DARREN, 64
I grew up in a deprived area in Liverpool and I was a police officer for 32 years. I’ve done raids on criminal houses, I’ve carried firearms, I’ve gone through front doors at 4am, I’ve policed riots. I’m not saying I’m a tough nut, but not much throws me.
If I’m being honest, I was alarmed when the news about Covid exploded. I think everybody wondered what was going to happen. You’d have to be quite thick-skinned or a bit daft not to have been worried, especially when they talked about a quarter of a million people dying.
I am on the clinically vulnerable list, so I got a letter off the government advising me quite strongly to shield. That letter upped the ante straight away. I also had a lot of texts about abiding by restrictions, and it had a subliminal effect on me. I have two of the conditions they were talking about – incurable cancer and a heart problem – so I thought I really, really can’t go anywhere near this virus.
My wife decided to shield too, otherwise the advice was we should eat in different rooms and clean the loo in between us using it. You can’t live like that in a small house with one kitchen and one bathroom. All these messages make you think that this must be such a bad and such an infectious virus.
There wasn’t much to do, so we’d watch TV and we saw programmes about disinfecting your shopping when it arrives, and having a safe zone in the kitchen. The nightly bulletins on the TV about death tolls, the big graphs with huge spikes on them, came at us ‘boom, boom, boom!’ It was a constant barrage of doom and gloom. My fear of the virus went through the roof.
Back then when I was listening to other people’s stories of the outside world, I remember thinking it sounded mad that McDonald’s was closed and there were spots on the ground at Tesco telling you where to stand.
It was like the fear we had in the Cold War, but much worse. That was an abstract concept, we didn’t think it would really happen, but Covid was something we were told was actually happening.
I stayed at home for 11 weeks. When I went for my first hospital appointment after seven weeks of shielding, my brain overloaded. I was a wreck that day, petrified of my own shadow. I drove rather than walked, because I didn’t think I should breathe in air that other people were breathing out.
When I got out the car I didn’t know if I could do this, but I steeled myself and I had my mask and gloves on. My fear got compounded because I was greeted by someone at the hospital entrance who told me I had to take my mask and gloves off because they’d come from outside. That made me think it must be really bad.
There were signs everywhere telling you, ‘Don’t go past this point. Stand here’. Most of the chairs had been taken out. Nurses were in protective gear. They took my temperature which they wouldn’t normally. Everything screamed danger.
I didn’t feel wobbles or jellies, but my head was racing, ‘I’m going to catch it, I’m going to catch it. If I breathe out of place, if I touch the wrong thing, if someone walks past me, I’m going to catch it.’ If someone walked past me I would hold my breath.
Hospital workers walked past me when I was on my way out, and in my head I was thinking ‘What are you doing?’ When the third one walked past me I swore at him under my breath, the rude four-letter word that begins with ‘c’.
When I got home I stripped off in the conservatory because I didn’t want to contaminate the house with my clothes. I put my clothes in a plastic bag and I threw my shoes away! I sat in the hottest bath I could, for as long as I could, scrubbing every inch of myself. I looked like a lobster when I got out.
The turning point for me was that the government reopened golf courses. My oncologist said I should get out and that we were going to play a round of golf. It was terrifying at first, but crucially, that got me talking to people and that helped me get over the fear.
For a long time I was frightened of everything: the world, the air, other people, physical objects, anything that could transmit the virus basically. Looking back, I can’t believe it was me. I think I became agoraphobic.
I’m awfully angry about the fear now. I feel cheated. Ultimately I am angry at Parliament, not just the government, because there was no real opposition to anything. I’m angry at the media too and feel betrayed, they only publish one side of the argument.
It was despicable that the government tried to frighten us. Any other walk of life, you’d be arrested.
2. FEAR SPREADS IN THE MEDIA LIKE AN AIRBORNE VIRUS
Awoman in a face mask stands with her shopping bags next to a subway. Suddenly she falls forward, landing flat on her face. She lies immobile and stiff on the pavement. A concerned shopkeeper runs out to check on her.
A man is out cold in the street, as people in white hazmat suits attend to him. Another man lies face up, body straight, alone in a corridor. Another body, two people attending in hazmat suits. A very wide roadblock is manned by people in white lab coats, masks and high-vis vests. Another man lies on his back in a shop. The area is cordoned off. People in PPE look on.
These worrying scenes all appear in a video1 which paints an apocalyptic picture of collapsed citizens, medics in hazmat suits, concerned bystanders and a city grinding to a halt. It was our first glimpse of a new, deadly epidemic and our first taste of fear. It appeared in the British press,
