was eat out to help out. My town had very few cases till that stupid initiative but almost immediately the numbers started to climb and it was months before it was back down to previous levels.