If we suddenly had to go into a 3 month lockdown again, how would you feel?

[LaurieFairyCake]

I think people would definitely comply. If it was Mpox I would want a smallpox vaccine as it's somewhat effective.

Towns being empty is destroying local businesses, why would anyone want that?

I wonder how long it will be before Starmer and others in government are rushed to hospital and intensive care because they’ve been afflicted with the pox? Just add to the drama and fear mongering like Johnson and co did to kickstart the ‘pandemic’.

Do you mean you like town being empty...apart from you?

Mumsnet is a very weird place at times.

Our town wasn't empty for long, there seemed to be more people about, all going for a walk or getting essentials, normally all these people would have been at work or out at places which had to close

Flu has vaccines at the time covid didn't when we had vaccines it opened up

I would feel dread. There were definitely some elements of lockdown that I enjoyed, and I think the opportunity it gave for reflection was useful, however overall it was a challenging time, and in some ways I’m still recovering now. Nothing dramatic, but it made me more insular and less connected to people. During long stretches of lockdown I switched off and became quite numb. I wouldn’t want to go there again.

Well - I didn’t get Covid while I stayed at home - I got it once the lockdown eased, and dh and I went out for a meal. I ended up in hospital, with oxygen sats in the 80s, and now I have long covid that has made me almost housebound. I can’t walk more than a few metres, or stand long enough to cook a meal. Feeding the dogs leaves me shaking with fatigue.

It makes sense that, when there is a pandemic going on, the fewer people we have contact with, the less likely we are to contract the disease.

But - and it is a massive but - experience has shown us that lockdowns also have massively negative consequences, and the cure should not be worse than the disease.

A previous poster mentioned masks - the ones that will prevent virus spread - I honestly think those, plus hand sanitiser, are a proportionate response to m-pox.

No one forced you to go out for a meal. You could have stayed home and probably not caught covid that day. People need to take responsibility for themselves. If they want to take the risk and "mingle" with large numbers of people or in confined unventilated places, then that's their prerogative. We shouldn't have laws preventing them from doing that. Alongside that, we need precautions for the workers who have no choice, i.e. proper masks, screens, better ventilated/larger workplaces etc. It doesn't have to be one thing or another - there's a massive middle ground. Take office blocks - no need to force them to close - organisations could have worked out rotas to reduce the number of staff in them at any one time, by rotas etc so that things would still be operational.

@taxguru Some people trust what the government says. If the government says that something is safe to do, they trust them. Although I think less people trust the government than before the pandemic.
Telling people to take responsibility when they were following government public health advice is a travesty.

During Covid the government never said anything at all was "safe". All the language used was about risk, i.e. lower risk, etc. They certainly never said it was "safe" to go out and have restaurant meals indoors.

Yes, idiotic Rishi encouraged "eat out to spread covid" but again there was nothing in that to say you had to go to eat in crowded unventilated indoor restaurants. People could have used common sense and avoided the busy times or only gone to places where they could eat outside.

It's ALL about personal responsibility, weighing up risks, making your own decisions according to your own circumstances, i.e. your own health, medically vulnerable people in your household etc. So, basically using common sense.

Government should be restricted to telling people the data and giving them enough information to make their own decisions. Nowhere else with public health do they "ban" you from doing something. People weren't "banned" from smoking, eating McDonalds burgers for every meal, drinking a bottle of gin every day, etc.

@taxguru they said it was safe for children to go to school as children did not spread it.

@taxguru and Eat Out to Help Out tacitly said it was safe to eat out. Why would the government spend money encouraging people to eat out for cheap meals if it was unsafe?
The answer was the government did not give a shit for individual people, just businesses. But that is a hard truth many people had to learn.

@Differentstarts

"Flu has vaccines at the time covid didn't when we had vaccines it opened up"

To be fair neither the flu jab or Covid jab are vaccines in the literal sense such as say a polio or chickenpox vaccine that prevent you catching the virus.

The covid and flu jabs simply reduce the severity of the virus should you contract it. Equally the protection it offers fades so by 6 months it no longer offers protection- hence the need for boosters.

Neither prevent you catching it or spreading it as many (including the Government) mistakenly believed at the time and anyone who hasn't had a booster in the last 6 months is unprotected.

Surely the improvement was down to the vaccines not the masks!!!

Infection rates fell sharply even without vaccines, because of proper precautions, i.e. people avoiding indoor/crowded/unventilated places. The rate of increase of infections was falling even before the first lockdown as we'd had a few weeks of warnings about Covid and recommending people to take simple precautions, many of whom made their own decisions to avoid indoor crowded places, avoid socialising, etc. We never had the need to get daily deaths down to single figures - the people in authority got themselves painted into a corner and couldn't retreat due to their earlier mistakes. The "experts" went from "flattening the curve" to "eliminating deaths" and they couldn't backtrack from that mistake.

I would not make my DD lockdown. What the covid lock downs did to her MH is catastrophic. I don't think she would survive another one because of her MH so I'd let her take her chances with Mpox.

I get so angry about how blindly we followed those ridiculous rules. Sure, the first lockdown when everyone was taking it seriously was OK because you could see the rationale but when it became, "Well you can go to the pub but only until 10pm or if you're having a substantial meal," or "You can see people at the front of your house but under no circumstances can you have them in your back garden," "Stay 2m away except if its a full moon on a Tuesday" (I made that last one up but ykwim) and the rules were clearly no longer based on science, I lost faith in the whole thing.

Ah yes, having a ‘substantial meal’,such as a scotch egg, was ok - as long as one was sat down. They would be safe then.🙃

NHS are quite happy to overwhelm the families of elderly patients, Go read the elderly parents board.

Exactly - I stopped after the second jab when I realised it didn't stop me catching Covid or spreading it. The side effects made me so ill that I just said nope! No more.

My husband lost his job in lockdown and hasn’t fully got back to the same pay. Our house is currently now on the market as he was the main worker. He’s set up on his own and trust me I do not want another lockdown for fear of everything going even more tits up then it already is. I’m already having heart palpitations and anxiety. I start work next month so hopefully that will help. I also missed time with my elderly parents, my father has since passed and I feel angry I was kept away from him during this time.

To be honest life feels so crap at the moment. I wonder how much I can take and then I see this monkey stuff and it’s making me panic.

Don't panic it won't happen covid was an unknown this isn't, covid didn't have vaccines this does its a completely different situation. Their in the process of sorting vaccines and it hasn't even got to the UK yet so theirs time. It will be fine.

Dead people don’t cost the state money, treating live people for an infection does.

The covid lockdown wasn’t about preventing deaths, no matter what the government said at the time. Lots of deaths looks bad, but unless they were all working people the state doesn’t suffer from their loss.

Sick people cost money. Sick people who need long term care cost even more.

If a lockdown or any restrictions came in for monkeypox you can be certain it’s because the government believe the long-term cost would be too great for its purse. That means the chance of getting a life-long debilitating side effect are quite high.

They don’t care if you’re mildly sick and don’t use NHS resources, they don’t care if you die.

They only care if you need expensive care or unable to work ever again.

Because that costs money to the state.

Iv cost the government a fortune due to covid. Firstly shielding they paid my wages. Then when I got covid 4 weeks in hospital now 2 years on I'm still not working full time due to long covid and now rely heavily on benefits. Plus all the 10 million hospital appointments iv had since getting covid. They should of just shot me would of saved a fortune

The government do care about too many people dying too quickly though as it causes a state of chaos. They only have so much morgue space etc. also they need to be aware of future inquiries which investigate their decisions.