Triggered by lockdown

[user64827723]

It can't just be me.

I just replied to a thread about small age gaps and was triggered. During Covid I had a 1yr old and a 2yr old. We lived in a flat with nothing to do and no where to do.

I cried most days and I still get so upset and mad about it now, those precious first years completely lost. 2 years of nothing to do, no swimming, no baby classes, wearing a face mask at soft play and even then the cafe was closed and numbers were limited.

Life with babies and toddlers is bloody hard but nothing will compare to trying to parent in lockdown.

I felt at the time, and still do feel, that parents of very young children were completely forgotten in the madness of covid lockdowns.

Anyone else feel like this?

Obviously it wasn't the virus that increased DV. It was the policy response to the virus, ie the decision to lock down. When our government chose lockdown, they also chose an increase in abuse because they chose to lock victims in with their abusers. We knew this in March 2020.

In general, I don't think we were very good at having the societal discussion about how we found ourselves between a rock and a hard place. That the vulnerable aren't a monolith, they have sometimes directly contradictory interests and that we had no options available that would protect everyone so it was a choice of who to throw under the bus.

What a horrible disregard for the mental health implications of lockdown and I note that you haven’t answered my question on missed cancers etc.

There is no need to be so unpleasant. I could say you have a horrible disregard for those who died and their families. You appear to think the lives of the elderly or infirm are worth less than others. But maybe I shouldn't say that because I'm not usually deliberately unpleasant to strangers.

People are afraid of a cancer diagnosis with or without Covid. My mother left the symptoms for 6 months until she had to be hospitalised. This long before Covid. It isn't just fear of Covid that prevented people seeking diagnosis. It was fear of cancer - you must realise that, it's a very well known phenomenom. My father knew his heart was in trouble but did nothing until he had a heart attack.

It's far too simplistic to say it was fear of Covid.

I'm in remission myself but I had my routine check up during the time of Covid. At the clinic they said a few were too afraid but most came.

@CwmYoy you are missing the point cancers were missed due to screening services grinding to a halt, treatments stopped and you could barely see a GP to get a referral. I know of a young mum who died as a cancer op that would have given her a couple of years longer with her family.

If we did have another lockdown and the next pandemic could be more serious people including me would not adhere to it given the hysterical overreaction globally.

Cancer op that was cancelled!

But my clinic continued with its routine. No one had to miss a check up. Treatments continued.

Saying you wouldn't adhere to the law if there was another lockdown is just daft. You would have no choice. If places are closed you can hardly force them to open.

This is essentially in cancel the cheque territory at this point.

Obviously when people talk about not adhering to lockdown they don't mean they're going to, like, break into Next. They mean they'll see who they like and perhaps use businesses and services that stay open illegally. Plenty of us did that for some or all of the last lockdown and know we could do it again.

@CwmYoy glad that your cancer services stayed open it wasn’t the same countrywide sadly.

Hell would freeze over before I stopped my dc playing in parks and seeing my family and friends again.

I think this is an important point. Whether one thinks the lockdowns were right, wrong or undecided, it's pretty clear that there are lots of people whose experiences mean they simply wouldn't have it again. At least for the short term. Might change later on, hard to call at this point.

I’m triggered by the thought of another pandemic, which could cause a lockdown. It was Covid that was the root cause of all the issues rather than putting all the blame on measures that were an attempt to control spread. The vast majority of Europe was in lockdown and most of the globe. If another virus came along and crippled society I think we’d end up doing the same (restriction wise) as what the majority of Europe or developed countries across the world are doing.

As things stand, I can't see that we'd have another lockdown. It requires public appetite, trust in the government and willingness to pay for it, and none of those things exist in sufficient supply at present. Things would have to change a lot. Though they may well do in the future of course. But it's not something that worries me at present.

@PinkCherryBlossoms

What if a more deadly virus then Covid hit us? A virus with a high mortality rate in children? A pandemic like Covid was a global emergency, so I think people would follow the global advice - even if they have lost trust in our current government.

In order to work, lockdown requires a disease not dangerous enough to threaten the ordinary running of society. What you describe isn't that. We were lucky that covid didn't prevent an existential threat to most of the working age population. The people who we needed to go out of the house in order to keep society functioning were for the most part not desperate enough to refuse. It'd be very different if they thought their kids were going to die if they went out to do their Tesco deliveries, water mains maintenance, police shift etc.

