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In work the doctors were being given a crash course in covid before they were recalled from research to itu
Northwick Park (where a lot of our colleagues were based) had already declared critical incident and we were trying desperately to help them get PPE and sterilisation equipment : they cleared our supplies & were desperate for scrubs & goggles
2 things had unnerved me, Our lab WhatsApp group has a lot of statisticians and the R number & estimated fatality rate made it clear that governments herd immunity policy was insane
https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-12/british-government-wants-uk-to-acquire-coronavirus-herd-immunity-writes-robert-peston
And Lewis Goodalls report on News night a week before asking why UK wasn't taking it seriously as other countries
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1238242156365721609?s=19
So it was a relief that government finally seemed to be taking it seriously
I had to go in on the last day to help pack up our qpcr machines to go to lighthouse testing labs (where they would sit unused for over a month!)
My train into London was empty, rather than completely rammed & as normal & cycling thru empty London was spooky
I had an interview on the 20th March and we weren't sure if we should shake hands at the end of it. We did, though both reached for the sanitizer shortly afterwards.
I remember walking round Birmingham after that and it being dead. It was a Friday afternoon when it was normally heaving and there was no-one around, though everything was still open. I weirdly ended up on a solo pub crawl, dropping into a few favourite places for a beer, to collect some takeaway and a chat with the owners. Being sat in a completely empty bar at 5pm on a Friday where normally you'd be queuing out of the door was very strange. It was a very sombre affair.
I was in China on a business trip as the situation was unfolding. We were in two minds whether to cancel but at that point in January 2020 there was very little in the media, it was just starting to gain some traction in the news. By the time we were coming home 10 days later the situation had escalated although you wouldn't know it, there were no inbound checks on arrival at Heathrow only a few extra people wearing masks and the cabin crew spraying disinfectant spray around the cabin before take off.
Went straight back into the office when we got back and by that time people were getting a bit twitchy. We were sent to work from home after a week! A bit later I got a real snotty cold accompanied by a bad cough. That was the back end of Feb 2020. Got sent home and haven't really been back since. When the 1st lockdown was introduced I was out running. It was pretty surreal from that point on.
We've been extremely lucky through this whole period in that I've carried on working (with my Chinese counterparts among others), my OH only does a few hours a week and has been on and off furlough but it's not affected the family finances and we live in an area where there are plenty of decent places to exercise from home (I've been riding my local trails a lot as I don't need to drive there). It's also meant I've been able to spend a lot of quality time with my kids (3 & 6) which has been the biggest bonus of all.
Have to try and keep some perspective on what's going on as it's really affected a lot of people so that means we've been following the rules, not seeing family (OH is from Wales) and friends etc, only one of us going for shopping and all the other stuff...
I was a week and a half into being unemployed. I had another job lined up which I had intended on stepping into after a couple of weeks off. I didn't start until the end of May. As I'd been doing nothing anyway I was already fully into the swing of baking bread and doing all that stuff around the house that I'd been putting off.
I've just checked my google maps timeline, aside from exercise, I went nowhere except the supermarket from 23rd March to 14th May.
I shut up the business for the boss and got our essential data into the cloud ready for working from home. I had a week in the office on my own before going on furlough.
I remember commuting by bike suddenly being a joy, no cars to speak of and no muppets on the road. By the end of that week the cyclists were wobbling onto the road for exercise and the weather started to improve.
It was the worst of times, it was the best of times. It was also my birthday weekend.
Dog-sitting our increasingly short-sighted, epileptic old dog who’d also managed to smash his jaw jumping off a bed into the skirting board so I was treating his infection with antibiotics.
I was also waiting to get my wife back from (central) London neuro hospital. She was assisted travelling by train (as it turned out right in the middle of the panic/lockdown announcements)
They had to reschedule/cancel further scans tests what with the Covid hubbub, her shoulder-joints were increasingly failing and (extra-weirdly) the act of swallowing food and drink was becoming more and more difficult.
They were now testing for (quote) ‘prepare yourself for a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis’ (ALS, ie rapid deterioration, paralysis and death within typically 3 years)
Hearing this possibility/likelihood was an entire gut-plummeting shock to me. I’ve been caring for her/watching her triumph for years with this and other disability/disease/related-injuries. But ALS on top? I felt immediately I had to prepare for the worst and so I began the mental process. To be like the most ‘grownup’ husband, FIL/SIL etc that there ever was. I began cleaning every nook and cranny of our home. Weird. Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Throwing cluttery things away.
