To ask what we SHOULD have done during the COVID pandemic

Yes I agree with this. Schools never should have closed

Not had so much that was all about "appearing" to do something: taped up benches, locked playgrounds, etc. Even some scientists have admitted that "two metres" was made up on the spot.

And not created so much plastic waste with signs everywhere, moments after preaching to us to use less disposable plastic.

How theoretical are we getting here? Because my view is that a lockdown was politically unavoidable in the UK. There's no government who could've avoided having one, due to most of the rest of Europe doing it. Johnson clearly would rather not have done.

Within that context though, there are still a lot of things that could've been done to make it better, both at the time and in the aftermath. The whole protect the vulnerable bit was terrible, because it made people think the vulnerable were one group who could all be protected. Whereas in actual fact, some people were more vulnerable specifically due to restrictions, and it was actually a choice of who to throw under the bus for who.

We should have had lockdown messaging that emphasised the importance and right to outside exercise. Police ought to have been told not to harass people who were sitting and resting outdoors either, because some people need to rest during exercise. Instead, the average person put on a few pounds due to lockdowns. And the rules in 2021 meant primary aged kids were functionally excluded from meeting a friend, unlike other age groups.

The curriculum should have remained suspended in the 2021 lockdown. It would have reduced the inequality somewhat. Instead, some DC got full schooling with much reduced ratios, and some got a recorded message a few minutes a week. Mine were at the latter end. I don't forgive or forget. Schools should also have reopened in June 2020.

We also didn't need to have such badly written legislation, bullshit enforcement and the highly problematic single justice procedure.

And who would have looked after these vulnerable elderly and ill people? It would have been impossible to keep them segregated if they need care multiple times a day. Those saying they should have stayed at home are basically saying ‘They’re worthless and should have been culled’ because that would have been the end result if we’d have allowed everyone else to go about their business.

I knew two perfectly healthy people who died of Covid in their 30s. It wasn’t just elderly or CEV people dying back in 2020/21.

Been much stricter on furlough and other payments. So much money wasted and people profited from it

The old and vulnerable staying home sounds sensible in theory, but not so much when you consider that they live with young people. Parents and grandparents can be vulnerable, and if schools were kept open then it would spread like wildfire.

I think it was a difficult lose/lose situation no matter what they chose to do, but the ‘’rule of six’’ while out in the garden in open air I thought was illogical. As was having to wear masks in pubs and restaurants when the person was going to be eating and drinking anyway and would have to remove it.

Being 2m away from a potentially infected person in an enclosed space isn’t going to do much to prevent spread either! So there were definitely things that didn’t seem to make much sense. Boris was a total fucking idiot though, they all were and had such contempt for the public.

@Hemiola is spot on about each of the UK nations having different “approaches”/rules/whatever one wants to call it. It really did become a dick waving contest or as Hemiola put it, “trying to be the best” with their response. It failed as far as I’m concerned.
it led to instances of cases where people were charged with breaching the rules having to be dropped because police had wrongly applied Welsh rules in England for example. This was actually reported at the time.

England relaxed lockdowns earlier - the right call - and what happened? Wales still hadn’t opened “non-essential retail” after lockdown 1 and the traffic from Wales over to England was obvious.

I met up with a friend yesterday and we started talking about Covid restrictions funnily enough. I can’t even remember what got us on to the topic.
We both lived in Wales at the time and as many will know Wales had some absolutely stupid restrictions. I think the best well known was the “ban” on non-defined “non-essential” goods. Sounds like Ireland had an even stricter approach on this from a few posts earlier in the thread. Here’s the funniest thing though, which a lot of people didn’t know: in Wales there was no legal force behind this because none of the Covid regulations at the time prescribed for it. It was so inconsistently applied too. The one branch of Tesco cordoned off the gift cards and stationery aisles but the other branch 10 minutes up the road didn’t.

For me possibly the silliest of the restrictions in Wales was during December 2020 when they imposed a 6pm curfew on restaurants, bars and pubs and they couldn’t sell alcohol during the times they were open either. At this time you had to book tables, could only stay for 2 hours and they were limiting how many people could come in. Oh and you had to put your masks on when stood up or when going to the loo but could take them off when sat down at the table.
The same friend and I met up twice during those weeks, went to a Toby carvery the one time and another pub/restaurant another. To say they were both well attended despite the fact they were limiting numbers inside and had to close at 6pm would be an understatement. If the thinking behind the no alcohol and 6pm curfew was, “well, people won’t bother going if they can’t have a drink,” they got that wrong!

