To think that it is crazy to be ending lockdown now, and that this will definitely lead to a disastrous second wave?

[Staysafer]

Given that the UK currently has 8,000 new cases of coronavirus a day and numbers now appear to be rising, and given that the 5 tests the Government insisted would need to be met have not been met, AIBU for worrying that ending lockdown now will inevitably lead to a hugely dangerous second wave?

Four members of SAGE, including Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust, are now openly disagreeing with the government decision to ease lockdown.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52858392

I'd like people to vote on this because I think that it is still possible to avoid a second wave. But that requires action to be taken now, and also for everyone to be aware of their continuing need to socially distance and take precautions as before.

So YABU = you think ending lockdown will not lead to a second wave, it will all be fine.
YANBU = you think ending lockdown now will lead to a second wave.

NB This is one IABU where I really, really, really hope IABU. Unfortunately I don't think I am. But time will tell.

[Aridane]

I think it is a distractive move due to the Cummings disaster.

I had wondered if the rapid lockdown release was for this - ie we’re now used to this relative freedom, we think, meh, so what he drove to Durham and walked among the bluebells and went to Barnham CastLe

But surely they wouldn’t play with public health just because of Cummings?

[Iggly]

But surely they wouldn’t play with public health just because of Cummings?

I think it’s played a part. Probably better to rush to lift lockdown now so that an inevitable spike could be blamed on that, instead of being blamed on people copying Dominic Cummings.

[Kazzyhoward]

The only place to find guidance was on their website, which is clunky to navigate and again - not everyone would see it.

Gov.uk is clear and written in simple terms. Links to various different pages have been all over social media throughout the crisis.

The real problem has been mainstream media with Kuennsberg and Peston concentrating on their own biases rather than properly reprting the facts around the guidance.

[wafflyversatile]

It's easy to take photos of beaches and parks and say people are breaking the rules but even then most people you see will not be breaking the rules (whatever they are right now).

What you cant see so easily are conditions inside workplaces. we can see a little of what public transport is like but apart from that first day the media dont seem to be showing it much. I can see inside buses from my window and you can fuck the fuck off if you think I'm getting on one. Enclosed spaces are a lot worse for spreading infection than outdoors. People who cant afford to take time off work if they feel ill and have inadequate support from the government to self isolate are invisible to us while were all busy giving our neighbours the side eye for having visitors in the garden or a group of young adults playing football in the park.

[Menora]

The enclosed spaces concern me more - I work in the NHS and this week I had to ban the staff from using fans and air con. As this contributes to the spread of infection basically blowing someone’s breath all over other people, but there was uproar as it is hot. It has not been easy to try to make it safer for people indoors, this is doable in the summer as you can have every single door and window wide open but if this carries on during winter, it will not be as easy to manage.
Even the doctors I work with are not as concerned about the open air spreading, but having been into public spaces, a lot of people are not staying even 1m apart because they are outside. My neighbour had a huge party last week with loads of guests.

I’m very on the fence about a 2nd wave - I think it will be a really really shitty winter, and letting people out in summer is probably going to help ease the economy and people’s MH. We are all planning for a bad winter.

Right now CV seems to be a hospital acquired infection with most of those patients and staff (and care home staff) the ones who are becoming infected - our patients in the community with symptoms are now very very low

[EnlightenedOwl]

@Chessie678

I think lockdown should be eased now. It isn’t so much that I believe a second wave is impossible as that the effects of lockdown are beginning to outweigh the harm caused by the virus. I think the public vastly underestimates the economic consequences of lockdown because they are not yet apparent (particularly as the furlough scheme is currently protecting a lot of jobs) and there’s a tendency to think of the economy as just being about rich people making money when in fact it affects everyone. Each week of lockdown costs billions and destroys businesses and people’s livelihoods and that will inevitably shorten the lives or decrease the quality of life of a very large number of people - many more than the 40,000 or so who have died prematurely due to coronavirus. The government have borrowed vast sums to fund the lockdown so far and that may have been the right thing to do given that they have borrowed at low rates but there is a limit somewhere and each extra amount spent on lockdown now is likely to cause harm to society in future. Recession inevitably costs lives. It’s difficult to weigh up saving a life against damaging quality of life but that is a judgment we also need to make e.g.if prolonging a life by 5 years means 20 children losing months of education or 10 people losing their jobs and struggling for the next decade as a result or 5 people developing mental health problems is it the right thing to do? Everyone will have a different view on what lengths we should go to to save lives but I don’t think we should prolong lives at any cost to others. The NHS has always had a concept of how much on average it will spend to save someone and already made judgments about treatment based on quality adjusted life years - I.e years that someone will live in good health if given a certain treatment so taking the monetary cost of measures into account is not a new concept.

There’s also no guarantee that further lockdown will prevent a second wave. It may just delay it. It is virtually guaranteed that further lockdown will have significant long term negative effects on almost everyone. So for me extending lockdown seems like the greater gamble at the moment.

I actually think that governments all over the world including ours have erred on the side of taking measures to save lives from coronavirus even where those measures are likely to cause more long term harm because the public can see deaths due to the virus ticking up day by day but can’t measure deaths caused by the short and long term consequences of lockdown. This is probably because the government will be blamed for the former and not for the latter.

And ultimately lockdown is an unprecedented restriction of peoples’ rights and I think that a very high level of evidence that it is necessary to avoid catastrophic harm should be required. I find it quite shocking that people have accepted such authoritarian- even Orwellian measures- so easily and that almost any measure now seems to be justified if it may reduce spread of the virus even slightly.

