To ask what we SHOULD have done during the COVID pandemic

I understand your point. I am discussing the pandemic from an entirely social aspect but it's important to me it's discussed. And they are different beasts, covid its self/the non medical havoc it caused.
But more children died utterly harrowing deaths than would have had these children had social worker visits and school in place. There was also a rise in people shaking up with new partners at the beginning of the pandemic and who knows how much child abuse that is responsible for, it was definitely responsible the death of Lola James, the wee girl who was murdered by her mums new partner who was a monster.
I don't live in the greatest area and I know more people during the pandemic who would access drugs than normal people could access toilet roll. Genuinely. People did more drugs, drank more booze and lads I know who did work that saw them laid off ended up broke, relying on alcohol and feeling like they were struggling with everything which in turn made them more volatile and violent on occasions which is a side they'd controlled until the pandemic.
As i agreed, you're of course correct I'm discussing the social aspect to the pandemic and yes we have a staggering number of abuse and DV cases, but locking up people with their abusers was a disastrous choice, the consequences were devastating.
I lost people to covid, I have friends who lost parents to cancer due to lack of available treatment during the pandemic and all the side effects of lockdown but I personally can't believe now that we locked children, knowing statistically how many men are peadophiles, in homes with no escape knowing the likelihood in a pressured environment such as covid, children would be abused.
It's barbaric.

We fucked up on every level, we ignored good advice and the repercussions of the long lockdown will be seen for years to come with the children who missed out on education, socialising, having a place to go when their homelives weren't stable.
I'd never ever again advocate locking away children, they're too precious to risk.
I hope you understand why I feel so strongly and that I do appreciate what you've said.

I think maybe allowing one household at a time to meet in a garden or outdoors would have been OK, and people should have been able to drive further afield for outdoor activities (not that I think they ever really stopped people, but I remember a sense for the first 6 weeks or so that you weren't to go on long drives or anything). At the end of the day, you were never going to catch it outdoors by just walking past someone unless they were infectious and literally coughed or sneezed in your face (dense crowds outdoors were another matter).

One benefit of this would've been that some socialising that was pushed indoors due to fear of detection could instead have taken place outside. With lower risk.

I think maybe allowing one household at a time to meet in a garden or outdoors would have been OK, and people should have been able to drive further afield for outdoor activities (not that I think they ever really stopped people, but I remember a sense for the first 6 weeks or so that you weren't to go on long drives or anything). At the end of the day, you were never going to catch it outdoors by just walking past someone unless they were infectious and literally coughed or sneezed in your face (dense crowds outdoors were another matter).

I thought from early on that small, local non 'essential' shops should have been allowed to open, although I guess there is a question of how you'd define 'small' and 'local', but when I think about places like a local flower shop, or bed shop, they would only ever have a handful of people in them at once, and wouldn't have been a hotbed for infection.

But hindsight is a fine thing. It was a novel virus and they had to act on the assumption it was as transmissible as possible and as dangerous as possible rather than going 'Meh, it probably won't be that bad'.

I work with children 1-5, our nursery/preschool was open as usual (it’s basically free where I live) so I worked. We had a great time. After 3-4 weeks after sending home anyone with a slight sniffle as adviced, we basically had a full group of healthy children every day. None of us got sick. It was amazing.

But now it’s back as usual, and we have all got a cold all the time. 😂

The second lockdown, parents were falling over themselves to get their children into school.

I agree with this.

In the early days parents were pulling children out of school before they closed. So not sure early on parents would have been happy with that proposal and in the January lockdown how would have that worked?

Parents complained about having the windows opened all the time

I think any family with a child at primary school should have had a right to either have one parent furloughed or a school place.

I don’t think it was at all fair on children to have a parent trying to home school them and work simultaneously. It’s obviously impossible to do two things at the same time to any kind of standard.

@crumblingschools

More than half, I would estimate. You'd never get 100%. The longer it continued, the more children who be attending.