If we had something really awful, there'd be a real risk of societal order breaking down. One thing humans have never yet had to contend with is a pandemic that represented a real threat to most of us combined with modern tech that allows us to see how bad things are globally. It's very optimistic to imagine that people would listen to any kind of authorities in that situation. I think that would've been a reach even before eg the WHO undermined their own credibility with their actions during covid.

Sorry, covid didn't pose an existential threat. Not prevent- would be the exact opposite point! Apologies for any confusion.

@PinkCherryBlossoms

I think before we had the vaccine, there was threat to the working age population : hospitals were buckling. Even if there were large numbers of frail and elderly dying rather than younger/fitter : those people still required hospital resources which impacted all services - including services needed to those not at risk of Covid, maternity services etc.

Maybe I need to be clearer. I'm talking about the working age population being sufficiently scared of the threat that basic services stop functioning, because too many workers refuse to leave the house to maintain them. We never saw anything like that, even when covid was at its most dangerous. Food got distributed, utilities were maintained, there was no threat to societal order.

In the scenario you've suggested here, morgues full of dead children, clearly people would be much more frightened than they were in 2020-1. The relatively high level of compliance and of millions of people being willing to work outside the home relied on people not being scared enough to get desperate. Lockdown requires both of these things in order to be viable. But humans have done some awful things in plagues when they've been sufficiently deadly.

I disagree. There was a threat to
basic services. I remember queues of 40
ambulances outside hospitals. What if you were a pregnant working age mother in one of those ambulances and you can’t get in easily to get your bed? Even if the other 39 ambulances are elderly Covid patients, you can’t deny them an ambulance and resources to die humanely. There was threat to societal order. These were times when there was no method of control, and no one knew if the virus would mutate into something more deadly.

Ok. Let's call your scenario a worse threat, then. Mass swathes of the people who deliver the food to the supermarkets and keep your lights switched on and water in your taps refusing to leave the home because they're scared for their kids, to the extent that those services are threatened or don't function properly. That did not happen during covid.

Lockdown worked as it did because the public level of fear was actually at quite a sweet spot. Scared enough for nearly everyone to voluntarily restrict at least some of their behaviour, but not so scared that essential workers refused to play ball. A virus that was killing off children isn't at that sweet spot. Your pregnant working age mother would have a lot more to be concerned about in that situation than sitting a queue of ambulances outside a hospital!

Basically, if you want to say people would listen to the scientists if they were scared enough, part of that scenario involves thinking about the other things they'd do as well. Or not do. You can't possibly think that if kids were dying off, those parents who work outside the home would be fine carrying on regardless?

Well this is what I’m saying. I think most people would listen to what scientists are saying around the globe if a pandemic hits us again. Lockdown was horrific but no lockdown would also cause horrific outcomes. I think we should have better strategies in place for pandemic preparedness, be learning from Covid, be learning from other countries. Uganda had to implement a lockdown fairly recently for Ebola and there was criticism there for a slow response.

I agree that there would be a much larger section of society that are weary and refuse to lockdown. But I don’t think it would be the majority.

A virus is like a predator and is seeking to find a host and multiply. If we are weakened in our behaviour and resources by one, it might give another a better chance to thrive. This is what triggers me more than lockdown. But I try not to think about it too much, and hope that someone with a better brain than me would have a plan!

I don't think it's quite what you're saying, because my point is that in your scenario, we'd risk societal order breaking down people couldn't rely on being fed or having basic utilities. Whereas you've not mentioned that aspect.

The ambulances would be doing well to be stuck in a queue outside the hospital. Because for that to happen there'd need to be petrol, paramedics and a hospital actually able to provide care. Those things are not a given if all the parents in those workforces would be risking their children's deaths by doing their jobs.

In that situation, even assuming for the sake of argument that people do place trust in scientists about the best way to tackle the pandemic (which is optimistic) clearly they're not going to be sitting at home and socially distancing when food supply chains aren't functioning. We wouldn't have a lockdown then, because lockdown involves societal order.