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?

@Bourdic I've just read up on ons and where you got it from nothing to do with government lying and only based on a small sample and even they say likely to be because people are asymptotic or have very mild symptoms etc
It's not a guarantee that 8000 are getting it just a possibility, for now all we can go on is confirmed cases and antibody tests when they roll out
As loads of people seem to think they have had it

Boris hasn’t got the clout to get a grip on lockdown rules. The Cummins situation saw to that as his weakness in the face of controlling his maverick advisor was exposed to us all.

And here we still are early June.

There has been quite of lot of talk on this thread about the risk to an individual of dying from covid, or becoming seriously ill. Long term consequences, and recovery time for all levels of the illness, we know much less about.

Obviously assessing these risks is important to individuals, but your individual risk of death really isn't a big factor in govt policy about lockdown. It's barely a factor at all. For the government this is about large numbers of people becoming sick (absent from work) and/or dying all at once. It comes back to exponential growth, and having a huge number of cases over a short time.

@strugglingwithdeciding It wasn't me that said 8-9000 cases. It was another poster responding to my comment about the VE Day spike that hasn't happened. If the ONS are right about that many cases daily, it doesn't seem to be causing much if a problem.

Mirinska
Do you have a link for the research that shows that if everyone wears masks it lowers transmission. I agree with you but I can’t find any definitive research. Just conjecture based on how other infectious diseases spread and how CoViD-19 spread. It’s pretty clear to me that mandatory masks indoors would help from the bits I’ve read, but even WHO don’t seem to agree from what I can tell and I am not an expert in this particular area.

Swedish experts now admit they were wrong.

@ssd It is that simple - Sweden has done it.

Ah Sweden - that old trope

Sweden - with the 5th highest death rate in the world per million

Sweden - who are so much worse than their Nordic neighbours

Ah, Sweden - Sweden’s Minister of Finance Magdelena Andersson notes that Sweden may face its worst recession since World War 2

It hasn’t worked for Sweden

I’m as fuzzy about the facts as everyone including the government seems to be, but this virus appears to spread very very fast. We went from no known cases to where we were in March incredibly quickly, and were not much lower now than we were in a March. I may be wrong, but I assume that if we stopped any kind of lockdown now, the cases would go through the roof.

My understanding as well is that the people who get seriously ill are not just the very elderly. At age 50 and in good health, I started this feeling fairly confident I would be ok, but the more I read about what they were seeing in the hospitals, the more worried for myself I became. Even if I were in my 30s or 40s, I wouldn’t have felt much less worried. Lots of younger people without underlying conditions are getting ill and those underlying conditions often seemed to include things you can manage safely for years, like diabetes.

At the end of the day, the government has put the country into an unsustainable position, due to their laziness, incompetence, greed and ideology. If they had shut down the borders early on, had built in the existing facilities in labs and hospitals for testing and contact tracing, had put a lockdown in place in February, had not let PPE stocks run down and had managed them properly,had not thrown care homes to the wolves, and had sacked Dominic Cummings, then my understanding is that we would be able to contain the virus at a level where it was reasonably safe to start opening things up.

But we are where we are and the country is split as to what’s the best way to solve this unsolvable problem.

Borntohula, Er no , we are not selfish to not be keen to go back to normal. The selfish ones are those who think it's ok to get together and behave as if this virus has gone. I for one am doing all I can to keep others safe and myself and my parents. So if that's selfish then I am sorry .

I am less stressed in my Bubble than the fear of getting Coronavirus. I will wait as long as it takes. I miss hugs and my family and friends but I am coping.

25,000 excess deaths in care homes, while we sit around at home.

This is not the way to protect vulnerable people. People essentially dying of dehydration having been confined to their rooms for their own protection.

2 in 5 care homes with coronavirus outbreaks. 1 in 2 in the North East. Half of all COVID-19 deaths in Scotland are in care homes.

It is a tragedy on an epic scale but demonstrates why we need to focus on protecting those most at risk while easing lockdown ASAP

www.spectator.co.uk/article/dying-of-neglect-the-other-covid-care-home-scandal

Have to say something changed with me last week - Cummings, mixed Govt messages, 10 weeks not really leaving the house and not having seen my long term partner - we are pretty much married but live apart because of children / divorces. Anyhow, it’s a pressure hose and it’s blown. We can like it or not but it has, and I can understand it. Not the littering / big parties, but the need to go out and see people. Those who are able not to are truly saints - seriously. I commend you but if you’re not shielding I’m honestly not sure how you’re still going as before x

And of course it will come back, and we will start to have pockets of virus - it’s about how that is managed. I think people aren’t as stupid as is made out - they know there is a good chance of lock down again (and again) and they’re making hay ......even if really unwise. We’re human and many of us aren’t perfect .......

Yes Sweden may have the 5th highest death rate... However they will come out of this without tanking their economy, no unemployment crisis and no mental health crisis... Let's talk about deaths in a few years and include indirect deaths... Sweden will be much lower then

@Inkpaperstars

www.theactuary.com/features/2020/05/07/co-morbidity-question

Posting again for those interested in life expectancy

Keep trying! But sadly people are more interested in spouting shit because they're bored of 'lockdown' and repeating itself only old people and people who would die soon anyway' makes them feel safe. Acknowledging younger healthier people are dying From Covid doesn't suit their narrative. Anyone a teally understanding the statistics & science is just pathetic/scaremongering/quivering indoors/

@Isaidnomorecrisps there is zero chance of another lockdown... Other countries have ruled one out and there is no way we would damage our economy more while others get back to normal, that would be economical suicide.

Younger and healthier people are not dying in large numbers- not by a long stretch

Well my year 10 student has two hours A day of worksheets. We were told by the school he will be going in on the 1st June. Now it is the 15th. We have a timetable - he will be going into school for 6 hours in total from 15th June to 22nd July. 3 of those hours will be to watch a film for his gcse film studies. It is a disgrace what we Are doing to these kids, he has lost the motivation to study and is bored and angry,

I'm not saying that they are getting much education at the moment but that doesn't mean that they will never get an education. It's just for a few months. It will have no impact on their long term future.

@EarlGreywithLemon you’d rather experiment with people’s livelihoods, mental health, children’s education, domestic violence, cancer deaths, the list goes on...

Ah Sweden - that old trope

Sweden - with the 5th highest death rate in the world per million

Places 1,2,3 and 4 go to countries with a lockdown.
Sweden - who are so much worse than their Nordic neighbours

Denmark and Norway have had very few deaths because they were very successful in containing their virus. Sweden didn’t aim to contain their virus as they didn’t consider it was sustainable. Nor did the UK. Containment was NOT the purpose of UK lockdown. The purpose of lockdown was to slow the spread to stop everyone getting sick at once, the nhs becoming overwhelmed, causing preventable deaths. Sweden achieved this without lockdown. According to the science on which we based our lockdown, Sweden should have about 90,000 deaths, they have 4,500 and their curve is slowly in decline and has been for weeks (albeit at a slower pace than many other countries).

Incidentally their were reports in the media the other day that Norway have come out and said that if they have another outbreak they will NOT be locking down again- they have decided it was too costly. In particular they have said they will not he shutting schools due to the harm it causes to children.

Listened to Stefan Löfven on the radio yesterday, saying that with hindsight a lot of their policies were wrong.

Over 800 people have clicked YANBU OP. You are not alone

@Chillipeanuts he didn’t say Sweden should have a lockdown though did he?

Yes Sweden made mistakes, in particular they did a terrible job of protecting old people in care homes (as did many other countries across Europe, some of whom aren’t even counting care home deaths in official statistics).