Lockdown & Me
By Shirley Ottewell.
Lockdown Experience & Thoughts.
Introduction
My given name is Shirley.
In the year 2018 I moved house from Rossendale Lancashire to south Sheffield to be close to my younger daughter Penny, a research scientist at the University. My elder daughter Tracey lives in Peterborough & after a hectic year rescuing my bungalow from long term neglect I decided to sell my car. Public transport in the area is good: a tram journey to Penny’s or a direct train to Tracey’s. In February 2020 a few weeks before lockdown I celebrated my seventy-third birthday.
Start of the madness.
Late October 2019 was about the time we first heard about a new virus in China. Said before when a SARS virus was discovered, to have originated in the wet markets where wild animals were sold for food. The media ran with it and for the first time we heard the word ‘lockdown’.
A call to lockdown our borders in an attempt to stop this ‘deadly virus’ coming to Britain. Sheffield has a large intake of Chinese students so people were calling for a hold to be put on their return. This didn’t happen, the new year came & the students returned. Originally this up until now unknown virus SARSCoV-2 was referred to as Coronavirus later Covid-19. This was the great pandemic we’d feared since the 1918/19 Spanish Flu.
Washed in by a wave of media hysteria, more people would die of Covid-19 than Spanish Flu. Scientists are working hard to isolate this killer bug, no cure, no treatment, no vaccine, the population of the world is defenceless. People over seventy and younger ones in poor health would all die. China goes into lockdown, closing schools, places of work, stopping travel etc. Britain's newly elected Prime Minister Boris Johnson addresses the people.
Lockdown is a typical Chinese reaction. We won't lockdown, we will follow contingency plans laid down over years to deal with pandemics. We will protect the vulnerable whilst getting through the bad times, build up herd immunity; set up ‘Nightingale Hospitals’ to isolate Covid-19 patients & allow the NHS to get on with their day to day work.
7-9 such hospitals were built & I remember asking my MP how they could staff them. His answer ‘they’ll be run by the military’ shocked me. Didn’t he know 98% of the military medical services had been closed down in the mid-late 90s & transferred to the Territorials/auxiliaries, part timers who other times worked for the NHS.
Boris Johnson the British Prime Minister styling himself on his hero Sir Winston Churchill addressed the masses repeating ‘We will protect the vulnerable in our society while the rest of us carry on as usual. Locking down was something China's communist government inflicted on its people, we here in Britain were a democracy. We would keep going though the hard times coming’.
In an amazingly short space of time Boris did his first U-turn (a habit he’d become well known for) and announced Britain will lockdown on 13th March 2020 for just for a fortnight to flatten the curve and protect our NHS from the wave of serious infection that was coming along the line and threatening to overwhelm our hospitals.
First Lockdown
My memory appears to serve me wrong on dates because I thought EU countries locked down at different times but researching the issue today tells me it happened almost simultaneously, of course with the exception of Sweden who never locked down. .
Although I’d lived in Sheffield for close to two years I’d been tardy in signing on with a GP. Enjoying good health & preferring natural health treatment to drugs handed out by allopathic GPs, I’d only signed on as a patient with a local dentist, not a GP. Time to rectify matters. I walked down to our local Health Centre.
The place looked deserted, only two cars in the carpark, absence of patients coming & going. I try the door but it’s locked. I press the bell, no response. As I wait a man comes up to the door looking as puzzled as I felt. We exchange a word & he presses the bell 3 times in succession to be rewarded with a gruff female voice ticking him off. .‘I’ve come for my wife's prescription, she’s run out of Insulin’.
‘We’re closed. All repeat prescriptions can be had from the chemists.’
‘Right; hang on there’s a lady here who wants to speak to you’.
‘Morning. I’m new to the area & need to register.’
‘Can’t do that now, if you need a prescription renewed contact the last practice you were registered with’. An audible click ended this short conversation and I started to wander off down the high street. A film or tv series would at this point burst out with mysterious mood music or spooky sound effects. The high street had neither but the feeling that engulfed me as I walked familiar pavements mirrored the feelings such effects were manufactured to create. I passed the Methodist Chapel.
A new notice filled one third of their notice board. “Closed due to CoronaVirus.. You are always in our prayers”.
I passed our Parish Church, St. Marks where a similar notice of closure adorned a smaller noticeboard finishing in “May the Lord be with you”.
‘Yes’ I thought ‘The Lord be with you because the Churches and Health Centres, the organisations we’ve come to rely on in times of trouble will not.’
