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?

Ilovemypantry,

You sign up to track and trace, see what happens with the information that is polled - give it a few years and then decide if it was a good idea.

In fact, up to April 22 2020, all-causes mortality in England and Wales was 2,700 FEWER than in the same period in 2018. fullfact.org/health/ons-2020-covid-death-totals/
The typical death rate is of the order of 1,800 every day in normal times. This background information is never shared by the media. It adds up across the whole U.K. to just over 620,000 every year. And remember, until last week, a not-unusual number of people have died in U.K.

Did you actually read that fullfact article? Did you look at the graph at the bottom. If it works here is another similar graph produces with the same data.

So, this pandemic is self-limiting and albeit slowly is waning steadily.

Do you think that would be the case if we hadn't had lockdown?

on my point 5 I meant antibody tests...

I don’t understand why no effort was made to quarantine people arriving in the country at the airports and ports.

I'm not saying Covid is man made or it isn't serious but I have serious reservations about the introduction of the app and the governments handling of the whole crisis in general.

Once you install a tracing app (albeit voluntary) you relinquish a part of your privacy, what happens if in 10 yrs time another government declares the tracing was a success and decides to introduce a compulsory version in the 'interests of public safety' ?

It relatively cheap and easy for the government to issue everyone with a free phone for the purpose.

Suddenly you are carrying a government tracker, how long before they put your driving licence, bank details, medical records, criminal history on it?

When Universal Credit was first thought of it was envisaged that ultimately all claimants will have a phone with a tracker with them at all time. It was to enable the Job Centre to direct people at no notice to do zero hour contract work for a few hours.

A phone tracker may look a good idea now but it opens the way for all manner of clandestine surveillance - it starts us on a slippery slope that will be irreversible.

It may sound far fetched but just consider how much technology is advancing these days - the tracking of people is coming if we aren't careful.

Every new arrival should of been quarantined from the start

JingleCatJingle Sun 03-May-20 16:20:25
I don’t understand why no effort was made to quarantine people arriving in the country at the airports and ports.

As I understand it, they were trusted to quarantine themselves. I have a relative who arrived back from holiday in Spain and quarantined at home for 14 days on return.

While the NHS was to be protected, care homes were left to struggle on. The argument is that many are private sector companies and they should have addressed those inadequacies in terms of protecting their staff and residents. I'd expect an inquiry into how government handled this and would welcome an inquiry as to how those care homes practice

I am not sure we could have done anything different with care homes. Very few staff could live-in as people have families and responsibilities outside of their work commitments. PPE would have helped, undoubtedly, but with people coming and going on shift changes and elderly people wandering about (you can't tie them to their beds), I am not sure the outcome would have been that much better in the long term. It is possible that had families been given the opportunity to remove their loved ones for a few months and not have to pay fees, some families might have managed it. I know personally at the point my mum went in a home, we were past the point of being able to support her in our home which is why the decision was made. Of cousre, that would have been problematic for the care homes but possibly the equivalent of furlough would have helped. I don't know. Very sad.

All they'd have to do is open-source the code to their app, but they won't because it's too good an opportunity to collate data en-mass.

I don’t know enough about tech to know why open source code woukd make a difference, if anyone can explain in words of one syllable, I’d be grateful.

I don’t know enough about tech to know why open source code woukd make a difference, if anyone can explain in words of one syllable, I’d be grateful.

OK, I'll try.

Programs start with source code which is essentially lines of human readable instructions. If you understand the programming language and have access to the source code you can determine exactly what a program does and how it does it.

Once the programmer(s) have completed writing the source code for a program, it is compiled into computer readable form. This is not human readable and if you only have access to the compiled program you cannot be absolutely sure what it does or how it does it. Traditionally, the source code for programs was not published, mainly to protect the intellectual property of the publishers. This is still the norm for most commercial programs.

With the open source model, the source code is published along with the compiled program. This means that individuals can analyse the code if they have the skill and will to do so. There are many benefits to the open source model but in the context of this discussion the main one is trust because plenty of people would analyse the code and shout if there was anything nefarious in it.

To dumb it right down:

Closed source is like me giving you a cake and you have to trust me that it's safe to eat.

Open source, I give you the recipe as well so you know exactly what is in the cake.

With open source programming it is very easy to verify that the cake and recipe match exactly.

@GoatyGoatyMingeMinge your post is the most reassuring thing I have read. Can I ask where you got this info? Is it your line of work?. I've been utterly terrified and you have brought me a lot of calm.

OK, I'll try
thank you for laying that out TooTrueToBeGood :)

@GoatyGoatyMingeMinge
Totally agreed - something that's crossed my mind a few times and not only just recently....

U.K. civil society is passively committing slow suicide. I’m impressed at the extent of meek compliance the vast majority of our citizens are showing

But then isnt the whole world?

There are some places that aren’t slowly committing suicide/murder, yes.

Lots of people in care homes who could have gone home from hospital but didn’t because of lack of care in the community - I hope if one thing can come out of this is it a “National Care Service”. Many councils got rid of their own hone care service and totally rely on the market which doesn’t work for the carers or the cares for.

LilacTree1 a lot of countries are in lockdown- some much more harsh lockdown than us. Are we all in the same boat?

meth but lockdown conditions vary hugely

So no, we are not all in the same boat.

TooTrue thank you, that’s really helpful

I might see if there’s any free courses around about this sort of thing as it would be good to learn more.

Wooden tracking of people def coming, I’ve started a thread re immunity passports.

I don't think that we shouldn't have had any lockdown at all, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if we look back and realise that the measures we imposed were too strict and ended up doing more harm than good in the long run. In particular I think the restrictions on non-COVID related NHS services will come to be seen as a huge and tragic mistake that will lead to unnecessary death and suffering. Maybe one day we'll discover that you're at very low risk of catching the virus unless you're in direct contact with someone who's coughing in your direction, and it'll turn out that restaurants were quite safe all along and we destroyed countless people's livelihoods for no reason. Etc.

However, towards the end of March the government had very little time to act on limited data. It's always easy to look back after the fact and say it would have been better if we'd done xyz instead, but I think they did their best with the information that was available at the time. I was actually in favour of the Swedish-style herd immunity + voluntary social distancing approach for a longer time than anyone I know in real life, but by the time the lockdown was introduced even I thought it was the right way forward.

I just hope that the government are still 'following the science', as they're so keen on saying, and won't extend the lockdown based solely on public pressure. I'm glad we have a Tory government (never thought I'd live to see the day, etc) as I can't see them throwing the economy under the bus if it's not necessary.