Much better than being stuck isolated for two terms

I think people have short memories. The UK should have locked down sooner. The many children who were damaged by having their education paused, and the hospitality businesses the same, would have been way more damaged by losing their loved ones to death by covid, as individuals.

I'm finding it really odd to read about people talking about testing and PPE who seem to have forgotten this was not available for the crucial first 3 months!! maybe longer.

Maybe every single person in the world was affected in some way by this global pandemic, but that's the thing about global pandemics! It wasn't a local virus that could be contained.

My children 1) had to come home from University 6 months into their first year and then was pretty much locked down for her second year away from home.

2. didn't get to sit his GCSEs and then missed most of his first year of 6th form.

They fell short changed, as we ALL do by having to put our lives on pause for 18 months/2 years to some extent - but we move on? We are grateful not to have lost friends, relatives, or been affected by long covid. It was a collective trauma and we comforted each other. We are the lucky ones.

@stargirl1701 how many parents would have agreed with that?

I expect their test and trace programme was a success largely because it wasn’t being run by Matt Hancock’s friend, but by competent people motivated by running a test and trace programme rather than by lining their own pockets.

No. it was a success because their government's access to personal data is much more comprehensive than ours.

Their Track & Trace had access to moline phone and bank card data as well as having control of all CCTV. They were also able to publish the addresses of those diagnosed with Covid on the internet.

Primary Schools should've moved outdoors. We could have kept children busy even if we could not have covered the entire curriculum.

The risk of transmission outdoors in very small and children were not massively at risk. Any at risk teachers could've been furloughed whilst the rest of us cracked on.

How would you have managed to find enough hospital beds for all the extra Covid patients requiring treatment if you’d let Covid run unstopped through the population?

This I totally agree with. Secondary schools and universities too. Teenagers and young adults did not come through this unscathed; there are a hugely higher proportion now suffering mental health issues and a lack of emotional resilience.

I doubt any government would have done well with it though - unprecedented times, unprecedented measures. And we certainly weren’t the only country implementing similar rules.

Wow! So why don't we just kill everyone off when they reach a certain age or have severe disabilities? I think Hitler did that, didn't he?

Best suggestion of the thread.

You could add to this for example having the supermarkets giving prioritised free delivery slots (or if necessary paid for by the Government) by delivery drivers that daily had to produce a negative COVID test ( in return for a small bonus).

Instead we went for mass hysteria.

Those at risk stay home, everyone else just get on with life and work.

But if you're going to come out and say in absolute terms that there were ways to make the UK response work like New Zealand's did, you do actually need to know enough about the country to explain how.

It sounds like you're referring to a ban on flying into the UK here, either full or partial. That's only one part of the picture, since we have a land border and we're also extremely reliant on supplies brought in from abroad by other humans. So there needs to be much more.

It would still spread, PPE doesn't stop that.

You are underestimating the spread of the virus, even Melbourne with incredibly strong quarantine ended up in long lockdowns as it was very tough to control

PPE would do almost nothing on that front

And the sheer numbers would make it very hard to do the same as Melbourne

That's why Whitty said it wasn't feasible, not sure why anyone would doubt him really, he would know

Well with regard to South Korea, its only land border is with North Korea. So it doesn’t quite have the same issues with thousands of trucks crossing the channel and then - crucially - relying on the same drivers to distribute.

I expect their test and trace programme was a success largely because it wasn’t being run by Matt Hancock’s friend, but by competent people motivated by running a test and trace programme rather than by lining their own pockets.

To be clear, I'm not addressing your initial criticism at all. If you think another poster is mindless, that's up to you. My interest is in the hypotheticals you created.

He is right about covid entering via people in lorries. You only need a few cases entering a day to make avoiding lockdown not feasible.

And it'd likely be more than a few cases

I don’t propose to know everything about how the country functions but just letting people fly in from all over the world was stupid. We know it wasn’t handled well. Unless you think it was?