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

Magical, self sacrificing minimum wage fairies with no concern for their own safety, apparently.

Yep, also if COVID had been as bad as they tried to make out they would have needed military guards at vaccine centres to maintain order not bullying to encourage uptake.

So who is going to serve everyone that wants to stay at home

What would not complying even look like? Going on two excercise walks instead of one? Deliberately buying 'non essentials'? Sneaking your neighbours round to your hot tub and garden bar? Because if everwheres shut that'll be about the size of it, unless you're planning on marching round the streets, which I imagine the police and military would put a stop to.
If it happens again, enough people will be brought on board by the scare tactics/emotional manipulation just as last time, so those that are prepared to risk criminalisation, and their health and that of their family from a new threat will be a minority. Particularly as a lot of people actually enjoyed or didn't mind it.
I have every empathy for those greeting the idea with horror, but I think rather than take comfort from believing the public will take control and stop it, it would probably be better to have a plan for managing it as best you can should it happen again.

I agree.

Or if the illness was obviously really bad generally (not children specific). Like if it was even close to Ebola-levels of fatality.

If we saw scenes like we saw in Italy again and people were dying in numbers, unable to be helped because the nhs had collapsed I can guarantee you’d be staying at home without having to be told to.

We did know that about Covid in 2020. The problem with Covid was really the R number and the exponential growth. Even at the start Chris Whitty said it was a mild illness for most people

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Now, Covid is mild for the majority and most people don’t worry about it. At the time we were locked down - before vaccines and before it evolved to milder strains - people were actually dying and people were worried about dying.

If a new and unknown illness emerged that was killing people, I think plenty of us would be inclined to stay at home again.

I don't see why it's claimed that people wouldn't comply. You only have to look at the graphs for people catching covid and the death rate to see that it was effective in keeping infections and deaths down. If the alternative is to leave the NHS to collapse and put us all in danger, it would be utterly selfish not to comply.

It does depend on symptoms. For many covid was mild, this was said at the beginning so they needed to get people to comply using messaging.

If the symptoms are scarier people will change behaviour although part of why covid was hard to control was down to 1/3 asymptomatic anyway.

If symptoms are more obvious you can control it better.

Well obviously last time it wasn't that bad as loads of people still worked, the government just had to get that sweet spot where some people stayed at home but others had to go to work to serve them. Nobody is going to work in Tesco if they are very likely to die.

Unfortunately there will always be idiots with zero brain cells

Depends on the pandemic, doesn’t it? Some strain of Ebola that is killing 95% of infected within a few days… Yeah, everyone would comply.

only people with young kids would see the risk to young kids as a compelling reason to comply.

as for whether people will comply it will depend on what propaganda and scare tactics they try and scare us with.

lockdown was a disaster so I don’t think they’d be in a hurry to do it again

I agree.

Some people would be absolutely gagging for one! Desperate to resume their places by the window curtain twitching at their neighbours going for a second walk!

Yep!

A lot of people clearly struggle to conceive of what would happen if the food, transport, security and utilities workers could no longer be relied on. We were very lucky that Covid never spooked enough of them into refusing to come in. People don't seem to realise that can't be assumed in a future pandemic.

This.

I'm a nurse and working during covid was heartbreaking

People are criticising the lockdowns now with the benefit of hindsight. However at first we (I say that collectively) didn't really know what we were dealing with. I remember the first patient testing positive where I worked and staff crying because they were terrified about taking the virus home to their own families.

Certainly, if another lockdown was put in place, I would comply. Yes, I do think mistakes were made with covid lockdown but I also think initially, people did their best with the knowledge they had

This. Absolutely.

People forget that the biggest fear was a high number of deaths. The health service couldn’t have coped, didn’t have a vaccine or enough of the other interventions to help huge numbers of people. Those who died all didn’t have an underlying illness. Memories are poor at remembering there were concerns about how the dead bodies could be stored before burial. Did any of us want to risk the life of our own family? As others have said, I’d love to hear your plan for a scenario where there’s such a risk to life.

People won’t fall for it again.

You wouldn’t if it was a serious illness causing it and you could no longer get food because all the workers refused to go in. Or your electric and heating went off. It was lovely for people who didn’t need to work yet still got paid, and the fact it wasn’t that serious so those that did need to work still went to work. As others have pointed out, like fuck would anyone go to work in Tesco if there was a 50% or higher chance they’d die.

Lockdown worked though. Everytime lockdowns were relaxed hospital admissions rose shortly after.
Lockdowns gave hospitals much needed respite - I don’t think they could have managed otherwise.

Most people would comply to a degree. I don't know anyone in real life who has even mentioned lockdown or covid at all in the last few years let alone with this attitude of "it was a terrible thing to do and I'd never do it again".

Nobody outside of what I saw on social media was complaining about it much while it was going on.

I would comply sensibly but without worrying too much as I did at the time. So going out for walks wherever and whenever I wanted but not washing the groceries etc.

If schools closed again then this time we would probably use DH's NHS employee status to get DC still in school which we didn't previously.

I didn't have IBS in the pandemic when WFH, a lifetime of pain and daily discomfort didn't happen. And my running times were pretty good.