To ask what we SHOULD have done during the COVID pandemic

I know it wasn't the point they were making, but the default to the nightmare scenario means you raised it yourself. It's quite a well worn path at this point!

For the people who now refuse to go along with the government as a matter of principle, if there were another pandemic now that put them at greater risk, presumably some of them would choose to modify their behaviour because they felt threatened and others wouldn't. Part of the reason others wouldn't is because of lack of trust. There'd have to be some person or institution that people actually believed. It's not immediately obvious who that would be. I think if another pandemic came along now, half of the internet would say it was down to the covid vaccine.

It does also need to be factored in that some non-compliance wasn't borne of disagreement about medical advice, but rather about who the government had chosen to prioritise. As an example, when my children and others in the family were considered unworthy of school and socialisation whilst others got the whole caboodle with better ratios in 2021, I decided they weren't going to be any more collateral than I could help. So we had playdates, and plenty of them.

Now I agree that the greater the number of contacts that happen, the higher the risk of transmission. That's the science bit. But the question of where my children ought to fall on the priority list isn't science, it's politics. And I disagreed with the great genius scientist Boris Johnson about how much of their welfare ought to be sacrificed. There were plenty like me.

They did nothing of the sort. Government's operation Cygnus in 2016 found glaring holes in government readiness for a pandemic yet they got rid of the PPE stockpile. They allowed the Cheltenham race to go ahead before they locked down. UK never had a full lockdown, untested, unchecked passengers were allowed in by the hundreds of thousands bringing in Covid and new strains. They undermined the messaging to get away with their own lockdown rule breaking and to get people to accept "casualties" of Covid and go back to work. Eat out to help out was another super spreader disaster. Besides that they've wasted billions on an app that never worked, on the VIP PPE lanes and the Covid loans. Compared to other island nations such as New Zealand UK fared pitifully. So no, the government "has not done what it could", it consistently made things much worse by ineptitude, greed and corruption. 250,000 dead and over 2 million living with Covid in the UK. I would not call this "they did what they could" when NZ death toll is what could and should have been.

I don't disagree with you, Society is a fragile thing and it wouldn't take much for it to collapse, but that wasn't the point being made by the pp I criticised, who simply seemed to favour a bloody-minded refusal to comply with government in any future crisis, regardless. My 1-in-10 example was simply a rhetorical mechanism to get the pp to think of a situation where non-compliance would unarguably worsen the death toll, what would they do then, still not comply?

People sometimes say that the first duty of a government is to protect its citizens but, really, the first concern of a government is to control it's citizens (broadly speaking, by coercion in dictatorships, and by persuasion in democracies). 🤷‍♂️

This doesn't really relate to what I wrote, although I certainly agree on the corrupt, self-interested buffoons part. If you want to talk about at risk groups, that includes those who were placed at risk by the restrictions you advocate for. I've been extremely clear that it was impossible to protect all the vulnerable, because they had different and competing interests.

Also, the UK's geographic position is why we couldn't have done anything like New Zealand did. The frequent reference to them in this thread is bemusing. We have a land border that could not have been both closed and policed. We're on the busiest shipping lane in the world, one that people frequently cross unofficially, and unlike New Zealand we're nowhere close to producing enough food for our whole population. Which is more than twenty times theirs.

Either its a serious pandemic or its not. Yet Strictly Im A Celeb Dancing On Ice still went ahead.

What are lockdowns for? To stop the transmission and contain it. UK modelled few years before a pandemic, Tories decided to get rid of PPE stock despite advice to the contrary. 12th of March mandatory testing of staff has stopped. Nobody knew where the virus was. Government was reactive because it did not have the necessary means in place to successfully curtail it. Had Johnson heeded the science and the WHO advice in time they could have taken advantage of the UK's geographical position. Tories locked down 2 weeks too late, before that they allowed the super spreader Cheltenham event to go ahead because of the gambling lobby, and allowed hundreds of thousands of unchecked people to come in via airports. People were with them at the beginning, heeded the advice etc. later they completely undermined their own messaging for political reasons this is when antivaxxers and Covid deniers piped up. New Zealand handled it well. We had self-interested, inept, incompetent corrupt buffoons. The mantra of we protected the at risk groups is nonsense when PPE for hospital staff was not available and later people couldn't be bothered to wear a mask. Who are the at risk groups? Fact is, Covid did not only target the designated at risk groups. Healthcare workers, economically disadvantaged, ethnic minorities and overweight people disproportionately figured among the dead. 2 million people are disabled by LC to varying degrees. Nobody cares about them. It was impossible to protect the at risk groups by walling them away from society. Many of those have jobs, live with children who were forced to go to school. Many conditions that predispose people to catch it do not count as at risk such as people with ME/CFS.

