To think the lockdown needs to end now?

[Fr0thandBubble]

I could understand a lockdown being imposed for a few weeks to make sure the NHS was up to capacity, but it’s gone well beyond that. The NHS now has lots of excess capacity and yet here we still are.

I am horrified by what has happened to our civil liberties, what it’s doing to our children’s education, what it’s doing to everyone’s livelihoods and mental health, what it’s doing to the economy, how people are not getting life-saving treatment for things like cancer, etc.

I don’t understand why people aren’t given the right to choose to self-isolate if they need to but for the rest of us to be allowed to get on with our lives and to take responsibility for ourselves.

I don’t understand why people who are not old and don’t have underlying health conditions are acting hysterically and why people have decided it’s OK to police other people’s behaviour and shout at them in the street.

I feel like I’m living in some kind of awful dystopian society.

I realise I’m in the minority here but does anyone agree with me?

I think parents will be rioting in the streets if schools aren’t fully open in September. It’s gone on long enough, mumsnetters doom and gloom on here isn’t changing my mind, most people are getting on with their lives now anyway.

Rowantree I think it's quite variable . There is some uptick in traffic but round here most people are sticking to the old rules , especially anyone over 50 . One of the youngsters went to a local popular beach at the weekend and was surprised at how quiet it was, especially having seen pictures of Bournemouth and cDurdle door . Which will at least help control R . Which will give the government a fighting chance ( albeit despite them not because of them )

Try telling a child it's mother has died, that's harder

But It's the expectation that the economy won't be broken by an uncontrolled deadly epidemic that I find bizarre.

Try telling a child it's mother has died, that's harder

It is. She could die because of untreated cancer. or because she was too scared to go to a&e though couldn't she?

But It's the expectation that the economy won't be broken by an uncontrolled deadly epidemic that I find bizarre

I never wanted it to be uncontrolled! I think lockdown is taking the piss now though.

I'm assumimg you don't live in the North East, you aren't part of the BAME community, don't work for the NHS and don't have anyone close to you who have died of the virus.

Sweden has gone tits up - their death rate per capita is horrendous. Why on earth would you want to be in their situation? This baffles me.....

One problem is that you can’t just protect those most vulnerable ie those in hospital and care homes as those caring for them are mixing with others who are going about their normal lives and potentially transmitting COVID.

Lockdown 'princess'

It's you that doesn't understand. To the vast majority of people this virus is very low risk. We have destroyed the economy and the people that wouldn't necessarily suffer from the virus are suffering from mental health issues, suicides, drownings since no lifeguards, untreated cancers, other illnesses that people like you think are of no significance since Covid-19 trumps the lot. It has done for 3 months now and now is the time for the balance to swing back - I get that you want lockdown to last until not one single death from the virus but that would be totally stupid and could take years since SOME of the very, very vulnerable and elderly have conditions that could kill them at any indeed even the seasonal flu virus kills many of the very vulnerable people. The number of people dying has fallen and hospitals are not snowed under and now need to see people for other things. Scans/referrals/outpatients etc need to get moving to catch up with the 3 months lost - the delay to some will mean deaths from cancer etc - those people are also important and deserve treatment to.

The very vulnerable can continue to shield and stay at home - no one has said that they can't. But 'princesses' of the lock down cannot continue to enforce their views that this lock down must go on and on until they are happy - some will never be ready to end lock down but will be quite happy for keyworkers to keep working to allow them to stay home. The country needs to get back to work urgently. Children need education and more importantly social contact with others. You might not but others do.

We can’t stay in lockdown forever. There has been no news cases in my area for 10 days now, no deaths for a week, loads of testing centres set up but nobody in them as hardly anyone has symptoms, yet we have 1000’s of healthy people sat at home loosing their jobs and homes, 1000’s of children not going to school, it’s madness. I do know parents that have died and it’s very sad, the children are devastated but how long do you keep people from living their lives because you might die? It’s no way to live.

BeijingBikini

I completely agree, lockdown is totally over for me and my family.“

Are you/your family going to refuse treatment if you contract Covid?

There was always going to have to be a balance.

Thing is that it’s a lot harder to come out of lockdown than it is to go into it because as soon as you create a lockdown scenario you are creating the message that we’re in an unsafe environment. Reversing that perception is so much harder hence why there are so many who are fearful of what coming out of lockdown means.

