Now we are a coupe of years on. Do you think the Covid lockdowns should have happened

[Rainbowdeer]

I don’t we should have shut down the schools and I don’t agree with the lockdowns
the damage has been far too great
esp regarding children’s mental health

the economy been damaged far too much

work culture has totally changed

sorry, but you're talking nonsense bysaying we know lockdown was the better option.
Do you know how modelling works?
having various models does not mean those outcomes will occur.
It's a best guess to put it crudely

Sorry, that quote function went funky there.

@Mightymoog ,

‘Do you know how modelling works?’

Yes, my degree was in mathematical physics. Do you?

The main model used is the S-I-R model, which uses susceptibility, infected and removed to show how an infection spreads through a population. A university released the model to the general public and I played with it on my compute. You can change the assumptions and see how it affects the outcome.

Of course, it gets very complicated because you need to consider the variance of the r number and not just the mean. The variance is the bit that can give rise to the superspreader events.

That is why epidemiology is more statistics than medicine, although you need a multidisciplinary team to really understand it.

We have a pretty good idea of what would have happened without lockdown and it isn’t pretty!

we have a definite idea of what happened with lockdown and it wasn't pretty!

@ThePartingOfTheWays

‘There's nothing wrong with taking the view that the short term impact on the health service needed to be the main priority. That's legitimate, even though it's not morally better than any other value judgement. But you do actually need to know what the other things are that you're prioritising it over, in order for it to be an informed opinion.’

It was never about the NHS. It was about keeping a functioning medical system in order to save lives but the government’s advisers decided that ‘Protect the NHS’ was a message that would most encourage compliance.

I think that single message did a lot of damage, as it caused people to question whether ‘protecting the NHS’ was worth it.

I do understand all the complexities around it. I taught through Covid and for 3 years after it and it was pretty grim. So I totally saw the effects it had.

However, I still strongly believe that all the damage done was due to the virus and not the response and that lockdown was the only viable option for everyone.

I keep ironically seeing an ad on MN which says "90% of brain development happens before the age of 5", for jobs in the NHS.

The same hallowed NHS for which hundreds of thousands of under-5's formative years were sacrificed.

So as I said, the short term impact on the health service. Again, there's nothing wrong with choosing that as a priority over the others, but in order for it to be an informed decision, we do need to understand that there were other competing priorities and we couldn't protect everyone. That there are some harms ensuing specifically from lockdown rather than covid, just as there would also have been if we'd not locked down.

It was never about the NHS. It was about keeping a functioning medical system in order to save lives

The medical system is called the NHS?

So, you took your kids to a closed school? Continued to work on furlough? I'm guessing you mean; not wear a mask, mix with as many people as you could etc.

People like you are the reason my family member, vulnerable, died from it.

^ This, in spades.

I've remembered another irony. A couple of people I know queued to file past the Queen's coffin, and had something confiscated by security. What was it?

Wait for it...

Hand sanitiser! 😂Yes, the very same stuff which no less an authority than Boris Johnson was ordering us to use, as one of those infantilising three-word slogans "hands, face, space". You couldn't make it up!

no, a nasty illness is the reason your relative died.

oh, and i continued to work when the sector was closed down, yes.

I thought that!

@noblegiraffe ,

‘The medical system is called the NHS?’

I must admit that I thought my meaning was clear but maybe not!

The aim was always to minimise the loss of lives and health. The means to this end was flattening the peak and thus maintaining a functioning NHS, so that cases could be treated.

The messaging, however, made it sound like saving the NHS was actually the aim, not a means to an end, which allowed people to question whether it was worth it.

We had the case numbers per day

There'd have been a very different public reaction if we'd had all harms per day, social and economic

@EasternStandard,

Most experts believe that the economics of not locking down would have been worse.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/economic-damage-could-be-worse-without-lockdown-and-social-distancing-study

‘This paper yields two main insights. First, we find that areas that were more severely affected by the 1918 Flu Pandemic saw a sharp and persistent decline in real economic activity. Second, we find that cities that implemented early and extensive NPIs suffered no adverse economic effects over the medium term. On the contrary, cities that intervened earlier and more aggressively experienced a relative increase in real economic activity after the pandemic subsided. Altogether, our findings suggest that pandemics can have substantial economic costs, and NPIs can lead to both better economic outcomes and lower mortality rates.’

https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2020/03/fight-the-pandemic-save-the-economy-lessons-from-the-1918-flu/

Of course Covid was not Spanish Flu and the Cambridge paper was imperfect too.

But, again, you will find few real experts in any field, including academic economists, who think we had any option other than locking down.

But you will get a hell of a lot of non experts (and a tiny minority of experts that they will repeatedly cite) who take the opposite viewpoint.

In human studies, unlike Physics and pure maths, you will rarely if ever, get a 100% QED proof, but it seems crazy to not accept the overwhelming opinion of genuine experts in their field based on very little bar anecdote.

The whole period could be seen as an equation and for the public only one side was promoted

Daily cases, creating increased perception of risk and no messaging on harms from lockdowns

No one has worked out the total cost for economic and social disruption and whether it was too high

That is for Covid. Another pandemic might have a different result. We can't afford another soon though. Even if we needed lockdowns for the next there's zero room to do it all again.

The best we can do is hope we have a long wait because we reacted as we did on Covid

The NHS will take years to catch up on the damage caused by Covid cases and the ongoing Covid related illnesses. There needs to be a huge investment in infrastructure and equipment so that medical staff aren’t having to make do decisions with patients lives.

The total costs can't possibly be worked out yet, in any case. A couple of articles from spring 2020 won't do that, and that would still be true if they were making the opposite argument.

@ThePartingOfTheWays a stab has already been made at working out the costs: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9309/#:~:text=Current%20estimates%20of%20the%20total,the%20pandemic%20for%20that%20year.

Current estimates of the total cost of government Covid-19 measures range from about £310 billion to £410 billion.

Sure, a number of attempts have been. But what I mean is, lots of the consequences haven't even been experienced yet. Doesn't mean the workings out aren't valid, just that we have to ensure we understand their limitations, and take them for what they are.

This is the cost of which is a bit easier

Including the full picture ie social and economic repercussions is harder I agree

The question needs to be set up to answer it, I'm not sure it has been

@ThePartingOfTheWays and @EasternStandard the Covid 19 Inquiry will be looking into the broader economics in November and December 2025 in the Module 9 hearings.

The big issue is that we couldn't have had the scale of the lockdowns/restrictions if we didn't have the internet, say, if Covid happened 25 years ago. It was only possible because some people could work from home, you could order home delivery shopping, easy communications via phone/email/facetime, etc.