To ask what we SHOULD have done during the COVID pandemic

Yes, those things are vital parts of the discussion about what would've been best.

Much more nuanced than that. It's whether we could have slowed the spread without lockdowns, or with different kinds of restrictions. I.e. alternatives that could have achieved similar end result without trashing the economy, causing business failures & bankruptcies, job losses, massive increase in national debt, massive increases in mental health problems, increases in non covid deaths and health conditions, etc. etc.

Basically, the question is whether the things we got from lockdown, ie slowing the spread with pre Omicron variants, are worth the negatives. It's not an easy one to answer, especially because some of the relevant information is in the future.

The whole point was to "flatten the curve", not eliminate Covid. Even the vaccines havn't eliminated it. Lockdowns helped keep the numbers of people with Covid at any one time limited, and within numbers that the NHS could cope with. Hence why we were in and out of lockdowns and had fluctuating restrictions over the 2 years, rather than a continual lockdown.

The fact that a lot of the restrictions were completely bonkers and illogical and the fact that "some" things weren't restricted/controlled, is a different subject really. But ultimately lockdowns and restrictions "did what they say on the tin" to control the spread, which was the plan all along, until either we achieved herd immunity or we had a working vaccine.

Even vaccines aren't a "real" solution as you can't vaccinated everyone and for some people, they don't give full protection.

People need to live. It's a privileged few that can do this, most people actually have to go to their jobs so the privileged few can work from home. People need food, deliveries, boxes, infrastructure like water and roads.

It's complete shit for many in terms of health in other ways, particularly children, it makes people fat and unhealthy.

And as soon as they come out the benefit is gone and the virus takes off again.

It's not a real solution.

Which experts? Not sure if you're referring to vaccines only here. And there was a loooot of relevant expertise that wasn't part of the conversation.

We should have listened to experts

Worked together with EVERY country to produce the vaccines

Hence lockdown to stop non essential contacts…

Practically it was. If you are far enough away from people for it to work, you are basically not able to interact with them. And in an enclosed space it's very quickly irrelevant how far away you are..

Saying the six foot was an arbitrary number isn’t the same as saying social distancing was nonsense.

But he didn’t…

It's complete bs. Any number of people could have had the virus and run into that poster, anywhere. There is no way anyone could know.

Oh yeah they were for the later ones, I forgot it seems like so long ago now!

We completely disagree on the value of education and the level of risk we are willing to take. I have already said many wouldn’t agree with me and it is fine that you don’t.

Schools were open for the children of NHS staff and other key workers during lockdowns.

Might be a bit difficult to pull off!

I was their one to one and my whole school was one bubble so we knew who it was.

I see how quickly tummy bugs spread in my current school (staff, parents, kids) and it makes me glad we shut them for covid!

What about the parents who are vulnerable or worked in the NHS, care homes etc. Should their children have stayed home?

Perhaps not what we SHOULD have done during the COVID pandemic but now we should be forcing China to pay the full cost of the pandemic. It started there and they failed to contain it. They have a huge economy and so should pay for this. It seems that it was either produced in a laboratory or spread due to poor hygiene at a market. In either case make them pay.

I think if there’s another pandemic we should just get on with our lives. The vulnerable should be advised to stay home, but not forced to do so by law.
People should be allowed to make their own choices.
Advice about the pandemic should be issued immediately - no delays - and any rules that are introduced should be logical. Sensible measures such as mask wearing, keeping rooms well ventilated and hand washing should be strongly encouraged and anyone who is ill should be required to stay at home.
The importance of cleanliness and hygiene should be communicated clearly.
Air filters should be provided in enclosed public spaces and proper PPE should be provided to all who need it.
Making sure we have plans in place for any future pandemic before it happens would also be a good idea.

Medical people looking after COVID patients should have had proper face fitted FFP3 respiratory protection. Not surgical masks. Surgical masks are intended to stop people spitting bacteria into open wounds, not to guard against viruses.

The reality is that had covid happened, say, a decade earlier, we couldn't have had lockdowns etc. It was only because of the development of the internet, fibre broadband, almost everyone having laptops/smartphones, and that we were already well on the way to an online World, i.e. working from home, online shopping, online banking, Facetime, email, etc., that we could extend and accelerate what was already happening, to facilitate remote schooling, Universities doing 100% online teaching, working from home, widespread grocery shopping deliveries, Amazon deliveries for everything else, hot food deliveries, etc.

It was only because so much "could" be done online that it was kind of a social experiment to lockdown and have so many draconian restrictions and do as much as possible online.

That's probably why there'd been no contingency plans for an "online" response for a pandemic and why so many mistakes were made as they were making it up as they went along, so no time for proper preparations etc.

Indy SAGE in March 2021- less than 30% of those who should isolate are fully adherent, at page 5.

www.independentsage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Supported-isolation-final-180321.pdf

The best evidence we have shows that household members and contacts of people with symptoms or a diagnosis frequently ignored rules and guidance to isolate.

The table on page 8 has records for cases and contacts who were phoned, which is more reliable than self reported surveys for obvious reasons. The mean number of those complying is around 75%.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65f092919812270011f61405/self-isolation-compliance-of-cases-and-contacts.pdf

Note that this is just the people who were known to Test and Trace. Not those with covid symptoms and confirmed LFT positives who never did a PCR or went into the system, or those who were never reported as contacts because they asked the positive person not to. So it misses out the people who were actively trying to subvert Track and Trace to avoid isolation, and the true figure will be even higher.

PHE acknowledge this, and also cite some international studies of symptomatic people (a different population) showing even lower rates of adherence. Which makes sense. One of them said three quarters of people with symptoms and their household members had gone out of the house in the last 24 hours!

Basically, this is a looooot of people who weren't having it. Clearly a group that includes over quarter of a given population is significantly sized.

Quite! And surely the child must have caught it from someone? Or is it being implied this child is patient zero?!

Always easy with hindsight.

Reacted faster with a blueprint developed over decades.

The initial stages were patently out of control as early as January 2020 in China, so much so that we cancelled our planned holiday to Thailand in February with T1 diabetic DH. Friends visiting from HK were stunned when we cancelled meeting them in London in February.

Incoming flight and shipping passengers should have been quarantined as they landed.

A plan should have been in place to quarantine elderly people leaving hospital before they got back to care homes.

A plan should have been in place to address the devastating impact to children and other vulnerable people.

Lockdown should have happened sooner, but accounted for the inhumane isolation of people that didn't fall into convenient households.

It still seems staggering that in this century we didn't have a contingency plan readily mapped out to handle an unknown contagion. Why? We have more resources than ever before. How is that no government hadn't mapped this possibility. In fairness, we were not alone on that one,but when you consider the billions globally that were spent on Y2K readiness 20 years earlier, why should biology readiness be any different?

Cobbling together the plan, The Rules, the tactical necessities should not have happened on the fly.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/06/02/six-foot-rule-covid-no-science/

It's not a surprise to anyone who is knowledgeable about how repiratory viruses spread.

The stuff about arrows on the floor, or six people in a group in a venue, was even more nuts. No scientific basis at all.