FORUMS - COASTERFORCE

Hi guys. Recently, we hit the 5 year anniversary of the first COVID-19 lockdown being declared in the UK, and 5 years ago today, we would have been in the middle of lockdown 1 in the UK, and countries across the world were grappling with the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. With this in mind, I was chatting with someone the other day, and we were reminiscing about some of the wildest memories we had from the COVID pandemic. We were talking about some aspects of it and how 5 years on, we almost couldn’t believe that they even happened. With this in mind, let’s reminisce about what is probably one of the oddest periods in most people’s lifetimes. I’d love to know; what are some of your wildest memories from the COVID-19 pandemic period? What aspects of the pandemic period do you look back on and think “I can’t believe that ever happened!”?

I’ll get the ball rolling with some of my suggestions.

Some things I look back at and think “that was utterly wild” include:

• The debate around what constituted a “substantial meal” that erupted with the implementation of the UK’s tier system in Autumn 2020. I find it nuts that we were even discussing this, and even more nuts that “a Scotch egg” was given as the common answer!
• The way everyone became an armchair epidemiologist (myself included!). Discussion around R numbers and “the peak” became part of everyday conversation, and everyone suddenly became experts in epidemiology for a year or two!
• The panic buying. I get being scared, but why everyone chose to stock up on toilet roll of all things still eludes me…

There are probably more I could think of! But I’d love to know; what are some of your wildest memories from the COVID-19 pandemic period, 5 years on?