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?

O and my dh is a net contributor. Always has been. Couldn't even get the surgery he needed on tbe NHS. Instead had private health care.

Go on there and express your wishes to go to the shop when you like, visit who you like when you like and flock to a crowded beach!!

At least 1 person on there will agree with the OP's post......me, so kindly refrain from the "try telling those who have lost loved ones" narrative we can speak for ourselves. Believe it or not, a great many of us who have lost loved ones are able to see what it's doing to those who have not gone what we have.

Whilst there have been loads of threads on this I'm genuinely astounded by your OP.
It seems completely logical to me that lockdown in the UK was both necessary and vital weeks earlier than we actually did and that it should have been a fuller lockdown - which may perhaps have then been shorter.
But due to the complete shambles and frankly sheer ignorance of this government we are now facing a second wave , remain at alert level 4 and yet are foolishly easing lockdown and simultaneously putting our most vulnerable and shielding at risk. In my view we should be continuing with lockdown for a good while yet- all the evidence and common sense, science tells us this.
Yes the economy is important, yes it is extremely challenging by we have coped this far. I for one would rather go trough a bit more inconvenience and get us all into a stronger position before we ease things I really would.

doubleshot it’s a bit more than an inconvenience to lose your job or your business.
To not know what your future looks like.

double you may have coped, you may want to carry on with this farce for longer, but many ,many people are now ready for it to end. It's not juts a slight inconvenience for many, it's been disastrous and crippling.

Not everyone has been furloughed knowing they will keep their job on some extended holiday. Many are furloughed facing job losses, many have worked all through the pandemic either WFH or in the community. Our economy is in tatters, and if we don't start to pull up from this nose dive it will be game over. No economy no NHS.

Sweden got it wrong -

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/architect-of-sweden-coronavirus-strategy-admits-too-many-died-anders-tegnell

Dom, how did Sweden get it more wrong than the UK?

I for one would rather go trough a bit more inconvenience

You're very privileged if this has only been an inconvenience to you. That is not the reality for a lot of people.

Thanks to lockdown only 7% of the population have had it except there is a massive flaw in that argument.

Lockdown was never about preventing people from catching COVID, it was about preventing them from catching it all at the same time and therefore overloading the NHS.

people have lost sight of why we went into lockdown. It was never about stopping COVID, it was about slowing its progress. And now that we have done that we need to start to re-open again.

There will always be people who catch COVID, and there will always be deaths from it.

That fact is unavoidable.

Now we need to start moving forward out of lockdown to prevent the economy being overwhelmed.

I’ve never understood the comparisons to the few countries who have done well such as Denmark and New Zealand. Those countries are absolutely tiny and are nowhere near as densely packed as the UK. There are more people living in London than in Denmark.

The government messed up from the beginning, we should have had a stricter lockdown like Spain and Italy. We always had a half arsed lockdown and as a result, we’re still not ready to come out of lockdown. Whilst there are hundreds of daily deaths and thousands of daily cases, we’re not ready.

AlecTrevelyan006

Why are you conflating shielded with vulnerable? They are two separate groups. The vulnerable group are not shielding.

The hospital capacity was never even close to being overwhelmed, new hospitals were built and not used (PPE is a different matter)

If hospital capacity wasn't overwhelmed why did all routine or non essential treatment cease? Would hospitals have been overwhelmed if normal work had continued? If the answer is yes, as it undoubtedly would have been, then in my book the NHS was overwhelmed. The Nightingale hospitals weren't used because of a shortage in staff.

The death rate in hospital (all causes) in the latest figures was 24% below the 5 year average (I'm not sure which week it was, as this was hidden within a doom and gloom report). So is no-one dying of anything else, or have some of those that have died in the last few months simply been taken a few weeks/months before their time and would have died if they had caught any other viral or bacterial infection.

You say this and yet excess deaths are between 50 and 60,00. Something doesn't add up.

Why are you conflating shielded with vulnerable? They are two separate groups. The vulnerable group are not shielding. many vulnerable are shielding though because the shielding list was a complete farce and many people who should have been shielding have never had letters and many who don’t need to be have.

But many have been told by consultants etc that they should shield even though they’re not on the official list.

Admittedly that won’t be twenty million but it will be a significant enough number.

