Anyone still suffering lockdown fallout?

[EmmaEmerald]

I don’t want to tag any of the original people who helped me out a lot as I know this thread will attract a lot of nasty folk

but every so often I feel absolutely in shock still at how the fallout goes on.

suppose I’m seeking reassurance it won’t be like this forever but it might be, I guess.

For every person who died 100s were saved by hospital treatment they received.
Several of my colleagues were incredibly sick but their lives were saved, they were in hospital for weeks, off work for months.
None elderly
Now have a think about what would have happened without lockdowns.
The numbers of incredibly sick people would have been off the scale.
Hospital staff would have been affected in huge numbers.
So a catastrophic amount of very sick people with no available hospital beds and no staff to look after them.
I'm really not sure I can make it any clearer.

Now have a think about what would have happened without lockdowns.

Apaths who get their 'news' off social media personalities can't seem to manage thinking.

https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202401240012?utm_source=site.facebook&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=fbuser&fbclid=IwAR1xOtH-FVWdA2wTgEnkCvSDvIne3eu1bMq8fHjj-hTTnFPjb4P78_n3b_s

https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202401240012?fbclid=IwAR1xOtH-FVWdA2wTgEnkCvSDvIne3eu1bMq8fHjj-hTTnFPjb4P78_n3b_s

That mother wiill never live again.

How do you allegedly die?

I'm really not sure I can make it any clearer

you can’t. Those duped by the fear mongering of conspiracy theorists won’t listen anyway.

That doesn't alter the fact that plague was far deadlier.

A woman called Elizabeth Hancock in Eyam buried seven members of her family who died within eight days of each other. A typical example of the 1665 epidemic.

The Black Death in Europe killed half of the population between 1447 and 1452.

I'm not sure how I can make it any clearer.

In my immediate family we've had covid ten times between us. I don't fancy our chances if we'd got the plague ten times between us back then

I wonder why people who express disquiet about the way restrictions and communications were handled in this country are still branded by some as selfish morons who wanted to let it rip?

I wonder why people who point out facts about a global pandemic, which was handled fairly similarly by most governments worldwide, are branded 'lockdown lovers', 'fearmongers', 'dementors', and 'sheep'.

I wonder why people who point out facts about a global pandemic, which was handled fairly similarly by most governments worldwide, are branded 'lockdown lovers', 'fearmongers', 'dementors', and 'sheep'.

The obvious answer, of course, is that this is the messaging given on Telegram and other 'alternative media sources'.

I'm perplexed because I think that the lockdown(s) were utterly necessary, mask-wearing was necessary (and I still wear masks by choice in some circumstances) and I remember the justified fear of the virus at the time and in an ongoing sense, particularly amongst the vulnerable. A friend's relatives died early in the pandemic, people I know have long COVID, a friend who was considered vulnerable (vaxxed to the hilt) got it very badly only months ago and was very unwell indeed.

At the same time, this was a new event and we were learning. Some of the messaging was less than desirable and some actions we were required to take were not, in hindsight, necessary, or were counterproductive.

It was a new experience and we were working with the best available data and expert advice but we could not expect to get it right all the time.

This goes for any design spiral considering any problem. The key is evaluation, learning and iteration.

Its been so successful as a scare tactic they are already using it again, suddenly many people are sobbing because the worlds going to end because of a "climate crisis", that can be averted if we go vegan and buy an electric car - or believe we are on the brink of ww3 based on a few peoples hyperbole.

@HelenDamnation1

I'm NHS and I 100% agree. Yes it was a fucking pandemic, it was going to kill people - mainly the very elderly and vulnerable. But what we have now is 500 preventable deaths per month from the relatively young and healthy as we tanked the economy and hence the NHS.

This is only going to escalate. We traded the safety of the elderly for the rest of the population.

You're aware that "the vulnerable" encompass an extremely wide group of ages? So a person can be 40 years old, arthritic, and vulnerable? Or a child? And you've just written them off?

At last the voice of reason! I totally agree with every sentence of your post YetAnotherSpartacus.

This wasn’t a global conspiracy; it was a rather fumbled at times attempt to do the best we could in a new and unknown situation.

At the same time, this was a new event and we were learning. Some of the messaging was less than desirable and some actions we were required to take were not, in hindsight, necessary, or were counterproductive.

I'm glad you've written this now, it's well set out.

I think a substantial part of the problem is that too often, when this is pointed out and when some of the people who actually suffered because of those actions and messaging say that, the response is that we had no choice. As though that addresses the point. We only got 4 pages into this thread before someone claimed that it was pandemic rather than lockdown that caused all the problems, which is obviously not true.