The country entered into a twilight zone, the roads were nigh on empty, people on the streets walked in the roads or crossed to the far side pavement to avoid getting within two metres of each other. Markers painted at bus stops that now rarely saw a bus ordered ‘keep 2 metres apart’ Similar circular markers became stuck to floors of supermarkets now guarded by big menacing men wearing high-viz jackets. No more than a set number allowed in at a time. The rest lined up waiting two metres apart outside regardless of age, fitness or weather.
Four days into lockdown I heard the ambulance drive onto our housing estate strangely followedby a police car...
Talking with the neighbours Wednesday morning (we made a habit of bringing in our bins at the same time; an excuse to stand and talk) the news came that the ambulance hadn’t been for a Covid-19 victim but a suicide.
A woman known to two of my neighbours had hanged herself from the bannisters in her family home. Reason unknown.
The two weeks or fifteen days to flatten the curve have come and gone, but schools are still closed, businesses and shops deemed ‘non essential’ still shut, students isolated in single rooms studying on laptops, businesses struggling to operate with their workforce all working from home on mobile phones and internet. Main media feeds us several times a day on a diet of fear. The numbers of infections and deaths are rising, and the virus is spreading in more countries. We are in the grip of a global pandemic the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918/19.
Pictures from China from where covid-19 emerged are shown on BBC. Pictures of people collapsing in the streets to be picked up by others wearing hazard suits. Forcibly quarantined citizens of any nationality being locked in hotel rooms because they travelled across borders. I’ve given up listening to the news. I communicate with friends and family on the telephone or onWhatsApp groups. One friend’s convinced a truck parked at the end of her road is a refrigerated vehicle used to store the bodies of covid victims because all morgues are full. Another friend hasn’t left her house, she orders through the supermarket's internet sites donning household gloves to wash all packaging in disinfectant on delivery. Pilates has gone online, for one hour a week we exercise via Zoom.
Waiting to start my screen scans, my classmates, people I’d normally see in the flesh now appear sitting on mats in their own rooms. They are dressed for pilates and have placed aids alongside them. It’s eerie, makes me feel even more isolated. I notice how quiet we all are just ‘hi friends’ and an occasional ‘happy birthday’ to one of our numbers. No birthday coffee after this class.
I’ve not been sleeping properly since it all began but the problem’s getting worse. Some nights I drop off to sleep within half an hour only to wake up one hour later and stay awake until after 4pm, followed by an extra 3 hours sleep. Increasingly rest is being overtaken by a ‘flight or fight reaction’.
I start to fall asleep and get hit by a sudden rush of adrenaline shocking me into full wakefulness and violent enough to jerk my body to a sitting position. Desperately I tried each method I knew to combat this escalating problem. Lying still, mimicking movements I visualised my sleeping body would make, meditating, praying, listening to an hypnotic tape designed to induce sleep, all to no avail.
Some nights I’d cry, others I’d scream, thump or throw my pillows across the bedroom. Two or three nights I jumped violently out of bed pounding my fists on the walls screaming ‘let me sleep, oh God let me sleep’ . If the neighbours heard my outbursts none of them said so. Visiting the pharmacy I brought an over the counter anti-insomnia product, something I’d said I’d never do. Instructions read ‘take one or two tablets with water twenty minutes before bed. The first night one tablet had no effect nor on the next night. Desperate, on the third night I took two tablets with a glass of water at ten-fifteen, finished watching a tv program, went to bed to settle down with the hypnotic sleep inducing tape.
Sleep found me around midnight and with it the nightmares. In the first dream I was trapped in a large plastic bubble hovering a few centimetres above a bed in an empty hospital ward. A voice said ‘you’ll stay on your own ‘til you die; and you are going to die, nobody’s coming to help you’.
In another bad dream I was cycling into Rother Valley Water Park. Cycling to Rother Valley is a ride I enjoy particularly in spring and autumn, down the old railway track, turn off towards the water, swing right and follow the track with the water on my left and onto the cafe.
Not in this dream; here dawn’s breaking and the air’s cold pedalling hard I head for the water but I don’t turn right. I ride straight on into the cold dark water of the lake, nobody’s around I’m on my own in the water. This nightmare plays on my mind all day and the next day I take out my bike, inflate the tyres and set off for Rother Valley.
I cross the normally busy, now empty main road. Dismount to get through the gate displaying large yellow posters “COVID Cyclists keep a distance of 2 metres when passing walkers”.
