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

There could be, depending on the virus, but what was being discussed there wasn't Ebola. It was just a virus that involved 'bleeding from every orifice and dying in the street'.

Personally I don't think there's much point in that kind of example, because it would so obviously be something like a zombie apocalypse. I agree with you that the area of interest and relevance is with something less serious. But for whatever reason, the people keenest on the idea of another lockdown often try and make their point using examples where order would completely break down anyway.

Even then I don’t think people would comply unless they personally had children in the at risk category.

I didn't think you would.

If it was something like bubonic plague, people would happily and voluntarily lock down, I’m sure. For another flu type illness with a high rate of recovery for the average healthy person, no, I don’t think people would comply.

No it would be extremely far from normal life, it would be societal collapse ultimately.

My point is that the set of circumstances that enabled a lockdown as we had with Covid are actually pretty unusual. I cannot see this particular response ever happening again.

Absolutely this.

If there was a new disease that spread and 1000+ children were dying every day people while absolutely comply.

This.

Trust me, if it was the 'right disease' and it looked scary people WOULD lock down by choice.

The issue is people assume now that the next would look like COVID.

If the next one was affecting kids or had a really high death rate people would follow the rules.

One of the reasons people eventually started to ignore the rules was frankly because the rules became ridiculous - Christmas bubbles FFS!

So who would you expect to serve you with all your needs

It was inhumane on so many levels.

My poor MIL died in 2020, not from Covid but as a direct result of the pandemic (her medical treatment was postponed and her disease progressed rapidly). During the funeral the vicar had to lock us all in the church, her granddaughter who was late due for no fault of her own was not allowed to come in. She was devastated.

Saying never ever going to do lock down again is ridiculous.

Surely it depends on the disease?

Those who say they wouldn't comply would change their minds in the event it was a virus that killed you in days and led to mass burials in plague pits.

As someone said earlier, hindsight is wonderful. If in the next pandemic there was no lockdown, and huge numbers of young people died, everyone would be up in arms and saying they would rather have their child alive whatever their mental health.
It’s the same with the (understandable) distress about sending old people back to care homes and them dying. If your (younger) relative had not been able to get an ICU bed because ICU was full of care home patients in their 80s, there would be a huge kick off from the families of the younger ones who died. Unfortunately there is never an answer that is perfect for everyone.

Closing schools, big entertainment venues and working from home where possible is a sensible precaution. The total isolation was probably not and I think did contribute to poor mental health.

Yes, the 'you'd have to lock down' crew don't seem to realise that with a disease sufficiently serious, there won't be essential services! Keeping out of each other's way actually involves a loooooot of labour from people who aren't keeping out of the way. That is not something that is guaranteed to anyone who wants to lock down, however strongly they might wish to comply.

Reality.

If the hospitals become overrun with patients with the disease, and the critical care medicines run any shorter than they did during COVID, there will be no capacity to care for patients with other diseases.

The alternative is to leave the pandemic patients who need respiratory support to die at home while still treating the trauma patients, those with strokes and appendicitis etc.

That’s not even taking into account the higher rate of staff illness through additional exposure, which also has an effect on capacity.

I don’t like the idea of lockdowns one bit, but some method of reduction of transmission of the disease is necessary.

Possibly improved respiratory protective equipment and ventilation should be a greater focus of pandemic planning.

Thing is, there's a lot of steps before we get to that stage.

So if Ebola got loose in the UK, we'd be trying to manage it by tracking and isolating contacts initially.

If it got beyond that, there could well be a stage where the govt said, "ok, we need non essential workers to stay home so we only have to isolate a few contacts per infected person"

There'd be a miniscule chance that any person you met was infected, but the govt would be asking us to lockdown just for pandemic management.
Would people do it then?

If that's the case, the alternative to lockdown still won't be the normal life that most of the people here who are saying they won't comply want instead. Normal life will still be ruined either way.

I sometimes wonder how our pampered, entitled population would have coped in WW2.
Imagine the chaos and conspiracies? lol.

I’m not a minimum wage worker so I can’t with certainty say what people would do. But I can guarantee that no matter what levels of PPE they gave me or how much they tried to convince me it would be organised, I would not be going to work (in my higher than average paid job) if the risk is death from the illness was higher than about 10%. So while I can’t guarantee it, I can’t imagine many minimum wage workers wanting to go to work either. Especially if they have families they will be going home to and potentially infecting.

I think that whilst wfh and things such as things being closed would happen, other restrictions would be ignored much more. A legacy of the response from the then Prime Minister who should be facing life imprisonment for the deaths his neglect caused, along with the then Health Secretary for sending older people to their deaths.

I hope there is never another pandemic.

I think we'd comply in more intelligent ways. No way would I let any family member suffer what my dad suffered: six months in a hospital two hours from anyone he knew, no visitors allowed except my mum who has dementia so someone had to collect her wait for her drive her back but not visit him, unable to use his phone as his hands were so swollen but nurses far too busy to help him so he couldn;t even get our phone calls 90% of the time. Then moved to a truly horrible nursing home as it was the only one that would accept him at the time. he died there.

My son developed anorexia in his 'bubble' of none in his first term at uni as no one else in his flat turned up and he wasn;t allowed to mix with other flats because computer said his flat was 'full'.

I would happily break such cruel, pointless laws which swap one potential danger for a genuine one of chronic isolation and depression which creates severe health issues. too.

Exactly. Covid was unusual in that it was serious enough to prompt lockdown, but not serious enough for societal collapse, which enabled a version of society to function even under lockdown. A more virulent illness, like the haemorrhagic fevers which some people sound a bit too gleeful about the prospect of on here, wouldn't allow us to have the same kind of "normal life lite" lockdowns again.

This shows total lack of understanding.

Lockdown is a pandemic management tool that involves prioritising the welfare of some groups over others. The same with not locking down. The government is choosing who are the collateral is.

Hopefully the last one was for the greater good. It would be very unpleasant indeed to think we did all that harm and the pros didn't even outweigh the cons. At this point it's guesswork either way, but I know what I would prefer to be true. However, even if we do one day get into a position where we can prove that lockdown was the least worst option, it will still be true that it massively fucked over some people. The same would also have been true if we'd chosen not to lock down (I don't think we could actually have avoided it, but theoretically).

But the saying goodbye to dying loved ones on a phone held in front of them by a medical practitioner, not giving your bereaved mum a hug at your dad’s funeral, trapping old people alone in their homes for weeks, taping up park benches, all that, that’s what people won’t comply with. It was inhumane.

I'm not talking about lockdown or no lockdown - it wouldn't come into it.

If mortality rates for young people were high, there is no way people would risk themselves going to work everyday to keep your fridge stocked and your lights on. The country just wouldn't be able to function. A paltry salary wouldn't be convincing them.

When something is considered a serious enough risk its never left for people to choose. We can't even choose not to wear a seat belt, take certain drugs or ride a motorbike without a helmet. We're certainly not going to be allowed to choose whether we go about risking catching and transmitting a potentially deadly new virus.