4.20 /// Reflections on COVID-19 and a global pandemic...

What does it feel like to live through a global crisis while protecting a loved one who is particularly vulnerable? We recount our personal journey during the COVID-19 pandemic, navigating the early days of uncertainty and the drastic shift to a remote work lifestyle. With my wife having cystic fibrosis, we took extreme precautions, only to find that when we both contracted the virus, her symptoms were surprisingly mild compared to mine. As companies scrambled to establish remote work, we experienced not just the challenges but also the unexpected joys of spending more time at home together.

From the rapid development of vaccines to the UK's "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme, we unpack the broader ramifications of the pandemic. We discuss the mixed messages around safety guidelines, the staggering death tolls, and the controversies over government spending on PPE and faulty contact-tracing apps. We also touch on the skepticism and conspiracy theories that added an extra layer of complexity to an already chaotic time. Join us as we reflect on these unprecedented events and their lasting impact on our lives.

Chapters

• 0:00 Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic
• 11:50 COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Ramifications

Transcript

Stephen: 0:00

Hello, welcome to Infinite Prattle. How the devil are you? Welcome to today's episode, and in this episode, I'm a little bit late to the party, but I'm going to be talking about the weirdness and the experience that was the COVID pandemic, so stay with me for that. You're listening to Infinite Prattle with your host, stephen. Thanks for joining me for unscripted, unedited everything. Hello and welcome to Infinite Prattle. If it's your first time today joining me, welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you for listening and if you are a returning listener, thank you for that too. Thanks for sticking with me and, as always, please like, share, subscribe. All that jazz really helps me out and lets me know that people are listening and lets me know that I'm getting that feedback and that you're even enjoying what I'm doing. So if you give me a bit of feedback, love it. Yeah, so today's episode is going to be talking about COVID and the pandemic that we went through in 2020, and, yeah, just going to reminisce about that and what my take was, what my viewpoint was and what happened to me during the pandemic. And, yeah, so for those that don't know, in 2020, there was a global pandemic and it kind of changed the world in some ways and we're still feeling the effects of that through people still having illnesses, and COVID is still a thing, but it's kind of almost not a thing as well. Um, covid still exists, but we don't really care anymore. I don't, do we? I don't know, maybe we do and don't, and I think it's something we got over pretty quickly and I always felt that was gonna be the thing. You know, it was this massive thing at the time, never been experienced before and yeah, it was. It was a massive game changer. So when it started to affect me and my wife my wife's got an illness. You all know that, if you don't because you're a new listener then I did an episode, I think back in series one, maybe series two, about her illness. She got cystic fibrosis so she was classed as being vulnerable.

Stephen: 2:24

So, um, on the lead up to march 2020, when things really kind of kicked off in the uk and and most, most parts of europe and even america, um, when it became kind of serious, we'd heard rumblings for a couple months of this thing happening in in china, but not really I wouldn't really say like anything too serious. Like it was like, oh, this thing's happening. Then you started seeing reports where people are walking around in hazmat suits and, uh, disinfecting things and people being locked into apartment buildings. It was like, oh, this is, this is serious stuff. Like, how bad is this going to get?

Stephen: 3:03

And I think the problem with the whole COVID-19 scenario was it happened so quickly and we didn't know how bad it was going to get. We didn't know what COVID really was. We didn't know how it was going to affect us to a degree, you know, was it just bad flu? Was it like having a cold? Because it killed a lot of people? Like, um, I'm not, you know it's just, but it affected people in different ways. Like my wife actually caught covid and was less ill than I was and she has this illness and we all thought like she was gonna be really, really ill and it turned out that when she got it, she felt a bit under the weather and um, I'm just going to look at the death toll actually, because I don't I don't know what the actual total death toll was. Um, it's millions, but I don't think it's it's as as global pandemics go. It's not as, it's not like the black Plague or anything like that.

