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?

The problem is that most people haven’t seen the other consequences yet and some never will as they won’t see the correlation of future deaths from other diseases, economic hardship etc with the lockdown.

You could also argue that because we have had a lockdown many people don't understand the consequences of not having one as evidenced on this thread. There is also the problem that people are blaming things on lockdown when in actual fact they are a consequence of something unrelated or of the virus itself.

We are potentially heading for a winter of discontent when coronavirus will be the least of our worries.

If the virus is the least of "our" worries it could just mean that the lockdown worked in terms of reducing deaths though.

that may be true for some but certainly not all- for many , cancelling their treatment was effectively a death sentence. Measures could have been taken to mitigate the risk of infection.

They wouldn't have cancelled treatment if the benefits of the treatment were considered to be worth the risk. The decision would have been made on an individual basis by oncology consultants and the patients themselves i.e. experts who actually know the patients they are treating and the benefits and risks of treatments. It's very arrogant of you to think you know better.

@Bizawit you mention to another poster 'the mentality of people like you , who are so irrationally fixated on the risks associated with one particular disease, that you are prepared to risk/ sacrifice almost almost anything else, cause all manner of other harm to mitigate it'.

Why do think the global response among very different govts and countries became this mentality? Why did they all suddenly become so irrational? They haven't done so over other diseases. So what about this suddenly made scientists and politicians all over the world surrender both logic and in many cases their political instinct?

No relatives or friends you like?

I suspect that come 15 June a lot more people will start to realise they’re going to lose their job. Why? Because that’s 45 days before 1 October

Erm.....no it isn't. It's 45(ish) days before 1st August.

[quote Bizawit]@EarlGreywithLemon It was a policy CHOIcE informed by the mentality of people like you , who are so irrationally fixated on the risks associated with one particular disease, that you are prepared to risk/ sacrifice almost almost anything else, cause all manner of other harm to mitigate it.[/quote]
Respectfully, this is anecdotal, but I know at least once cancer treatment recipient who wouldn’t go anywhere near the hospital, not even for a blood test. She knows full well what the virus would do to her of she catches it in hospital. And this is with the virus relatively well controlled. I imagine there are many others like her. And can you blame them?

@cherryblossommorningstoday well said. Each one of these lives matter.

[quote Inkpaperstars]@Bizawit you mention to another poster 'the mentality of people like you , who are so irrationally fixated on the risks associated with one particular disease, that you are prepared to risk/ sacrifice almost almost anything else, cause all manner of other harm to mitigate it'.

Why do think the global response among very different govts and countries became this mentality? Why did they all suddenly become so irrational? They haven't done so over other diseases. So what about this suddenly made scientists and politicians all over the world surrender both logic and in many cases their political instinct?[/quote]
Quite. Including governments like China and Russia, who don’t usually treat their populations with kid gloves.

Respectfully, this is anecdotal, but I know at least once cancer treatment recipient who wouldn’t go anywhere near the hospital, not even for a blood test. She knows full well what the virus would do to her of she catches it in hospital. And this is with the virus relatively well controlled. I imagine there are many others like her. And can you blame them?

Of course, I don’t doubt that at all, and certainly for individuals like your a acquaintance it sounds better to stay away, but that is not the same for all. For some people the risks of delaying treatment will be much greater than the risk of catching and dying from coronavirus. And those people should not have had their cancer treatment cancelled.

@Bizawit

Respectfully, this is anecdotal, but I know at least once cancer treatment recipient who wouldn’t go anywhere near the hospital, not even for a blood test. She knows full well what the virus would do to her of she catches it in hospital. And this is with the virus relatively well controlled. I imagine there are many others like her. And can you blame them?

Of course, I don’t doubt that at all, and certainly for individuals like your a acquaintance it sounds better to stay away, but that is not the same for all. For some people the risks of delaying treatment will be much greater than the risk of catching and dying from coronavirus. And those people should not have had their cancer treatment cancelled.

As a poster explained above, the cancellations would have been clinical decisions where the risk from Covid were considered to outweigh the benefits of treatment. As it happens, this lady’s tests have not been cancelled. And she is taking a big risk not going. But as a neutropenic patient she knows what would happen to her of she got Covid.

They wouldn't have cancelled treatment if the benefits of the treatment were considered to be worth the risk. The decision would have been made on an individual basis by oncology consultants and the patients themselves i.e. experts who actually know the patients they are treating and the benefits and risks of treatments. It's very arrogant of you to think you know better

The Times had an article about a guy who was supposed to have an operation in late March. He was 60 and had a 98% chance of surviving the operation. Because it was cancelled, he died.

My mum has a friend whose cancer op was delayed but only by 3ish weeks, and for skin cancer, so she has now had the op and is fine. She is 97.

We've "protected" the NHS by sacrificing a lot of other lives. It is not arrogant to point that out and experts get things wrong especially when they're trying to avoid being sued, which is generally the case in the NHS.

@puffinandkoala

They wouldn't have cancelled treatment if the benefits of the treatment were considered to be worth the risk. The decision would have been made on an individual basis by oncology consultants and the patients themselves i.e. experts who actually know the patients they are treating and the benefits and risks of treatments. It's very arrogant of you to think you know better

The Times had an article about a guy who was supposed to have an operation in late March. He was 60 and had a 98% chance of surviving the operation. Because it was cancelled, he died.