Turning onto the disused rail line where people are walking their dogs, swing sharp right under the bridge and get my first look at the expanse of water. In my dream the path leads straight into the water but in reality there’s some three metres of rough grass between the path and the water. I come to a stop staring at the water. Was it cold? If I threw myself in, what would happen? Could I drown or would I automatically swim out?
A bicycle bell broke through my reverie, two male cyclists are on the path behind me. ‘Time to get moving’ one shouts ‘Bobbies on bicycles approaching. Parks closed,’ they laughed. The men stopped, I remounted and joined them on the path. Neither of them moved away from me but slowed to my pace and started talking. ‘We've been thrown off the picnic benches today,’ a slim grey haired guy laughed. ‘Last week it was the grass. Should we sit up in a tree next time?’ Two mature cyclists making a game out of stupid rules like naughty school boys. When I arrived home I felt better than I had done anytime since the beginning of the year. Those two men cocking a snook at the whole scenario, not youngsters, more pensioners.
That afternoon I looked up a number and rang my homoeopath for the first of a number of over the phone consultations which I should have done weeks ago. Treated with homoeopathic remedies, my hours of sleep increased, the silence lost its threat.
Talking over the phone with my homoeopath, Pauline and over Whatsapp with daughter Tracey, friends Lynn and Hilary, learning that things were not as the government would have us believe. My elder daughter Tracey was busy ‘bending’ lockdown rules to help with newborn twin grand daughters.
Delivered by caesarean section four hours later the hospital sent the three of them home to an empty flat with strict instructions to isolate until the Covid emergency ended. I’m not sure if the community midwife visited or if yes how often. What I do know is Tracey started to look closely at all the rules pertaining to lockdown. Tracey later rebelled against the face covering mandates, buying ‘Marigold exemption badges’ with green and yellow lanyards on ebay, laughingly one could buy copies of the official blue exemption badges on Amazon.
We had a lot of fun with those, hiding them under clothing until rudely jumped on by petty officials or officious shop assistants then innocently showing the badges, frequently receiving abject apologies.
Eat out to Help out.
In April 2020 our government came up with the idea of opening pubs and restaurants to ease their strain on finances. An idea was hatched to encourage people to eat out, £10 off your bill.
Of course they had to keep up the fear of covid, so a large number of regulations swamped the industry. Up to five people per table.
Tables 2 metres apart. Sanitise hands in the doorway. No approaching the bar. Tables two metres apart. Only one person at a time in the toilets. Myself, my daughter Penny and her six year old son Alexander booked Sunday lunch . The waitress brought our drinks.
‘Please take your own glasses off the tray. I'm not allowed to handle them for hygiene’ .Alex looked confused …
‘But she filled them and put them on the tray I watched her do it’.
The cutlery arrived the same way and I sat wondering about the staff who’d taken them from the dishwasher.
Swimming
The swimming pools also reopened with a bigger raft of ‘covid’ regulations. One of my grand daughters belonged to a high performing swimming club. Under these regs:, parents must not car share. Children must come ‘beach ready’. (swimwear under jogging suits) and strip off poolside. At the end of the session they towelled down and replaced clothing over wet suits to go home. I returned to my local pool to experience this. Everyone had to book online two to five days in advance.
Five metres of the shallow end was cordoned off for preschool lessons. At the end of each lesson swim aides were taken from the chlorinated pool and sprayed with disinfectant and returned to the pool for the next session. Children under eight had to change poolside. Showers were closed. On hot days I jumped into the pool covered in sunscreen and sweat as did we all.
One day I resorted to flushing my feet in the toilet. They'd got so dirty walking there across the fields and with the showers closed I had to wash them. In winter I caught the bus home with wet hair under a hood, the hairdryers had been taken away. No sitting down in the cafe, take away service only.
Seating in the reception area had been removed. Government swung from full lockdown (March) to local lockdown (July), to numbered tiers of lockdown (Nov).
Infection and death figures bounded everywhere but few ambulances were on the streets and no increase in funerals. The second ambulance to be called to my estate answered a call from a pensioner who’d suffered a head injury. He was taken to hospital and his family were told they’d keep him there under observation. However after treatment he was taken home as per covid-19 rules. His family found him dead in the chair the ambulance staff had left him in.
Vaccines and mandates.
Suddenly in February 2021 to a huge fanfare of publicity, the Covid Vaccine arrived on the market. People hailed it as our return to normal freedoms. The powers that be saw the roll out as another tool of control. Threats:- no jab no entry to sports or entertainment venues.
No jabs, no eating out.
No jabs, no holiday travel.
No jabs, no university.