Stephen: 4:02

Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's a big number, but um, yeah, so I, I caught it and I was I don't want to say I was really really ill, but I felt rough and I think for me it was just I had no energy whatsoever. I felt like I had a cold bit of sore throat, like, but I was just wiped out like no energy whatsoever, like, but I was just wiped out like no energy whatsoever, really really, really, really low energy and uh, it was really I don't know, it was really it was really strange, but for for like a week or so I was kind of wiped out, like just lying on the settee watching telly and but it took a while to get it. I think I it was. It was when was it? It was probably about it was probably about five months into it, six months into it, maybe was it, I can't remember. It was quite a while into it because obviously me and Sarah shielded, so I always took it home.

Stephen: 5:01

Um, like, a lot of people were, um, my, my job at the time involved actually going out visiting people and visiting my staff, so that kind of all stopped, um, but I couldn't go into the office neither. So, um, the company I work with really had to scramble around really, because we weren't really set up for homework and whatsoever. We have offices and operational locations where people go in and use the office wi-fi and the computers weren't really set up for home wi-Fi and accessing the network while like remotely. So the IT department, probably like most companies, had their work cut out to allow this and luckily I was one of the ones prioritized because the job at the time I had was like frontline operations, like trying to, you know, keeping the train running, trains running, managing the. So I managed to work from home and it was. It was actually for me and sarah, who actually, apart from like setting up some, some things with shopping and stuff like that, we kind of enjoyed it, like not enjoyed it, but we kind of enjoyed like having me at home.

Stephen: 5:57

I got up every day, um. I ended up doing like a fitness challenge and raising money for charity during covid. Um, I did. I did a thing on my furthest points tour challenge that I did in 2010, where I rode a motorbike around the country, uh, raised money for a roblech legion, and I did that again, but on a on a next size bike. So I did the did the same mileage on an exercise bike over the space of like three months and um or four months I think it was, and uh yeah. And so I had like a really nice like day plan I got up, going for a walk, come back, start working about eight or nine o'clock, did my seven hours and because I couldn't visit people and do my normal duties, it was phone calling people and um and just doing catch-up work really.

Stephen: 6:42

So it was kind of good to be able to work in that way and actually get myself back on track with stuff I needed to catch up on and paperwork and organizing my files and stuff and online files. So in that sense it was actually reasonably good for me. But for the rest of the world, people you know the people I managed still had to go into work. You can't run a train service at home. The signal still had to go in. So for a lot of people they were like still going out and even when COVID was still around after the six months I stayed at home for I started to start going into the office again and when I started going back in, like it was a different world, like wearing masks and going to the shop and standing and distancing from people and you know, not hugging, not touching, you know, not seeing relatives.

Stephen: 7:37

It was a bad time. You know, my mum lives in Northern Ireland and my dad lives down the road and I couldn't even see my dad, let alone go to Ireland and see my mum, and she contracted an illness, she got cancer during the pandemic and with me working and having to shield and not being able to travel, it was just bad times all around and that was the same, as I say, for a lot of people. You know, it wasn't. I think it's one of them things that very few things affect everyone, and this did affect everyone, and it was just a strange situation and people acted peculiar as well.

Stephen: 8:16

During it, there was a shift in people's cognitive thinking, I think. So a lot of people decided to you know, have that phrase, be kind Like in the UK, we were celebrating the NHS and key workers, and there was a thing to go outside every night and clap it was it at five o'clock or six o'clock and clap in the streets, which I took part in a few times, where I felt a bit stupid because, um, in my view, is, how is that helping people like I was, like I was classed as a key worker and that's's not helping me. You want to help me, like, stay at home and follow the rules and stop spreading it? Um, because from my point of view of my wife, I was terrified that she would get in and die. Fundamentally she's got a lung condition. I didn't want her to get anything on top of that and, as I say, as it turns out she, she got it it and she was fundamentally okay better than I was.

