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

I'm sure also that even in the countries which claimed that "the police and army barricaded people in their homes", that was some carefully-publicised propaganda, and that had those societies been less compliant, that would not have worked either. Those other countries might have better-funded police than we do, but I don't think they could cope with a whole state rebelling. Even if police are armed in many other countries, it would be ironic if the police were shooting people while "trying to keep them alive".

@ThePartingOfTheWays ,

Well, we have to agree to disagree. Most of the population wouldn’t be prepared to risk serious fines or jail to mix. The few who were might get caught or might end up as spreaders, but an enforced lockdown would work as the majority of the population are either not rebellious or rebellious only then the consequences are minor.

If we had a pandemic like measles with a high fatality rate, we would be in a lot of trouble, but I don’t really understand what point you are trying to make.

My school stayed open throughout, although there were fewer pupils. Pupils that had parents working in the emergency services or were considered vulnerable came into school. They also tried to support families. Due to the guidelines from government, we were only allowed a certain number of children in the classsroom as they had to be spaced 2m apart and kept in their form bubble.
The upside was that with fewer children we were able to get to know some of the more ‘difficult’ students and formed better relationships with them that continued after all students returned.

I agree with @ThePartingOfTheWays when you need millions to comply you use messaging

The daily case count was remarkably effective. The compliance rate was high enough to be commented on

For another pandemic symptoms could do that or similar methods

Again though we don't have the money so if people think we're likely to have another pandemic quite soon then which would you downs £400bn plus on?

Depending on what it is I'm not sure it would be Covid. The risk was out of alignment with harms ie age

You can agree whatever. But if you think most of the population would be risking fines or serious jail time to mix, you've not understood how easy it is to get away with breaking the rules in a society that doesn't have systems to enforce it. Take it from someone whose receipt and provision of childcare plus ensuring children's socialisation meant my household probably racked up more breaches than Boris last time. The consequences of mixing would be minor in most cases, because we don't have the infrastructure for it to be otherwise.

It's telling that you've not engaged with the numbers of police and army to population and area in any real sense, just assured us it'd all be fine. Worth pointing out that there's a gap between high fatality rate and diseases where it's easy to get R under 1 as well. So while I agree with you about the consequences of something really dangerous, we don't get to pretend it's either that or easy to keep R below 1.

How would you intend to enforce these serious fines and jail time? With our half empty prisons and not at all busy courts?
You're assuming we have the man power to catch people breaking rules, and the man power to punish rule breakers. In reality we have neither.
Fear the is only tool we really have now. So pandemic II would need to be a lot scarier than covid.
Does nobody remember the West African ebola outbreak? It's really not as simple to enforce population wide restrictions as you think.

Yep, and people know this. The present state of the court and prison systems isn't a secret!

One of the major drivers of enforcement last time was people in the immediate vicinity. Lots were worried about being shamed in their communities, or shopped. Which was a consequence of high public buy in. Remove that, and the situation looks very different.

@noblegiraffe it's more that I saw it as pointless and extra added work and stress for not much benefit.

Like I said, my class' keyworker group consisted of 17 children, not enough room to keep them spread out anyway, might as well have had the other 10 in. Most of our classes were like that, except for EYFS.

It’s not just police and army who could enforce restrictions. At my son’s uni, the campus security staff stopped students walking around the open grounds in groups and threatened disciplinary actions including expulsion if they didn’t split into smaller groups which is ridiculous when the groups in question were flatmates, ie 6-12 students already living in the same flat that could be proved by their key fobs but uni security didn’t care. Let’s not forget was it Manchester uni where their security put barriers around the flats and checked students entering or leaving their own homes!

We need to be very careful about who can acquire draconian powers - often without proper control nor supervision nor accountability.

Like our local football club where stewards started illegally searching minors until large numbers of complaints forced the club to follow the law! Again, it was on the wrong abuse of power they initially got away with it by telling minors they couldn’t be admitted if they refused to be searched!

And we also had council wardens on the streets enforcing their rules and threatening fines for people daring to sit on outside benches that had been taped over!

With lockdown, care and treatment for everything else became, essentially, unavailable. The legacy of relegating treatment of the actual biggest killers of people in their prime impacts us to this day.

My personal conclusion is this. If the fates allow me to get to 80/90 years plus, I will thank modern medicine to not 'kindly' afford me a couple more years of sufferance. I'll gladly sacrifice my shot if it means cancer services for children and teenagers aren't paused.