I went into anxiety meltdown I suppose. It’s only ever happened once before and that was during another quadruple life-changing whammy where autonomy was being stripped away
Tight chest, dizzy. Short of breath. Went through a weird combination of pre-emptive grief-disbelief-planning-grief cycle, and also a quiet additional repressed panic re her return journey/safety from Covid (she’s well into the co-morbidity bracket having had a collapsed lung, ongoing disease and is prone to pneumonia at the drop of a small bug)
What if I get sick now, outside, from a delivery?? Who will care for her?
We’ve been trying to get to the bottom of her joint and pain and related issues for over 5 years but I never imagined this.
Anyway. Better news. Problems are ongoing today, but a year ago the important results came in a week or so later and they had ruled out ALS!
I sobbed again, now with relief as I took the phone after the call. Mrs P just looked bemused. We are made of different stuffs it seems! She says she would just have pragmatically chosen voluntary euthanasia.
I then sold my old road bike and instead bought a drum kit to work on my fun-quota, anxiety and focus issues. And then we queue online for a month, order groceries in, buy a second hand freezer and wash every packet of food. Forever. Like most of you?
A year later, she’s still awaiting healthcare but we’re holding on. And I’m still drumming.
*edit - apologies for the long one. Catharsis a year on is still catharsis I guess
was working in Leeds city centre and I took a picture on the 18/19th in the morning rush-hour and instead of the thousands or folk communing, it's looks like a particular lazy Sunday afternoon. There was a rumour we were all to be sent home that didn't materialize until the following week, at which I never went back, and subsequently handed in my notice as the role was a shitty one anyway. Moved house and back into primary care since!
Like others, I'd already been WFH for about two weeks. I remember it all being a bit of a novelty at first if I'm honest, and actually quite enjoying it.
A year later, I'm typing this looking out of my new office window at a rather lovely view of a hill in the Peak District, following a move that would never have happened (or certainly not for a few years) had Covid not made working from home much more of an obvious ongoing possibility for my and my wife's employers.
I'm not going to lie, other than some minor inconveniences and amended leisure plans, Covid has had a positive impact on our lives (touch wood, tempting fate, etc etc).
I always wondered what it would be like to have a memorable date as a birthday.
Not what I had in mind, tbh.
Being grounded on your 35th birthday sucks.
I'd been working from home for about a week already. We'd been told to work from home if able to do so.
I remember watching Bo Jo's press conference announcing the lockdown, waiting for 30 mins or so before calling my boss (to give him chance to speak to his boss) to find out what we were going to tell our field based staff to do.
Within the space of about an hour everyone had been informed by WhatsApp that they were to remain at home cleaning / servicing their equipment until we had produced the Risk Assessment which would allow then to return safely to their normal activities. That process took about 10 days.
At the start I thought it would all be over and done with after a couple of months. I'll probably continue to work from home even when we are allowed to return to the office, although no date has even been hinted at as to when that might be.
As for the lockdown(s), I still question the ethics of all for purposes of protecting (mostly) over 80s many of whom – in care homes – would now be dead anyway one year on (the average stay in a care home is just 2 years).
**** me
Did I really just read that?
Just to sprinkle some facts over that utterly callous drivel. At the age of 80 your average life expectancy is 10 years. So plenty of people in their 80s can expect to see their 90s.
Only 15% of people over 85 are in care homes
The group most at risk of death or hospitalisation from Covid (90% of cases) are the over 50s, not the over 80s. Its 25% of the population
Anyway. Vote Conservative!
The extraordinary measures being taken were about right and Boris, remarkably was doing about as good a job as we could expect from him
You have staggeringly low expectations!
I was in work on a run of night control room shift, we were all betting on how long Boris would hold off putting making the decision. It was blatantly obvious it needed to be done but even on Sunday morning he was saying there was no need. Lots of customers had already shut their premises and banks were planning for it so it was going to happen without the Govt making it official anyway. I'd deliberately been up to Coed-Y-Brenin that Friday for one last trip away before the lockdown, fully expecting it to be announced on Sunday. It was very eery cycling back home at 6.15am Monday morning through a deserted Cardiff, normally there'd be lots of early workers about. Riding back in for the next shift at 17.30 felt like a scene out of 28 days later: no traffic, people or trains in Central Station. Just me in near-silence pedalling away with bits of litter blowing around. Gives me the chills just thinking about it!