Invested properly in the NHS in the decade before Covid happened. I presume that if all the money they spent on Covid had been spent on the NHS instead there would have been no worries about overwhelming it.

Close borders
Keep schools open

Well that wouldn’t have helped the burden on the NHS. The main issue was that if you were seriously ill or injured (unrelated to Covid) you didn’t have much hope of being treated due to the lines of people on ventilators and the beds / staff being taken up.

I think people forget that the govt after a while KNEW that younger and healthy people weren’t much of a risk but had to desperately try and reduce the numbers in hospitals which were swamped. I worked in healthcare at the time and many of my colleagues were all deeply affected by this time.

@Gingerbee I understand that the schools would not have run as normal but they should have remained open.

New Zealand seemed to get it right, didn’t they? Long, strict lockdown initially and then living normally afterwards - with the big exception of a closed border. They have much lower death count. I’m not sure what effect it had on their economy but repeated lockdowns and furlough can’t have been good for ours.

we seemed to react too late and too slowly and then the measures when coming out of lockdowns were really daft.

Who would have taught your children, teachers and support staff were also getting Covid in large numbers.

The government didn’t know what we were facing.

Some people hold onto the comforting belief that the government didn't know. The reality is what was happening in Italy was all over the news plus the Italian state talked to other states. It came a little earlier than modelled, but what happened was expected.

In our school we had 8 members of staff who were classed as CEV and we are a small school. We wouldn't have had any Maths teachers.
Also, several students were CEV too.
I still tutor 2 students who have Long Covid.
One small school!

I definitely think schools should have opened earlier, it was ridiculous that you could go to the pub , but my children couldn’t go to school .

I think we should've closed our boarders earlier.

We should have locked down much sooner and much harder. And why did we ever stop? Covid is still out there. It’s just not safe.

DH was also a doctor during the pandemic. I went weeks with hardly seeing him and when I did he was having nightmares about the sheer number of seriously ill and dying patients- young and old.
The way the government (and some members of the public) treated the medical community during Covid was appalling.

After working as a GP and in hospital medicine for 30 years, DH has now taken early retirement. Treating so many Covid patients with insufficient staff and equipment has changed him forever.

I think we did ok. I'm not sure I would've changed that much. A few little bits here and there uk could've certainly done better. But that's easy for me to say because Dh and I were still working and ds's were fine at home doing school work.

Add to that list, the use of ‘grown ups’ as an attempt to make “their” gang seem more credible. While the rest of us, either side of the centre, chuckle at their naivety ☺️

I live in Western Australia so we had a massive advantage to most places we are geographically remote from the rest of the world. Our state border was completely locked down very early, so while the rest of the world was getting COVID, we had zero cases. We had about two weeks of stay at home lockdown, apart from that life was pretty nornal, apart from the fact that no one could enter or leave the state. They didn’t open the state border until we were all vaccinated.It caused some hardship as people couldn’t travel, but compared to everywhere else we were able to lead a fairly normal life while the rest of the world were suffering a lot. We didn’t even have to wear masks for most of it, as we had zero cases.IMO it was well worth it, and the UK should have closed borders completely much earlier. But it was an unprecedented situation, and we were lucky, it’s easy to see mistakes in hindsight. We didn’t really know what we were up against. We had just bought a house in Feb 2020 and genuinely thought for five minutes that there was a real possibility we had massively fucked up as we were possibly all going to die. Thankfully that didn’t happen.

T1D is an autoimmune condition that and be triggered by any illness, quite often in people with genetic markers that put them at risk. So yes covid can trigger T1D but so could chickenpox.

There has been an increase in cases, but its not know if:

• these are in people that would have developed T1D at another time regardless of Covid. So over a 10year period the number of cases will level out.
• the increase was triggered by Covid infections or the massive wave of other illness that came after lock-down.

That sums it up perfectly…and would have saved at least £250 billion. Compared to the hyperbole about stricter controls and more lockdowns at the time, which would have cost another £250 billion….

It’s the next few generations that will be paying the price of the inept advice we were all given, with no consequences for the politicians, the civil servants and public health organisations for being woefully unprepared in terms of even having a plan.

😂 This is so true. Any mentions of “sheep”, “snowflakes” or “woke brigade” and I’m switching off