Brilliant well said

[Coronabored]

You are so right. Lock everyone up as we are all going to die if we don't. The economy does not matter at all. Protect people's lives, so when it is over in 2025, we can all go bin dipping to get our dinner but hey we will still be alive.

[Kazzyhoward]

letting people out in summer is probably going to help ease the economy

People buying ice creams, lager 6 packs and a bag of BBQ charcoal will do nothing for the economy. It's trivial when the cost of Covid to the economy is in the hundreds of billions.

Yes, the ice cream van owner will be able to pay his mortgage this month, but that's about it really.

I really think it's a bad message for people to justify their actions by saying they're helping to save the eceonomy with such trivialities.

[MarshaBradyo]

We never locked down to eradicate it, no country did.
We didn’t but the latter part is incorrect. NZ did.

I don’t know, I’m inclined to think a slower rise of numbers than initially.

It’s difficult as we have the hugely onerous payout system in place which is costing so much, and a very partial lockdown which will increase spread. I don’t know about track and trace lots of negative reporting but we’ll see. Hopefully we get maximum economic bang for restriction buck whilst in this half way world.

[MadameMarie]

It's not the easing of lockdown that's going to cause a second wave it's the idiots that just do what they like

But one causes the other. You have to factor in human behaviour.

[Menora]

@Kazzyhoward

People are not simply just spending on ice creams how trivial to belittle this down to that. Also very irritating to have 1 tiny part of what I said taken out of context

I work in the NHS
We did indeed have COVID patients during April and May
This has now decreased quite dramatically
The NHS cannot stay locked up the way it is, it needs to ease
The economy cannot stay locked up the way it is, it needs to ease (and not so people can buy fucking ice cream)
We are preparing for the later months of the year

People who want to stay in lockdown for longer clearly do not have any financial problems is how it comes across

[Coronabored]

People who want lockdown for longer clearly have a horse in the race. It's like the opposite of Cummings.
I just want to get back to work, plain and simple.

[GoldenOmber]

I think if starting to lift lockdown was definitely going to cause a big surge in cases we’d have seen that happen already in badly-hit European countries like France and Spain and Italy as they started to lift lockdown. It hasn’t, cases have continued to drop, so that’s quite reassuring.

[MadameMarie]

Lockdown should ease but the scenes on the beaches and the like should have been avoided (i.e. Scotland and Wales). Relying on the common sense of fools and selfish wankers doesn't cut it.

[attackedbycritters]

Spain relaxed lockdown levels to about the level of our lockdown...outdoor exercise allowed....when they had about half the daily new cases that we currently have

Germany's were much lower

It's generally agreed that you have less risk of a second peak if you can do effective test, trace and isolate and that means you need a small number of cases

How small is not known,

but to say that because other counties have relaxed rules and not got a second wave, we are safe to do so is comparing apples to oranges. We have not waited until we have the same low levels of other countries.

[twinnywinny14]

I want to get back to work but most importantly get back to work and stay there, not have another lockdown later on because we didn’t lockdown long enough in the first place

[EnlightenedOwl]

@twinnywinny14

I want to get back to work but most importantly get back to work and stay there, not have another lockdown later on because we didn’t lockdown long enough in the first place

Depending on your job if lock down goes on any longer there won't be a business ,/job to go back to

[millymollymoomoo]

Completely agree with chessie
People have vastly underestimated the impact to economy for what fir the vast majority if oriole is a mild illness
We need to be able to protect people in care homes and prevent hospital transmissions first and foremost as this is where most infections are incurring
But we cannot stay shut.
I think people are in for a serious wake up call in the coming months!

[MadameMarie]

Funny how in a week or two it's gone from discussing compulsory masks in public to having to accept back to normal and one massive party and do what you like

[skeptile]

There was an article in Private Eye at the very beginning of discussions around Covid, and their medic contributor ('MD') reported that in the Winter of 2017-18 (i.e. the 3 month period) 50,000 EXCESS deaths were recorded in England and Wales alone. Pretty much nothing was reported in the press. Austerity induced poverty (which was deemed by experts to be the cause of this horror) looks to be pretty deadly. Maybe lockdown induced poverty will be milder?

[FiveGoMadInDorset]

So that ‘thing’ at Durdle Door yesterday

The crowd in between the two helicopters was a third of the beach
There was a large group at the far end and a third more were moved to the beach next door.

That incident involved
30 police (to help with crowd control and to stop the fighting that started)
2 coastguard helicopters
1 air ambulance
2 coastguard teams
1 RNLI in shore
First responders
Not sure how many ambulances

5 in hospital

1 fire also put out

You couldn’t move on the beach before they were all bunched together

And I wasn’t in there but live in the next door village and a friends husband is in one of the coastguard teams.

It was like this last weekend as well

[MadameMarie]

Why on earth didn't the people on the beach just leave rather than huddle together for the helicopter? Insanity.

[millymollymoomoo]

Skeptile- the deaths were largely as a result of the flu vaccine which was found to be largely ineffective that year ( because scientists in part have to make a judgment on what strain ahead Of actually knowing In order to have a vaccine ready)
Largely killed the same categories / elderly and those with pre existing lung/respiratory issues. No social distancing for that !

[FiveGoMadInDorset]

@madamemarie because one if the critically injured was at the foot of the steps which is the only way off the beach

[derxa]

I'm suspicious that Eton etc aren't going back to school till September,
Eton is a boarding school.