The rest of that week was spent in a kind of other-worldly fog. I was back on the road just going to every customer I could find and collecting all of their money from their safes as lots of businesses feared being robbed. It still doesn't feel like I lived through it now, especially as I've been made redundant so will likely never see that side of things again. The fact it happened midway through the Six Nations tournament which means Cardiff is a massive party normally around now just added to the stark contrast of the whole situation.
When talk turned to stuff like the furlough scheme etc it felt like another alternative world. I always thought on the more pessimistic side of things anyway but the way it all quickly unfolded those first few weeks was still a shock. The fact we are here, 12 months later, with various vaccines, a still-functioning NHS and a hope that there is a way out at the end of it felt impossible back then. Just imagine how much better we'd be if the clowns in charge had done things correctly sooner!
The world feels like a tinderbox, I’m not sure how another major set-back would go with people.
As the scenes in Bristol last night show that's the big worry now. We've all been pushed to the absolute limit, the end is just about visible and anything that takes that away could lead to anywhere.
The last 12 months have been a real-time history lesson and we're still not at break time yet.
I was in hospital with broken collarbone, 9 cracked ribs, concussion. I believe my bars tapped a tree Was due to start a new job in the morning
over 80s many of whom – in care homes – would now be dead
And one might be Tom Moore.
1—–2——3—–4—–5—–6—–7—–8—–9—– and 10
Ah,that’s better
Same here.
I've been incredibly lucky. I had retired the year before and all I had to do was cancel some stuff I wasn't going to be able to do. I know one bloke who thinks he maybe had COVID right at the beginning and one friend's 102 year old dad who had it on his death certificate.
Other than that no contact with it at all.
I'd been following developments coming out of Korea regarding mortality and vulnerability, so wasn't personally that worried.
As a postie in the urban NW, I just got to work like a **** for the last 12 months in a comically non-Covid secure work environment, frantically hoying out non-essential future landfill to people internet shopping on the back of their furlough pay. Some of us got a bit poorly, nobody died, nobody's suffered long term symptoms. Not many obese octagenarian posties, mind. I pop into the STW echo chamber for a chuckle every now and again.
And hey, saved loads of money! As a frontline 'key worker' in my 50s I even got my first jab yesterday (no side effects, back at work this morning). Bonus.
Has an ill-advised post been deleted as there's some comments about the over 80's and the PM that are a tad confusing?
My work was closed down sharply this week, planned trips from Dundee to London and Halifax this week cancelled and everyone sent home with their Surface Pros to begin working from home. No-one had a clear view how long this would be for but we had the feeling it would be a long time. 'Essential workers', playing a role in keeping government functioning. Predictions from a particularly wise friend in a relevant area of medicine were that we would have restrictions for at least a year and that only an early and successful vaccine roll out would make a really effective change to that. A great many mistakes and resulting extra deaths were predicted.
This was also the week that I began booking shifts as a 'reserve' ambulance driver to work on patient transfers for a Covid assessment unit. The gig was to package and move patients from their assessment in a consulting room, out to the car park to say goodbye to family who'd brought them in, walk or roll them into the back of the truck and drive to acute admissions at the nearby hospital's red zone. Clean the vehicle and return to step one. Repeat... At this stage, I didn't really know what this was going to involve but boy, did I get my eyes opened the next weekend as I hit the first of the back to back 12 hour shifts. These days, images on screen of a row of ambulances parked outside an A&E make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I sometimes get emotional about it.
Being grounded on your 35th birthday sucks.
A friend is just going to have his 2nd lockdown birthday
Thinking 'FFS get on with it', to be honest. Same as every day for the preceding fortnight.
My daughter is about to have Lockdown Birthday - The Empire Strikes Back. Last year was a zero birthday. She doesn't want Return of the Jedi birthday next year.
A friend is just going to have his 2nd lockdown birthday
Tell them I sympathise...
It's all a bit shit, isn't it?
yep. Feel like its just life now and we will be in this state of social distancing / lockdown forever.