What should have happened to all the additional people who would have become critically ill at the same time?

How would the vulnerable people have been supported and protected, if everyone else was carrying on as normal?

I don't think there should have been any lockdown, the most vulnerable should have been supported to stay at home but for everyone else life carried on.

It was terrible closing schools and stopping people from seeing loved ones.

From Heathrow/London airports? Mostly onto the tube. I remember people talking about it at the time.

This is Darwinian survival of the fittest. Psychopathological and akin to fascism. (Economic and Social Darwinism is the sister ideology of fascism.) New Zealand managed to keep its death rate in single figures because it listened to WHO warnings and properly locked down taking advantage of its geography, short burst of pain to protect everyone. Covid does not discriminate by the way. There are no "vulnerable groups" it affects more. The underlying conditions mantra was false sense security. Never mind Long Covid. 2 million people have it. Even asymptomatic infected people got debilitating Long Covid and lost their lives as they knew it and livelihoods. Nobody has the right to infect you and take away your life just because they think only of themselves. I would not like to be related to anyone who thinks like this. Which one of their family members is disposable to you? Covid did not care. Same kind of people found it tough to wear a mask to protect others.

Sadly, I wish my neighbours hadn't let their grandchildren and their parents visit and stay over. Having stuck to the rules religiously until Christmas 2020. The children were in school as one parent was an essential worker. The child had a cold, but they all must be together for Christmas. (Even though they were in a bubble with other grandchildrens family). Obviously, it wasn't a cold both hospitalised by new year eve. Lady didn't make it, the gentleman went straight to a nursing home and died. Neither, had (known) preexisting conditions. Both were under retirement age.

Why was it feasible for Aus and NZ then?

They should have stuck to the protocols they had in place for a pandemic rather than making up policy as they went along. This would have included, protecting the vulnerable, not locking down and not imposing any mask mandates. Basically put things in place to help the elderly and those with comorbidities. They shouldn't have taken their advice from those with vested interests in pushing vaccines and other lucrative products.

This.
A healthy 23 year old teacher I worked with is still living with the impact on her heart and lungs of contracting Covid in the early days.

The eye opener for me was how reduced class sizes was so entirely off the table. The way we run schools in this country has absolutely no wiggle room- they're understaffed at the best of times.

It's worth noting that all these suggestions of quarantine or closing the borders contradict Chris Whitty's confirmation at the enquiry

He will know obviously what was possible wrt containing the UK, ie it wasn't

I thought people would clock onto that and stop thinking it was possible

Where are the thousands of people going after apparently testing how many at Heathrow and every airport?

You haven't answered.

How many people were going where exactly a day?

If you won’t admit that stopping thousands of new cases entering the country (even if we couldn’t do it before tests arrived) would have prevented thousands of new cases in the country, I’m not sure what else to say.

Or with carers coming in. Or delivery drivers delivering food and anything else they need. Or family members doing the same. I thought we had established ages ago that this was a nonsense cover for people who didn’t care how many old/vulnerable people died as long as they weren’t inconvenienced.

Don’t be obtuse.
It was your suggestion, we didn't even have tests in the first stages.

As for quarantine you'd severely need to limit entry, not just test, is that what you wanted? As for so many positives do you mean thousands a day or..? Where do people go?

It still wouldn't have stopped the virus entering as we have other methods of entry, mainly lorries. So you'd still have the virus circulating to pretty much the same extent. If you listen to Chris Whitty at the enquiry he confirms closing the borders for the UK was not possible.

He confirmed these sorts of suggestions were not feasible, I'm not sure why they're still entertained.

What about older people living with younger relatives or carers? Are they supposed to move out? How about older people living in care homes with young employees?

So quarantine then, not just allow in.
Don’t be obtuse. And we didn’t test even when we could.
If there were so many positives, can’t you see why some form of control would have helped?

How could we test at airports at the beginning when we didn't have the tests?

It wasn't for ages that we had enough tests and even then you'd have an absolute nightmare trying to deal with that. What would you do next when so many people a day arrived who were positive?

That would have been disastrous. As it was we just about managed to keep infections within manageable levels. This policy would inevitably have led to many more serious illnesses and the NHS would have been unable to cope.

Why distinguish people on old age pensions from others?` What about pensioners who needed to get to work?

Talking nonsense doesn’t help discussion, @JenniferBooth

Well it was apparently more risky to stand on your own doorstep