Stephen: 9:06

But yeah, it was just a really surreal, really surreal time and I think the biggest thing was we live on quite a busy road. We have a driveway and stuff, so we're not right onto the road but we hear traffic going past and it's a main thoroughfare for ambulances and stuff like that, because it doesn't have many access roads that cut across Crewe. Because we're a big railway town, there's always bridges to go across and the road I live on is quite a west to east kind of road or through through crew, so it's used quite a lot by emergency services and plus the hospital, isn't it by? So we, we noticed the traffic noise like obviously people daily commuting, schools etc. Like that might kind of cease to be that the odd car would go past, but it was mainly emergency services you'd see go past, or the company I work with, mainly like network rail vehicles and it was.

Stephen: 10:04

It was kind of a strange thing that it was before we had our double glazing. So the double glazing, the windows weren't that good and they let a bit more noise than they do now and it was strange not hearing anything. And then we we realized we were sat in the garden one day. It was a really nice, really nice like day in april and we realized like we're not that far from manchester airport, about 30 miles or so from manchester airport, and we realized there was no, not one plane in the sky and I was standing outside doing some work. It was nice, I was working from home and um, yeah, there was not one plane in the sky and it was just silent and it was just bliss. So from that side of I really enjoyed it.

Stephen: 10:53

Um, sarah's a bit annoyed really, because she just not long got a job at a local shop and the day she was going in for a training was when the government in Britain like called for a lockdown and shielding for people with vulnerable conditions. So I think she did like one or two days training and then they put her off sick, basically forced, but they paid her and so she was getting paid for sitting at home even though she really hadn't started the job properly. So that was kind of nice in a way, but she was kind of wanting to go in. I think the biggest thing that frustrated me throughout the thing is people's conspiracy theories. You know, people always have conspiracies, don't they, of how things are and fair enough, you know, fair enough. But you've kind of got to trust the government to a degree and I know people are going to go no, never trust the government. But at the end of the day you've got to kind of you kind of got to you, kind of you know, and it was a difficult time because they were saying do not go out, do not do this, do not do that.

Stephen: 11:50

And then you heard about all the things that were going on in the background with money making and you know, and you're thinking, these pharmaceutical companies have suddenly come up with all these cures incredibly quickly and we're all rushed through well, not cures, but like vaccinations. And they were all rushed through very quickly, where it would normally take a long time for some medicines to get approved. And I understand the nature of that because obviously it was a critical time. We needed to kind of stop it and you know, like reduce infection rates and all that sort of stuff. So I suppose allowances have to be made. But you do wonder, like, what has that done? Like, as I've had some of the vaccinations, I haven't had boosters since I had I think I had the two main jabs and I haven't any boosters.

Stephen: 12:30

Um, they did make me feel really ill, to be honest. I had when I went for one of my jabs. I actually uh, had a reaction to it and uh, it wasn't really bad reaction, but they'd had to monitor me for a bit and that was the first person I was privileged to be, the first person they'd seen to have a reaction to the vaccination. So what happened was I just started to feel numb and uh and cold and just really light-headed and just I've just felt completely off. Um, but the numbness was weird. It was, it was a weird feeling, but I sat there with them for about 20, 30 minutes and they just passed. I felt fine again. But it just goes to show. It does go to show that, uh, you don't know what's in these things really, um, but yeah, but the pandemic like really lasted for like probably like two years properly, where things were still in place and you're still having to follow guidelines.

Stephen: 13:24

And then they kind of started to get more and more release of you know lacks on the rules and and and breaking down them rules and then saying you know kind of just go about your daily business. But the biggest people that was like really really problematic for was, like, business owners. So if you owned your own business you could not function. You know you could not function. I know the government tried to help people out. You've got things like you know restaurants where they just couldn't open for a while and then obviously, um, the government in the UK did some incentives to um to like eat out and um eat out to help out.