Agree we need to be careful about what we allow.

Worth pointing out that local councils are elected, just like governments, so they're also doing what they think will get them elected next time round. They weren't necessarily wrong. There were, unfortunately, a good chunk of the public who were well up for this sort of thing during lockdown.

The other examples are more specific and, luckily, don't fly with the general public. There are groups within the population that it's easier to control, like those in prison, accessing healthcare, those whose accommodation is in private premises like student halls, but they're not most of the population. I was living in Manchester at the time, and found the students there to be an interesting case study. There was the overreach at MMU halls, but then Owen's Park was something else again. Huge amounts of illegal partying going on there, which is unsurprising really. Manchester Mule, I think it was, did a really good article about the impact of social class on access to illegal socialising during lockdowns. I can't seem to find it now.

edit- found it!

https://manchestermill.co.uk/the-social-experiment-our-student/

Similar with my DC school. We did have a higher than average number with LA involvement, EHCP or key workers.

I didn't have that many children in my classes before we locked down because parents had already removed them, and during lockdown we had barely any keyworker kids for the whole school (a few vulnerable) because at secondary we weren't needed for childcare.

Primary and secondary were very different kettles of fish in covid.

But even then your half classes would have reduced covid spread.

The army level of enforcement is a bit of a red herring.

We had the biggest behaviour change programme going, we only needed daily case numbers not troops

Far more viable, cheaper and effective

whereas at the school my children attended the kids and more importantly the teachers, had managed not to be frightened to death by the fearmongering and were in at more or less normal levels of attendance.
After the closure and once keyworker kids were allowed back in we had a remarkably high level of KW children back in school. Helped by the headteacher making it known that she wouldn't be checking up on parents' emplyment status! Good on her.

@Mightymoog nothing to do with fear. We weren't brave, we had to be in (and as a result our kids had to go their schools ) and a lot of our parents didn't want their kids at home, or it wasn't safe to be at home, which is why we had such high numbers.

It wasn't a choice or an act of bravery or any high and mighty reason.

I'm not buying that this was typical, or would have continued. My DCs school and nursery were both more or less full day before lockdown. Most parents were still out at work, they wouldn't have been able to remove children en masse pre lockdown would they?

Yep. In reality, if getting the army out is even being considered, that means the lockdown has already failed. I will hear many things against the governance during the pandemic, but those in charge did understand this much.

Primary schools again. Childcare again.

So? You're really telling me secondary schools were half empty for any length of time before lockdown? And that you think it would have gone on for more than a few weeks?

What an awful, insulting and insensitive thing to say. It wasn't only the elderly and frail who died. It was also doctors, nurses, bus drivers, middle aged mums and dads.
If you think lockdowns were wrong, how many people were you prepared to have died?

It was mostly elderly and otherwise very vulnerable who died. This is statistical fact. Whether we like it or not, old and sick people die. It's reasonable to question the extent to which we all should sacrifice to prevent it.

Sometimes I think people either don’t read my posts or misinterpret them (or, more likely, don’t care as long as they can continue to reiterate the same points).

In any democracy, the first tool will be messaging and getting buy in.

But there will always be people (as you can clearly see) who are totally selfish and will do what they want, regardless of consequences, because they believe their understanding of a novel zoonotic disease and the computer modelling of epidemiology exceeds the expert panel of PhD mathematicians and scientists assembled by the government. Or, more likely, realise that it is a numbers game and, as long as the majority comply, they can get away with doing what they want.

So the government need to use enforcement for some repeated offenders. For Covid this was some weak fines and, for a few, maybe a night in the cells.

If we had a pandemic virus whose contagiousness and fatality threatened the entire population, the enforcement would be far more severe.

All societies achieved sufficient compliance by a mixture of nudge and enforcement in varying degrees. You will never get to a situation where the ability of the police to subdue all of society is ever in question, as most of society will be on their side.

@Digdongdoo ,

‘It was mostly elderly and otherwise very vulnerable who died. This is statistical fact. Whether we like it or not, old and sick people die. It's reasonable to question the extent to which we all should sacrifice to prevent it.’

Because medical treatment was available.

How many fit and healthy people required basic support in hospital, even if for a few hours? Things like fluids, oxygen and steroids.

I knew several myself.

It would have been very different if the entire system collapsed.

None. In fact I still don't. Which aside from internet anecdotes where half their circle was in intensive care and the other half died, is statistically normal because the vast majority of the population never needed any treatment nor did they die.