To ask why you think we should not have locked down at all

[Methtones]

Not looking for an arguement, just a rational standpoint because I'm seeing lots of posters saying lockdown was a mistake with no reasoning other than "but the economy!".

Spain, France, Italy and Ireland have all implemented some form of lockdown and many of them have implemented a stricter one.

Why should we not have done this? Were these other countries wrong? Should we all have just have been business as usual?

Why haven't you posted this in the Corona virus section?

There seems to be little distinction anymore. But thanks for being the thread police

I think we had no choice but to lock down.

However, it might have been avoided if we had taken stringent measures of testing, tracing and quarantining back in February.

Bump

It's not that we shouldn't have locked-down at all, we should have done so much sooner. Instead, our government thought it was much bigger and smarter than this virus, and our economy was more important than lives. Now we've lost much more of both and still had to lockdown.

I totally agree with you both - track and trace (or whatever its called) and faster lockdown would have been a better approach.

But i get the impression there are posters who think we shouldn't have locked down at all and I've seen others saying it's been a failure because of when the peak happened. I just dont get the thinking at all.

As a nation of islands, with our only border-neighbours in Ireland locking down before we did, we had a window of opportunity to batten down the hatches (like New Zealand did) and we lost it.

there are posters who think we shouldn't have locked down at all

I don't agree with this. There is a school of thought that says as it's inevitable, eventually, that we'll all be exposed to the virus, we might as well get it over with - but in my view, we need to delay that as much as possible so we can get maximum benefit from what is being learned (at breakneck speed) about treating the symptoms of the virus - and, of course, making sure that supplies of oxygen and ventilators are always adequate for the number needing intensive care.

I thought it was to do with the R rests and that worked.

Rate

Lockdown has had a massive negative impact on countless individuals, both financially and emotionally, and the horrendous damage to the economy will take many years to recover from.

It would have been far more effective and less damaging to focus on extensive testing, targeted quarantining and early medical intervention, as has been demonstrated by other countries.

I was pro-lock down at the beginning, but as the time goes by it's clear this is not a long term solution, as there is no sufficient data to say the lockdown is working.
1.Take Sweden as an example, a country that did not follow lock down and still does not have significantly more cases than other countries with similar population but in lockdown.
2.There is no clear comparison of how many of those deaths were actually due to coronavirus, they are deaths of people that tested positive for Covid, but how many of those people would have died in the following months due to their existing conditions (as horrible as it sounds)

1. There is no clear knowledge about how many people have actually had the infection, the BMJ has published studies that suggest up to 78% of people contracting the virus can be asymptomatic. If this were true, the lockdown would be the worst possible decision.

4.The tests being used are antigen tests, they have up to 30% of failure rates due to incorrect taken samples, and other factors as: time of the infection etc. so they are not reliable. 5.Antigen tests which would be useful to know who had the infection, would be reliable to determine who can go back to work but there are not reliable Antigen tests available either.

1. The way the Government is administering tests is pretty bad too, they have done only a short fraction of what they promised (not even 10% of what they had promised daily here in Scotland) , so tests will not get us back to normal anytime soon.

7.The virus is not going anywhere , it will always be in circulation, the lockdown is not to eliminate the virus (this is not clear for most people), the lockdown was only to slow the spread and to not end up with an overwhelmed NHS where people will die because they could not get the attention they needed, so far, the NHS is far from overwhelmed , not even in London, with Nightingale hospital nearly empty, so surely measures should be relaxed a bit.

So, as we stand, the government has missed the chance of gathering knowledge of how many of us have had the virus, and whether or not there is already herd immunity.To top it up , the lockdown will make it more difficult to achieve immunity if we are all in hour houses and scared to go out.
There is no treatment , so are we supposed to stay in lockdown 12-18 months until they find a vaccine, when potentially 78% of us would be asymptomatic?

I think it a reasonable question and discussion, OP.

The UK hasn't imposed a lockdown as other countries have. It was more a 'stay at home' order to protect the NHS from becoming overwhelmed.

The policy has now worked and largely, the population has complied with staying at home. The u-turn came on the back of the Imperial College report and government advisors went from mitigation to suppression.

In theory, protecting or shielding those with compromised respiratory systems was a good policy.

All in all, in my lay opinion, the overall policy to stay at home has given the NHS time to address their in house capacity which has been successful.

The economic-v- health debate will rage on for years. In a decade or so, we will know who got it right and who got it wrong as we did with the foot and mouth pandemic 20 years ago.

I know Sweden divides opinions, but their measures were not altogether different from the UK. Older people were protected, the stand out differences were schools for u-16 were kept open, mass gatherings of

"1.Take Sweden as an example, a country that did not follow lock down and still does not have significantly more cases than other countries with similar population but in lockdown."

Is this true ? ^^

Almost every country in the world has implemented a lock down of sorts. If the UK got it wrong in even having one, then so did most of the rest of the planet.

There were alternatives to lockdown but they would have required far clearer information and rational ideas than the gov seems capable of. They also veered from herd immunity ideas to lockdown so suddenly they didn't give time to think it through.

As with Brexit, the gov decided to boil it down to a few slogans as they seem to assume that's all the population can take on board.

If the UK got it wrong in even having one, then so did most of the rest of the planet.

Yes, that's one of the reasons I'm asking the question.

It's really interesting to read what people think about it all in a measured non fighty way! You see snippets on other threads out of context.

From my perspective, I feel we have handled it terribly and left ourselves with no choice but to lockdown. but it will be interesting to see if it does become a cycle.

If Sweden closed care homes, where did people go?

We should have done it smarter.

Banned big gatherings, checked airport arrivals and quarantined, even stopped flight to some destinations.

Also traced and tested earlier and asked the vulnerable to stay in so the rest of us could get on with our lives, while still encouraging working from home but keeping the transport service running at pre COVID levels.

Track and trace is the last thing we need.

I certainly won't be participating.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/anger-in-sweden-as-elderly-pay-price-for-coronavirus-strategy

I dont think Sweden did anything different to us with care homes sadly.

It is starting to look like a sledgehammer to crack a nut but I feel that can only be determined in hindsight?

Woodentopper why? What is the alternative?

I think there various strands, but they boil down to the fact that the cost of the lockdown is hugely greater than the financial worth of the net number of lives saved.

Why Wooden?

If the early arrivals from Wuhan and Italy could have been contained, then why not?

It's too late now, but they are still considering it.

Sorry, early infected arrivals.