25 of the craziest Covid meaures from the past two pandemic years

The ultra-contagious Omicron mutant continues to cause chaos and disruption here in Dubai, leaving me longing for stability as school dangles by a thread and I wonder if I’ll ever actually see my work colleagues in person again.

As the pandemic drags on, we’re all working from home again, motivation levels perhaps gauged by our cameras all being off on zoom calls. I’ve even heard about people beginning and leaving new jobs without ever seeing their colleagues face-to-face. I mean, if you never actually met your co-workers in real life, did you even work there? 

This week, Son1’s first GCSE thankfully took place without him catching Covid or being a close contact. But after the first paper, he then got quarantined in moral education class the next day. Of all the classes to get quarantined in!

As the lesson neared its end, the announcement came that there was a Covid case in year 11. The kids had to stay confined in the classroom (“Don’t leave the room! Don’t move”) while close contacts were traced. 

The moral education teacher, on the other hand, legged it to her next class. How moral was that, I wondered?! 

Sitting on backless stools in their temporary enclosure (I’m not exactly sure what kind of classroom it was, but Son1 insists there were no chairs), they continued their learning online, like they did from home for the first week of term when the school was closed at the last minute, leading to the all-too-familiar pandemic scramble to adjust child-care arrangements and work schedules. 

Two hours later they were released, the close contacts having been sent home. I did wonder what symptoms the infected student was having – a scratchy throat maybe, itchy nose? God forbid, a bit of a fever. I hate to ask, but was s/he even actually, you know, ill?

Son1, meanwhile, missed his crucial in-person maths lesson while sitting in quarantine, just days before taking the second paper. 

Still, he was actually really lucky. The two brightest kids in the class didn’t even get to sit the exam, due to becoming infected or having to isolate. I can only imagine the disappointment after all the studying they will have done. 

I thought it might be worth compiling a list of some of the craziest, most-lunatic Covid measures I’ve come across. Lest we forget.  

I’m sure you will have some of your own and please do add them in the comments. 

• When students have been revising in groups at school during study leave, the teachers have had to break the study groups up due to social distancing rules
  
  
• Being sardined into a queue at Heathrow immigration with people arriving from all over the world, then having to legally isolate for 10 days and be visited by Track and Trace
  
  
• Putting padlocks on the gates of outdoor playgrounds and our compound’s basketball court (for 18 months)
  
  
• My parents allowed to go for a walk on a golf course, but if my dad had taken clubs and a ball, it was a criminal offence (could you get a more socially-distanced sport, especially when balls fly off into bunkers?)
  
  
• No butterfly stroke allowed while swimming
  
  
• Being told off in a store for not standing on a yellow circle – when you’re the only customer
  
  
• The one-way system at school with roped fences along corridors, meaning if the kids needed to get next-door, they had to make a circular journey through the whole building, ensuring they passed every person on the way
  
  
• The poor lady who came out the toilet on my husband’s airplane, scrabbled around to put her mask on, fell down the steps and broke her ankle
  
  
• The rule of three in Dubai taxis, so my household-sharing family of four couldn’t ride together and needed two vehicles for the airport run
  
  
• PE lessons and sporting activities currently forced to be suspended at school, just as some immune-boosting, healthful, outdoor exercise in the cooler Dubai weather would be a jolly good thing for the kids
  
  
• The water fountains being taken away at school. And now the canteen closed (food and team sports are about the only things Son2 really enjoys about school)
  
  
• Library books getting sanitized and quarantined for two weeks before being exposed to the next child
  
  
• Having to wear plastic disposable gloves in the supermarket
  
  
• The cubicle-style Perspex screens put up around each desk at work that I continually banged my head on
  
  
• The sign in the elevator telling us to face the wall
  
  
• Having to stand five-feet away from the perimeter of the rugby pitch Son1 plays on, lest from behind masks we breathe on the players all the way across the field
  
  
• Not being allowed to watch our kids play sports at all, leading to some parents standing on step ladders to peer over the wall (not a good look)
  
  
• Rugby tackles only allowed if the player is in your bubble
  
  
• Drones disinfecting Dubai’s streets so we wouldn’t catch Covid from the pavement – and the plastic slippers given to my DH by the Egyptians to wear when inspecting the plane in Cairo, in case he infected the tarmac
  
  
• Neighbours who thought someone jogging by their open window without a mask on risked infecting them
  
  
• British influencers and sunseekers hopping on a plane in the winter of 2020/21 to Dubai, bringing the Kent variant, resulting in the UK government slamming the borders shut to UK expats, a flight ban and six months of Hotel Boris (horse already bolted sprung to mind)
  
  
• Getting back to Britain via an 11-day stopover in an amber or green country, massively increasing the chances of picking up Covid on the way
  
  
• Permits to leave home during the mass house arrest of the UAE’s lockdown
  
  
• Public toilets being closed in the UK, causing people to use bushes, beaches and beauty spots instead
  
  
• A lovely friend not seeing her two sons in New Zealand for two years. How many million light-years of misery have these painful, enforced separations caused? How many?