To be depressed that lockdown would happen again tomorrow if there was another new disease

I thought of your post as @Binusdid. You’re not going to get anywhere with checkpoints.

A disease spread by humans is not like dangerous weather. Other people staying home is precisely what makes it safer for eg supermarket workers. Of course we may get a disease so bad they don't want even to risk contact only with each other, but at that point it's not so much that a lockdown wouldn't work as that it would be irrelevant - like pulling over in a car to let the engine cool down being irrelevant if the engine has already broken.

@EasternStandard ,

‘You wouldn’t need this as the virus itself either concerns people enough or it doesn’t.’

I’m sorry but that is just rot.

If people had, en masse, ignored COViD rules, COVID was plenty bad enough for enforcement to be necessary.

And people aren’t logical. There is a lot between Covid and plague/Ebola. As we can see from these threads a significant minority of people have zero understanding of either viruses or how public health works.

So those hospital wards full of dying people were just stage sets then?
And the governments of the whole world were in on it?

Those who would refuse to do lockdown.

Discussion forums by design have a range of for and against opinions. You and I clearly just disagree.

Lmao no it isn't.

Let's assume for the sake of argument we're talking about a virus not severe enough to prevent the basic blocks of society from functioning. Who on earth do you think is going to be staffing all these checkpoints? The UK has 70 million people and our combined police and armed forces are like 350,000. You talk about jails, which already don't hold everyone we want to put in them- who do you think is going to be staffing these? Even China, with a fully functioning authoritarian state apparatus and actual gulags, couldn't manage to keep that up when the public turned. And we don't have anything like what they've got.

Enforcing lockdown would actually be impossible if the public weren't up for it. This is why so much emphasis was put on messaging and increasing people's perception of their own risk. Because whatever else one might say about the previous administration, they understood well that we couldn't possibly enforce a lockdown through deterrence. If it gets to the checkpoints stage, the whole thing is doomed to fail anyway. People have to be willing to do it voluntarily.

Yep… during the black death people kept away from other people!

But what would they live on? A lot of minimum wage workers don't have huge savings they can fall back on. They would be forced to work as I doubt the state would furlough them, it didn't for essential workers

Should have been clearer - the vulnerable I meant the elderly and those with immunocompromised conditions and severe asthma. I do think that keyworkers with underlying illnesses would be safe with the correct PPE and hygiene

What type of virus are you referring to?

Restrictions obviously help reduce the spread of any contagious (airborne, touch) virus for which there’s no vaccine.

The people on here saying locking down for Covid was unnecessary... what drugs have you taken? Did you live under a rock when thousands of fit healthy young people were getting so incredibly sick and dying. When there wasn't enough ventilators or oxygen for those that so desperately needed it? Yes it's now a mild illness but only after the vaccine was developed. The lockdown for Covid was absolutely needed.

How do you know what it does to people or if have a high rate of recovery before the event? Wait to see if they're all dying and it's too late, the disease is spreading like wildfire? Or just lock down at the start and hope it all works out ok?

At the beginning of covid, people were dying. My partners healthy 55 year old cousin was intubated for a month, then she died shortly after. My 75 year old (at the time) neighbour was intubated and she survived with no long term troubles, I see her walking the dog most days.

It's a difficult call, I'd always err on the side of caution personally.

You wouldn’t need this as the virus itself either concerns people enough or it doesn’t.

If it’s way worse than Covid you won’t need checkpoints. If it’s about the same they’d be unnecessary.

Do you have a link to the prep the government has published @Pavementworrier ?

How would you know the severity of the illness?

Most of the people I know look back on lockdown fondly - even my DH who lost several close family members to covid.
Even my parents who were frontline key workers.
Even me who had a lockdown birth, pregnancy and maternity leave.

No pressure to be anywhere (for the most part) time spent with loved ones, quiet, calm, no FOMO.

If I lived alone or had an unpleasant home life I would obviously have a very different perspective, but for me it wasn't a negative time.

Closing schools wasn’t sensible at all.

If there was an illness were there was no cure, hospital were overwhelmed and people were visibly dying we would comply

may not be as easy as last time as iit wouldn’t for many governments (and as a culture we are fairly compliant) but the need to survive would be stronger that our personal feelings of mistrust for the government

Lockdown is much easier to enforce than people think.

You have checkpoints and actually put people in jail if they have no reason to be out.

Governments have huge emergency powers.

Covid was really lockdown-lite and semi voluntary, anyway. Which was fine, as enough complied to achieve an r number (remember those!) significantly below one.

But if they couldn’t get their voluntarily and case numbers were still rising, they have plenty of enforcement and deterrence available.

The issue with the COVID lockdowns is that the wealthy were given get outs and the local lockdowns weren’t applied evenly and fairly.

Don’t lockdown sceptics worry that vanishingly few genuine experts (virologists, epidemiologists and immunologists) think lockdown was unnecessary?!

Oh, ffs, OP. I think you have a lot more to be depressed about than the next pandemic and telling yourself how incredibly wise you are compared to Government on what makes life worse for everyone. Everything appears so simple when you don’t have to consider anyone other than yourself. Imvho, we are becoming a nation of simpletons…

But they wouldn't skip off merrily to work to keep the food supply going, the electricity on, etc, etc. You'd have an entirely different problem on your hands.

That’s now, because of the vaccines and natural immunity built up from the virus being in the community. When Covid first hit there were no vaccines and alarming numbers were dying every day. Feeling like shit for a few days might be the norm now, but in the early days it was a killer.

My DH was admitted to hospital for essential treatment in the first 6 months after the pandemic hit. He had a LFT before being admitted and it came back positive, despite us both having isolated and taken every precaution because we both have compromised immunity. The protocol was to isolate and do a PCR test to confirm. That didn’t happen. He was put on what was referred to as ‘the Covid ward’ along with others who had tested positive on admission for treatment. A PCR test was done the following day but he was discharged before the results came back. He saw three people die on that ward during the four days he was in hospital.

On his discharge there were no precautions taken - he was discharged as soon as treatment had finished even though he had supposedly tested positive and had been in direct contact with others who had the virus. Zero fucks given as to how many people were at risk at home.

The day after he returned home the results of the PCR were emailed to him. It was negative. The LFT had been a false positive - he had never had Covid. By then it was too late - he had caught the virus in hospital because they hadn’t followed their own protocols and isolated him until the PCR test results came back. Within a few days we were both very ill with Covid, and l’ve never been so scared. We were left to get on with it because the only care available was via hospital admission, which at that time was a shit show. We both have ongoing health issues attributable to Covid.

That’s the reality of what was happening back then, and l dread to think how much infection was caused in similar circumstances all over the country. We can only hope that if and when the next pandemic hits, we have learned from the many mistakes made during Covid.

What about long COVID? Symptoms can last a lifetime!

highly doubt it would happen again. If we lockdown it will be for certain age brackets (the old) and most vulnerable only the rest of the working population and young people will carry on

I’m not surprised about the non answer in your pp either.