'If the vulnerable can self-isolate, how is it selfish for the rest of us to be allowed to get on with our lives?'

I've been saying this since the Saturday, mid-March, before we locked down when it started to become obvious the announcement was coming. A friend and I sat on the sofa with wine and had this exact conversation. Esp as many 'vulnerable' aren't working, keeping economy going, tax receipts coming in etc (only connect!). I was reading yesterday about dire consequences for commercial property sector.. a lot of which is invested in by pension funds. And on and on.

@Fr0thandBubble thanks for starting this thread. Like you I was beginning to think there weren't many of us who took this view. Nice to see it ain't so. For the record we both WFH with no immediate plan to return to office. Two school age children, one now back in reception some of the time. DH and I both think it's time for a healthier attitude to risk and a fuller appreciation of consequences of lockdown beyond infection rates. But you're right when you say it's impossible to have a rational discussion with some people - they seem to stop following the argument, won't address actual statistics and bring it back to a relative who's older/ shielding. As if some of us don't have relatives!

AlternativePerspective

Your opinion on who should or shouldn't be in each group isn't of much importance. The government have determined the parameters of each group. You can't just toss the terms around willy nilly as though they are interchangeable.

The names matter. The vulnerable are receiving much less protection than the shielded and it's important to recognise that, not just lump them all in together and pretend that they are all getting the same protection.

Esp as many 'vulnerable' aren't working,

Are they not? Do you have the figures to back this up? I'd be really interested to read them.

@smogsville

If you want to accept the risk for yourself and your family then I say go for it. Just make sure none of you infect anyone else, because you don't have the right to accept risk on behalf of anyone else.

@borntohula

Dom, how did Sweden get it more wrong than the UK?

I didn't say they did. Hard pressed to do worse than Johnson and chums.

Just fed up with reading posts saying how wonderful Sweden is and how well they had dealt with it and thought it interesting that the architect of their plan thought they'd not done the right thing.

Hoping maybe people would shut up about Sweden but I doubt it.

Another one who completely agrees with you OP.

I agree with OP. And I'm not comparing us to Sweden! You can't continue with a lockdown if you are sending kids back to school and asking people to return to work if they are able.

Hoping maybe people would shut up about Sweden but I doubt it. You can never criticise Sweden on MN. Although bashing the UK is fine. Don't you know the rules?

Hoping maybe people would shut up about Sweden but I doubt it

We're all allowed an opinion

Yes the economy is important, yes it is extremely challenging by we have coped this far. I for one would rather go trough a bit more inconvenience and get us all into a stronger position before we ease things I really would.

Ah yes because it's so inconvenient to lose your job and home.

I've just thought of more people I know furloughed/sacked - in software, advertising and property industries. Again nothing to do with hospitality. People don't seem to realise that in a recession companies don't want to spend on "extras" - like a new software upgrade, new office, a new ad campaign. So many businesses that provide these services will be screwed. Even MN is begging for money now. If hundreds of thousands of people lose their jobs many will not have savings or find a new job for many months/years until new businesses start up; and who will want to start a business now (and risk £££s) if you could be forced to close at any minute? They will lose their homes. These are young, healthy, working people who have their entire future ahead of them.

Apologies for getting vulnerable and shielding mixed up

However- the claim was that it would be impractical, pointless and unfair for the 20 million or so that are vulnerable to continue in their lockdown while the rest of the population were free to do as they please. My counter argument is that as there are only 30 million people in the UK who work it is unlikely that all 20 million vulnerable people are in that group. Most people in the vulnerable category are not net contributors to the economy, therefore they can and should continue to be protected as much as possible while the rest of the population gets back to ‘normal’.

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras I specifically meant retired people either 70+ or approaching 70. My parents and their friends, for example.

But your question raises an interesting point - it would have cost considerably less to pay the salaries of anyone vulnerable who needed to self isolate for age or health reasons for a period of time (until a vaccine/ virus eradicated) than pay the furlough bill for the country. Not that I'm against furlough of course, more that it's needed in the first place.

There's no perfect solution but shutting down the economy for people who can work as they're not in risky brackets and ditching/ limiting schooling for children who don't as a cohort suffer badly from the virus seems wrong-headed to me. If you take an alternative view we'll have to agree to differ!