Stephen: 14:00

I think it was called, and I think the biggest thing that people were getting annoyed about, uh, especially in the UK, was they were kind of telling people to stay at home, be distanced. You know. You know if you test yourselves for COVID, if you get any symptoms, blah blah, send away for testing things, go to the, go to the testing centers and um, but then, but then on the same, on the other, on the other hand, when they started to like kind of get these vaccinations out. Then they're saying, well, actually, as long as you're safe, buddy, you can go out. But then they're still also saying, don't go out unless you have to. But then they're promoting going out to eat and going to the cinema and and doing you know normalish things again, and I think that's the the thing that was annoying people.

Stephen: 14:41

We were having these daily, daily broadcasts on uk television where they were doing updates daily about death tolls which have, which have gotten up. By the way, I never, I never said that, but it says here. It says on this website, what's it called, worldmetersinfo I don't even know if this is official and it says here that there's been over 7 million deaths recorded, so, close to 7 million 10,681 deaths, 704 million, 753,890 reported cases and 675,619 811 recovered. So I'm guessing the other 30,000, the other 30 million, have got long covid, which was a thing that, uh, they said could possibly happen, um, um, it's like an aftermath of having it, so like symptoms brought on by having COVID originally. I know a few people that have had that, but I think the USA kind of had like topped the total cases and I think that kind of makes sense, because you know the populace of America. They're very much like go out and about this is my personal impression of it like office work, you know, close-knit communities, you know, and I feel that Americans may have strong feelings about this, because a lot of those stupid pictures and stuff seem to come from America, of people like wearing a mask but then putting a hole in it, um, which is insane. Um, but the uk? According to this website, the uk has 232 112 deaths, and I knew a couple of people that died from it. Um, so it it did affect everyone, like I, I it was, even I was a bit skeptical at times, I must admit, so I suppose you can put me into that. The kind of conspiracyist, conspiracy theorist kind of um, you know, silo of of people, I suppose, um, because you did wonder like people were making that much money from it and selling.

Stephen: 17:02

And then the UK. There was some contentious contracts made with like PPE companies for the NHS, which is our health service, where they bought like millions of pounds worth of like health stuff and private suppliers who knew people in the government. So probably getting back anders, allegedly, uh, don't get sued. Um, that's what it looks like, though, and then none of the ppe was was was usable because it wasn't the right sort, they hadn't got to the right standards and all this sort of stuff and absolutely bonkers. Millions and billions of pounds wasted.

Stephen: 17:35

The tracking app that the government came up with in the UK. The app cost like 2 billion or something stupid and it didn't really work and it's just like that's a lot of money spent on an app and I'd love to know the contract requirements on that. Like what was the specification that it cost 2 million quid, was it? It must have been like a monetary value per head of person in the UK plus contract fees and, you know, maintenance of the app and stuff. But it just didn't work properly and it took it a while before the NHS released like a tracker that you can, like you know, log things on and log your like your vaccines on, which was just kind of like our normal NHS app really. Um, but I think what?

Stephen: 18:17

The thing that that killed me more than anything was the stupidity of people just blatantly ignoring the guidelines, thinking they were above the law and you know what, to a degree I can kind of think if you're going out, so they're saying don't go out, but then you literally live in the middle of nowhere and you're going into a field and kind of who that is? Who is that hurting? But then it only takes people to follow each other and then, before you know it, everyone's walking around. Um, there was a lot of stupid people like wearing masks and cutting holes in them to drink so they didn't have to take the mask off to drink. It's like, well, your mask's useless now. And there's people wearing sanitary towels on their faces, um, wearing plastic bags, covering themselves completely in bin bags, putting themselves in bubbles, wearing cages around themselves to help social distances so someone couldn't come in their own, you know, come in their space.

Stephen: 19:08

Like insane, insane things that people were doing. That thought was that they thought was helping and even stopping the germs, wearing plastic balls on the heads and everything. Honestly, like some of the pictures are absolutely insane and it actually made me laugh quite a lot when I saw some of them at the time, because you just think how do you think that's even helping? How do you think that's stopping any germs? It was just a mad time. It was a mad, mad time.