My 40th last September and my lad's 1st birthday - not that big a deal not having a nice do with family and friends in the grand scheme of things, but another thing making life a little bit shitter.
Same. People around me are planning to get together when they can, make plans for summer, and I don't want to do any of that. Living in your own house in fear is just the new normal for me now.
we had got back from skiing the weekend they closed the resorts and flights stopped. still feel very lucky we managed to get that week away in. didnt have anything else booked all year so not had any of those issues to deal with. i had decided to work from home a week before they made it compulsory. couldnt wait to GTF out of London. hard to believe ive never been back!! WFH was brilliant for me, saw the family, walked the dogs and rode my bike every single day. was out of work for 3 months during the year tho which was bitter sweet. loved the time off, riding and digging loads, school runs, even cooking for the family, all stuff that never used to happen being down ldn all week. proper skinted me tho!
i miss the pubs. thats my only gripe tbh. i never struggled for bog roll, touch wood stayed virus free so far, as have all the family. woods and hills stayed open, never really went anywhere else. always been a bit ocd hand washer so love that i get to sanitise my hands in the shops, and the introvert in me is delighted i dont have to hug, kiss or shake hands with people i meet! I even enjoyed home schooling! gutted we cant go skiing this year but im not complaining too much about that.
im about to turn 40. my mates have been discussing our 40th's for the last 20 years! but tbh im quite glad it will be forcibly low key! will definitely celebrate with a riding trip somewhere epic when we are allowed...
I even enjoyed home schooling!
Pervert.
Already had been working from home for 3 weeks, and was on-call that night, a week later started 12 shifts managing part of the public health response. It's not stopped since. I've colleagues who have had few days off and very little leave since it started in January 2020. I remember looking at plans and realising they weren't going to happen and being worried things were going to go downhill for a lot of people. Thinking about it now, very lucky family haven't had it and don't know anyone who has sadly died, but some were hospitalised.
The extraordinary measures being taken were about right and Boris, remarkably was doing about as good a job as we could expect from him
You have staggeringly low expectations!
HAD, we're discussing how we felt 12 months ago.
You can wind back the Covid thread a few hundred pages to check if you like to get a feel for the feelings of STW, but my memory of the 23rd of March 2020 was that the measures announced that day were taken positively by most of the public. Some thought it was too late, some thought it was a bit drastic but it was seen as 'enough' by most. The world was a very different place back then. Spain and Italy had both had terrible outbreaks, but it seemed at the time we could avoid that happening here, because it hadn't happened by the time the Government announced the lock down and more importantly the furlough scheme, because then, more than even now, people feared losing their jobs and houses more than Covid.
You can track the PMs approval ratings pre and post 23/03/20 announcement here.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/boris-johnson-approval-rating
It's easy to forget how much the world has changed in the last 12 months.
we’re discussing how we felt 12 months ago.
It's not how I felt 12 months ago, it was obviously too little too late and as pointed out above the government was criticised for that at the time. We thought we could manage with bluster and British exceptionalism and 'herd immunity'. Did you forget about Boris failing to attend 5 COBRA meetings about the situation, or boasting about shaking hands with everyone in a COVID ward?
It's got nothing to do with hindsight, it was obviously stupid at the time. The late lockdown and the Christmas lifting are reckoned to have killed around 30,000 people apiece. We only recently introduced travel restrictions FFS and now if you have a second home abroad you're allowed to go over to 'manage' it.
No revisionism from me P-Jay I haven't considered the PM was doing a great job from the first of the missed COBRA meetings onwards. He's been a day late and a dollar short for everything to do with the pandemic.
He's not been a dollar short for his mates and his mates' mates though the corrupt bastard.
The OED definition of shit is due a change it should now include a reference to Boris Johnson.
The first real impact was a cancelled ski trip on 1 weeks notice. Then my wife was sent home to work and is still doing so. I work in a hospital so have been in all the way through to varying degrees so from a work perspective not a lot changed. We were fortunate in that my site was designated a green site so we could still treat very ill patients safely.
The bigger impact on us has been in our personal life. It’s the old you don’t realise how much you enjoy things until you cant. Not being able to se family, ride and travel has been really difficult to deal with despite making the most of the lifting of restrictions over the summer.