Putting the whole world on hold for what is essentiall a few hundred thousand deaths is not sustainable. And before anyone says that a few hundred thousand deaths is a disgrace, yes, of course any death is one too many, but let’s be a bit measured here, a few hundred thousand deaths in a world population of eight billion is negligible, whereas the impact of the obliteration of the world economy is going to have far reaching consequences.

I’m not convinced that these countries who have been commended for going into lockdown so early are out of the woods by any means. Given they went into lockdown so quickly, no-one has now been exposed, meaning that there’s a very real chance that once they’re re-opened those from other countries will spread the virus to the parts it hasn’t previously been.

Fact is there’s no magic answer.

people are going to have to make decisions for themselves, even the vulnerable, but equally there has to come a point when you can’t just demand not to go to work because of the fear of catching COVID, because COVID will always exist assuming it doesn’t burn out. If it doesn’t then even if there is a vaccine people will still catch COVID and people will still die from COVID. Just as they do from other illnesses every year.

We are going to learn to live with COVID rather than feeling we need to survive it.

They should never have shut schools imo

Sweden have done the right thing really. Might look bad now but they've avoided all this how do we actually get out of lockdown shit. They don't need to do it because things never closed. Their 7 day rolling average is still going down despite their lack of restrictions. Their schools have remained open throughout and yet I haven't seen any reports that's thousands of Swedish teachers have dropped dead.

They've been sensible. We've backed ourselves into a corner it's increasing hard to get out of. Half the population have been manipulated into being terrified (and yes folks that was the plan they wanted people to be "personally threatened" so they would comply which personally I feel is completely unethical) and now don't want to go back to normal.

This has been a shit show from start to finish but the healthy terrified are making it worse.

Totally @trustthegene

Are you/your family going to refuse treatment if you contract Covid? eh? What a stupid argument. That’s along the same lines as I’ve seen some refer to the shielded who have dared to go out when they’ve been told to stay home.

And the reality is that COVID has become such a divisive thing now that people have lost all sense of empathy over it, on both sides.

This virus has not changed. Van Tamme used the analogy of a spring in a box. This is because as far as we know, if we release lockdown, we are in precisely as bad a position as we were in March. Those worst case scenarios have been postponed, not avoided.

Instead of taking the lid off the box with the spring still in place, we need to work on weakening the power of the spring first. Its power is its R number. The main ways we have of lowering this without lockdown are social distancing, PPE and track and trace.

What we cannot do is pretend that the virus has gone. We would not be able to cope with the tsunami of what this virus would do without any preventative measures at all. Hospitals would overflow, people who would otherwise survive will not.

Also, the largest increase I have seen in suicides and mental health issues has been amongst health care staff. If we were to have the kind of wave that this "every man for themselves" approach would cause, then the mental health load of this group would vastly outweigh the unfortunate strains some people are going through at the moment.

We cannot afford magical thinking. This virus may not kill younger people when they have access to a hospital, but when 20% of people require hospital care from it, it is simply not something we can permit to run rampant through our population.

Are you going to pay my mortgage if I become homeless?

The schools should have never shut imo

So you just think all the school staff with underlying health conditions or who are pregnant or with vulnerable people in their families should have just put themselves and their families at risk?

AlternativePerspective

“What a stupid argument.”

No more stupid than the comment that promoted it, which suggested that poster’s family are quite happy to benefit from a protected health service but no, they shan’t be continuing to contribute toward its protection by complying with the guidelines.

The more people who decide that the restrictions don’t for some reason apply to them, the longer this situation continues for all of us. I’d say that was pretty stupid.

I lot of Mumsnetters are going to be awfully disappointed when it’s over

Compared to the rest of Europe, Sweden is 'booming' - the Swedish economy has contracted far less sharply than the rest of the continent (and the UK).

No, at best it is slightly better at the moment and many economists predict that it will contract by the same amount longer term. If businesses lose 30% of their customers which has happened in many cases they will probably make a loss.

I think the vast majority of people who want lockdown to continue are those privileged enough to have a stay at home parent. Or a wfh job. Or no children.

Basically no worries.

As a parent who has a 4yo and needs two wages to pay out bills I'm worried.

We are programmed to look after our family first.

which suggested that poster’s family are quite happy to benefit from a protected health service but no, they shan’t be continuing to contribute toward

What just like a lot of families who don't want to return to work to pay taxes to contribute?

Should only those who work and actively contribute be able to use the NHS too?

The UK had excess capacity throughout. This is not true.

It only had excess capacity because it stopped treating other conditions!