No jabs, sacked from the NHS.
No jabs, sacked from the care system.
Some future this news spelled out for me. Gone was the elation of push backs on face masks and regular anti-lockdown emails to MPs.
A retired osteopath taking the way of natural health these things I know…
A vaccine takes at least a decade to research, produce and test. So…
How could a vaccine be brought to the market in 2021 to combat a virus only identified in 2019? Vaccination is never used during a pandemic. I believe it’s because it enables the virus to mutate and it could grow more harmful. Covid-19 did mutate to Omicron, which fortunately is less virile.
Why if taking this Covid vaccine was the best thing…?
Why the need to coerce and bully people into taking it?
Also the large number of people who contracted and recovered from the virus should be equally pressurised as those who hadn’t?
Whatever happened to natural immunity? Gone the same way as Boris Johnson’s pledge two years earlier to not lockdown, get through the pandemic and gain herd immunity..
I’m retired, no job to lose but what happened and what I nearly lost is much more than my freedom. Writing about this short period of time in my life, I’m finding it extremely hard. I need to stop time and again to give way to tears. My daughter Penny and son-in-law Mark, both research scientists, had from the beginning held one hundred percent with main-stream narrative we’d gone through arguments over seeing my grandchildren, over my opposition to face-masks.
In February 2021 (11 months into the 15 day lockdown), we saw the start of the Covid Vaccine roll out and in my family the s*** hit the fan.
A further change in the rules “allowed” Penny to visit with her three children but what should have been a happy occasion ended with the kids in tears and their mother stomping out. I cannot, will not repeat what was said on that day.
Their next visit didn’t come for three weeks and included my son-in-law whom I felt came to protect his family from myself and my ideas. Maybe I’m wrong in this but I was feeling isolated in many respects. I can also recognize the stresses and strains put upon us all together with the majority believing they were “following the science” and those of us awake to the lies.
‘Our Gang’ Whatsapp was also split but very willing to exchange ideas. Two talking about ‘planned extinction of the human race’ to one a 100% believing the narrative and two talking of lies and deceit.
January 2022
Dr Steve James told health secretary Sajid Javid during a visit to Kings Cross hospital ‘the science isn’t strong enough to support the policy of mandatory vaccine.’ Heartened, I attended an anti-vaccine mandate rally.
Difficult to say how many attended the rally in the peace gardens where earlier Piers Corbyn had been arrested for organising an anti-lockdown rally. I spoke with a senior psychologist who was willing to give up her NHS employment rather than take the jab and a group of eight holding bright yellow ‘Stand Together’ placards.
Another woman carried a homemade placard ‘DON’T CALL ME ANTI VAX .I’M MRS DOUBT PFIZER..
Standing on the town hall steps with blue placards, a surprising number of NHS workers spoke in turn. Each seemed very careful of his/her wording. ‘I’ve had Covid-19 so I don’t need the vaccine’. ‘No medical intervention should ever be mandated for.’
What happens to the care system if thousands of workers are sacked because they believe in body autonomy? ’Eleven friends and relatives refused vaccination, including myself, elder daughter Tracey. More splits, more arguments. Telling myself adults must make their own decisions otherwise how could I in good conscience attend a rally for autonomy not mandate? This fell down when Penny wanted the children to have the Covid vax.
Sad to say another row ensued. Alex celebrated his birthday without his friends. We signed up for a Charity Bear Hunt, Alex proudly wearing a cloth face mask. He was old enough to wear one now. Kids fidgeting nervously over my blue “exemption Badge” because their parents were obviously disapprovingly silent.
What had happened to normal thought and common sense? Face masks can be physically and mentally harmful when worn for long periods, i.e all day at school.
Designed to be worn for the duration of a job, they’re made to stop particles of skin, hair or spittle from contaminating samples or infecting open wounds. Microscopic virus goes straight through. This had been stated, but masks were mandated anyway. Now we had GB News, which was in its first year or so and completely controversial to the main media like the BBC, Sky etc.
Unfortunately most people tended to loyally stick with their old news channel and not get a different view of the world situation. I’m not one of them nor are a few of my friends. We listened, exchanged views over Whatsapp, scrolled through Youtube, forwarded information and spoke on the phone.
“Spiked on line”, “Tim at Fairplay”, “Together” to name a few. Today is December 2024. Lockdown, face masks and staying apart came to a complete end only eleven months ago. Tragically the Covid vaccine remains, given to the elderly and so called vulnerable despite the number of deaths and injuries.
Our fight continues…