It maybe blind optimism but I’m still hoping we can go to Europe this summer. We were able to last summer and despite all the media we are in a better place this year than we were 12 months ago where we were at the bottom of the cases mountain
I’m still hoping we can go to Europe this summer.
I have a feeling that Boris will bottle the unpopular decision as usual, so yes, you may be allowed once the third wave in Europe has eased.
A year already! I'd better start thinking of changing my mask.
Having surpassed herself by preempting the toilet paper shortage (based on friends and collegues in HK and Aus), my better half undid all her good work by saying that all crises end up causing a fuel buying panic, and insisted we filled both cars with diesel, at full price.
Said tanks of diesel lasted until June in my car, July in hers.
We saw some music on the 9th and were staying in the same Holiday Inn as the Madrid side (kin annoying, we're not even football fans) then my mrs went through Cheltenham with plenty of pissed racegoers off and on the train. We locked down on the 11th and remained so. Before the official lockdown I was heeding that idiotic Japanese advice about bogroll and pasta with regular walks round the Co-op up till 23rd. Thought being locked down would drive me up the wall but it hasn't been too bad. Reckon my pattern of movements, location and MO is not going to be the same. Lockdown has given time to think, consider and reflect on time and money wasted in the past and hopefully not to be repeated
It’s not how I felt 12 months ago, it was obviously too little too late and as pointed out above the government was criticised for that at the time. We thought we could manage with bluster and British exceptionalism and ‘herd immunity’. Did you forget about Boris failing to attend 5 COBRA meetings about the situation, or boasting about shaking hands with everyone in a COVID ward?
It’s got nothing to do with hindsight, it was obviously stupid at the time. The late lockdown and the Christmas lifting are reckoned to have killed around 30,000 people apiece. We only recently introduced travel restrictions FFS and now if you have a second home abroad you’re allowed to go over to ‘manage’ it.
If you didn't feel that way 12 months ago, then you didn't, other opinions are available. If you were screaming from the roof tops back in Feb 2020 that we should be in lockdown then good for you.
You seem to want to paint me as some kind of Boris cheering idiot for daring to say that, on the 23rd of March 2020 I thought the restrictions and actions announced by the Government that day were a good idea.
I could argue, if I wanted to that, Boris didn't visit a Covid ward, he visited a hospital hundreds of miles away from the nearest confirmed covid patient and shock hands with people on the day the Government advisors started to advise to stop shaking hands. or that we had no idea that he'd avoided Cobra until months after the fact (around May 2020) but then, I'd be defending Boris bloody Johnson because talking on the internet is so ****ing binary.
Just come back from a day trip to Coniston on the 22nd to the news that we wouldn't be going to work the next day.
Just looked back at some photos and I'd forgotten how wonderful the weather was this time last year.
Year started off so well, I got married then just before lockdown I was offered a new job which was a shift away from teaching. Lockdown hit and I must admit I really enjoyed it. I like my own company and hate forced social events, so luckily none of those. I'd already been working at home for a few weeks as schools cancelled museum sessions etc. The weather was amazing, so I did loads of outdoor jobs, plenty of BBQs too.
A few weeks in to lockdown our old boxer was diagnosed with cancer, which really hit me. We'd only had him three years as a rescue and he really was my best mate. The one good thing with lockdown and working from home was that I got to spend so much time with him. Unfortunately he passed in September and working from home after that has been a mental ball ache. I've hated it. Even today I had a massive sob because he wasn't behind me snoring on his sofa as I work.
However. We are expecting our first child in August, plus hopefully seeing friends and family we have not seen since our wedding as they live at the other end of the country.
I always take a trip at this time of year, it's the end of my busy period at work.
Last year I was wild camping solo near Pike O Blisco, was the 2nd night of a 2 night trip, started in Langdale. Monday I walked from there over Old Man of Coniston before dropping down to pick up the van. Found out what happened when I eventually got phone signal
Heard that Snowdon was rammed, it was really quiet where I was. That was an ace trip!
This year I'm relocating to the countryside instead!
Day 2 of a trip to the Lake District. Cut it short to drive home straight after Johnson's announcement.
As slackboy says, the weather was stunning considering how wet the winter had been.
I drove to Manchester and back from Brighton to get my son back from uni.