Stephen: 19:40

But one of the nicest stories I think, kind of going back to it, was. It was just a mad time. It was a mad mad time but one of the nicest stories I think, going kind of going back to, you know, my area being quiet and less traffic and no planes, was the nature, you know, because like jobs that didn't have to be done would kind of just stop, like cutting grass and stuff like that, and and because towns and villages and stuff were so quiet, animals were coming back. So animals were coming back into spaces they'd not been seen, into seen for a while. So there was a village, I believe I think it was in wales and in the uk, and there was a village where the mountain goats, the wild goats, had come down from there. They might they might have been, I'm pretty sure they were wild, but they'd come down from the mountains and they were just wandering around the village and it was so lovely to see that that like nature had come back because like humankind had kind of gone away.

Stephen: 20:29

And it kind of makes you realise that, you know, if anything did happen like apocalypsy kind of thing to us or you know, zombie apocalypse or anything like that, that nature takes over so quickly, and you could see like because the maintenance wasn't happening from local government. Plants were getting out of control and growing through pavements and stuff, especially in my area. Whether things are better made in other countries, I don't know, but nature, as Dr Ian Malcolm said in Jassy Park, finds a way, and so from that massive pandemic, we did get some good things and I think at the time it made people realise and you know how much people mean to them and you know family life, etc. But I feel like we've lost that again now. I feel like we've lost it again and we forgot, like you know what it means to, you know to see each other, because we got so used not to seeing each other and I know I've lost probably a couple of friends through it uh, lost contact with people, lost that connection. Uh, that was once there and sarah has as well, and it's a shame. It's a shame, um, but it was an experience to live through and it's one of them unique things in history that I can say that I was there, kind of like remembering 9-11, and the 2012 Olympic Games and all depressive stuff. You know these things in time which are like kind of significant and yeah, it's just that you know I can tell my story and and not in 20 minutes, like because I ramble and prattle on so much, but you know, but yeah, so, so what, what? What did you do during the pandemic? Do you remember it vividly? Do you remember it like as a, as a kind of positive thing really, because maybe it it helped you connect and made you help you gather your thoughts on some things and kind of.

Stephen: 22:22

This podcast came out of covid. I started this podcast two years ago, towards the end of covid, when we were kind of like you know I I'd probably been for a year pondering what I could do and wanting to get my thoughts out, because you know I, I was kind of only really seeing sarah, so it was kind of like this was the thing to do to get my extra thoughts out and talk. So what was it like for you? Um, did you have worth it? Were you a key worker? What did that? What did that mean in other countries? Like I had to have a special letter to show the police in case they stopped me.

Stephen: 22:55

Um, strange times. But you know, I think we're through it now. Um, obviously some people do still suffer with it. Covid is still around. Still. I know people still take covid tests. Um, I think I'm one of them. People now that I'm like, well, I've had it, I've had my vaccines. Is it a thing? Is it now just like a cold because it was made this massive thing, wasn't it? What are your thoughts? Let me know, comment and um, and just just let me know what you think, because I'm really genuinely, really interested in hearing feedback.

Stephen: 23:28

Um, not many, not many episodes. I'll just finish this. Not many episodes in this series left now. Uh, I'm gonna have a little break again and then we'll come back with series five and um, I'm hoping to start video video recording myself in Series 5 for every episode. So, instead of it just being an audio-only episode on YouTube, there will be a video as well. So, fingers crossed for that. I'm going to try and get that sorted. Yeah, so watch this space and, like always, just let me know if there's any suggestions or anything you want to see, hear anything, and uh, yeah, I'll speak to you all soon and uh, take care of yourselves. Thanks for listening to infinite prattle with your host, steven. Follow me on social networks at Infinite Prattle and don't forget to subscribe. Thanks very much.