But even if lockdown policy had been executed perfectly and not followed with the collective gaslighting experience that was Partygate, it was still a choice that involved prioritising the welfare of some people above others. No getting round that one. The same would've also been true of not locking down. That's why the situation was so awful. While this was a new event, there are also lots of things we already knew very well in March 2020 but that weren't talked about.

Either way, of course one of the baked in consequences of the situation was people who were designated as the can carriers rather than the prioritised ones being angry about that, especially when those people are also vulnerable themselves.

I don't know how we get past these things, but I can't see how there's any solution that doesn't include proper acknowledgment of this. As things stand, if we did happen to have another pandemic in the near future there'd be huge problems with public health messaging and trust.

Each pandemic will be different but for Covid whether the damage from approach was too much or not won’t be looked at for a while

Unfortunately.

It’s what I had hoped the inquiry would look at because we may need to know at some point for next one

It's too soon to be able to do that properly. We should do what we can now, but a lot of the things we need to know about won't even have happened yet. I do agree we're going to require as good an answer as possible for the future though.

The damage isn’t being assessed now

It could be though

Some of it could, which is going to require willingness to name and accept it. There are other things like the impact on inequality because of school closures that will take much longer to become apparent, even with the best will in the world.

@OrangeMarmaladeOnToast We should I agree acknowledge the damage, that in my opinion could have been much less, and as mentioned on this and other threads I have contributed to, hold to account in the courts some of the actions taken or not taken by government at the time. Many of which were not people 'trying their best' at all, but either being asleep on the job or using it to help their mates.

We could also reduce some of the ongoing impacts. The excuse of the pandemic to reduce customer service in some areas and/or rip people off can be reduced or stopped. Mental health services can be improved if there is a will to do so.

Precisely. The precedent of "a frightened public is a compliant public" has now been set. "Climate change lockdowns" may be coming on politicians' whims, who claim to be following "the science", unless we resist fiercely, and show that we have not forgotten the tyranny of lockdowns. Remember how the Ukraine headlines followed immediately from all restrictions being lifted, so much so that they completely drowned it out? Poor old Boris never got to have his big moment of saying "it is with great pleasure that I declare all restrictions over, never to return", because it was all Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. It was also ironic that we were suddenly "nudged" to take strangers into our homes, moments after being criminalised for having our own families as house guests, with some people still being pursued by the courts.

There are plenty of other times the media have cried wolf, telling us about imminent disaster which never happened. It was subtler then, but it was still deliberately frightening the public. For example: civilisation as we knew it would end on 1st January 2000, because of the Millennium Bug. Tony Blair said he was recruiting an "army" to tackle this. I wrote to him offering to get involved: the reply from Downing Street showed there were no such plans at all. The same Tony Blair who used fear of "weapons of mass destruction" for his own murderous vanity project.

"Terrorists are around every corner" since September 2001. Also "paedophiles are around every corner" has been touted occasionally.

A lesser example was the total eclipse of 1999, with lots of the language used being similar to the state of fear used this time round. Remember how absolute chaos was predicted, with all the people "flocking" to see the eclipse, and this time round it was "selfish arseholes flocking to the beaches in summer 2020"? Also, the papers were full of pictures of people wearing those "eclipse glasses": these were very similar to pictures of people wearing masks to be seen absolutely everywhere.

All this has made me deeply sceptical of everything I read in the papers, and everything that politicians say, especially if they say "something terrible will happen if we don't do this". If the media and the government keep crying wolf like this, they will have no credibility left for when it really matters.

Some statements have been made already on demographic impact although if you mean tracking that through as children get older well I wouldn’t hold off just for that

The millions spent on the inquiry only for it not to assess damage is madness to me

We shouldn't hold off, no. It's more that it will need to keep being done over a very long period and we'll need to be extremely clear about the things we don't yet know. Inequality kills people early, so it's something we need to be very aware of.

I'd be more convinced by this if there were more evidence that decisions were being made with the best available data etc. What seems to be coming out of the covid enquiry is a lack of seriousness in how decisions were made, far too much party politics, and too little weight being placed on the long-term consequences of lockdown because covid deaths made headlines in the way that eg an increase in deaths from cancer over a longer period does not.

Yes good idea to track over time

The inquiry seems to be following a process which tends towards what can we do earlier, although maybe the huge cost of it will deliver some process changes - who decides and how

I’d want the question to be ‘was the damage from the approach too much and how do we know imposing similar harms is reasonable given the risk?’

It’s not easy but I can’t see any other way to look at what to do when the next pandemic happens