My mum has a friend whose cancer op was delayed but only by 3ish weeks, and for skin cancer, so she has now had the op and is fine. She is 97.

We've "protected" the NHS by sacrificing a lot of other lives. It is not arrogant to point that out and experts get things wrong especially when they're trying to avoid being sued, which is generally the case in the NHS.

I have no doubt mistakes were made, tragically so. What the article describes should but have happened. Separately, we weren’t protecting the NHS for the sake of it - we were protecting it so it could continue to provide as much treatment as possible. Because if it was overwhelmed people would have been dying in the corridors. The unspoken second part of “protect the NHS” is “so it can protect you”. To those who think Covid was prioritised above all else by the NHS- part of the reason the hospitals weren’t overwhelmed is that so many people with Covid were denied hospital treatment until literally blue in the face. They were left at home to suffer and sometimes die on their own.

@Inkpaperstars that’s a really good question and I think it would be complicated to answer. I certainly don’t have the answers to that! In many ways different governments have had very different responses, but there have been lots of commonalities as well..

In terms of the UK response, I think the government was unprepared. I think they very much didn’t want to have a lockdown, but they didn’t do anything for ages and then panicked. I think that they came under a lot of pressure from the public- whipped up into a frenzy by the media, and they were also very heavily influenced by that famous paper of Neil Ferguson’s where he predicted that 500,000 people would die and the NHS would become overwhelmed.

Should not* have happened

To those who think Covid was prioritised above all else by the NHS- part of the reason the hospitals weren’t overwhelmed is that so many people with Covid were denied hospital treatment until literally blue in the face. They were left at home to suffer and sometimes die on their own.

I absolutely agree with this and I think it is horrifying. I also don’t think it was inevitable though, but a consequence of the dangerous narrative that we needed to ‘protect the NHS’ at the expense of lives! The second part of the statement that you mention ‘so they can protect you’ should NEVER have been unspoken, it should have been the focus. The NHS was never at capacity as long as their were beds free they should have been treating people. They weren’t.

[quote Bizawit]@Inkpaperstars that’s a really good question and I think it would be complicated to answer. I certainly don’t have the answers to that! In many ways different governments have had very different responses, but there have been lots of commonalities as well..

In terms of the UK response, I think the government was unprepared. I think they very much didn’t want to have a lockdown, but they didn’t do anything for ages and then panicked. I think that they came under a lot of pressure from the public- whipped up into a frenzy by the media, and they were also very heavily influenced by that famous paper of Neil Ferguson’s where he predicted that 500,000 people would die and the NHS would become overwhelmed.[/quote]
I believe it was 250,000.
People were not whipped into a frenzy by the media. People could see what was happening in Spain and Italy. And before that in Wuhan, for those who were paying attention. The media isn’t a monolith all of one mind. Not all the media is in favour of lockdown. And there is plenty of good quality, well researched reporting in the UK press. You just have to choose where to look.

It wasn’t it was 500,000.

@Bizawit

To those who think Covid was prioritised above all else by the NHS- part of the reason the hospitals weren’t overwhelmed is that so many people with Covid were denied hospital treatment until literally blue in the face. They were left at home to suffer and sometimes die on their own.

I absolutely agree with this and I think it is horrifying. I also don’t think it was inevitable though, but a consequence of the dangerous narrative that we needed to ‘protect the NHS’ at the expense of lives! The second part of the statement that you mention ‘so they can protect you’ should NEVER have been unspoken, it should have been the focus. The NHS was never at capacity as long as their were beds free they should have been treating people. They weren’t.

I do agree with you that it should have been spoken, yes. I’m not sure who put together government messaging, but I don’t think they did a particularly good job.

@EarlGreywithLemon at least we can agree on that

@Bizawit

It wasn’t it was 500,000.

See the “Slowing and Suppressing the Outbreak” section www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196234/covid-19-imperial-researchers-model-likely-impact/

They may have revised it to 500,000 later, as this is what it now looks like extrapolating from current death rates.

[quote Bizawit]@EarlGreywithLemon at least we can agree on that [/quote]

I don't think people realise how pressurised the NHS was. The reason it wasn't overrun was because ICUs massively expanded. We are not talking about a few beds. Our ICU/HDU has 18 beds. We took over 3 wards and ended up having almost 30 patients at one point, most were ventilated.We were told that if necessary we could ventilate up to 90 patients using anaesthetic ventilators. Most of the medical wards were fully occupied with covid patients too - that's why staff from the community etc were deployed in hospitals too.

• See the “Slowing and Suppressing the Outbreak” section www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196234/covid-19-imperial-researchers-model-likely-impact/

They may have revised it to 500,000 later, as this is what it now looks like extrapolating from current death rates*.

Ah no- the 500,000 deaths were what they predicted with no measures, the 250,000 is with some measures in place..

@Kurzgesagt

I don't think people realise how pressurised the NHS was. The reason it wasn't overrun was because ICUs massively expanded. We are not talking about a few beds. Our ICU/HDU has 18 beds. We took over 3 wards and ended up having almost 30 patients at one point, most were ventilated.We were told that if necessary we could ventilate up to 90 patients using anaesthetic ventilators. Most of the medical wards were fully occupied with covid patients too - that's why staff from the community etc were deployed in hospitals too.

People just choose not to acknowledge this though. Because we haven't had pictures of patients lying on the floors in corridors it means it was all an over reaction you know.