To ask what the point is of lockdown

[Whenismumhome]

We’ve had one lockdown. Why do we need to do it again?

So we have a few restrictions, those restrictions need to be lifted and then the cases rise again.

Seriously, why even bother?

We are 2 weeks away from the peak critical care bed demand if things don't get worse than they are now. Let's see what Halloween day is like. Peak will happen after 2 weeks from now if spread gets worse.

If Lockdown = Tier3 then doing it nationally is wrong.
If Lockdown = Tier1+ then doing it nationally is probably ok, about sustainable.

My stupid question.... which country truly has had a health care system meltdown. I know Sweden didn't. What about Brazil? There must be some countries with very weak covid response, so which ones are they where all health care stopped? Peru or Ecuador, maybe? NYC or Florida?

The virus spreads through droplets. That means that anytime people are together and anyone has Covid that it can spread.

If people continue to mix freely, all those contacts people have incidental to just living their lives means that they can pass it on to those who are vulnerable and will need a hospital bed, even die:

• Older people
• those severely unwell
• people with chronic conditions
• the obese
• the BAME community
• etc etc

Hospital beds fill up and there are only a finite amount. All of a sudden there is no bed for heart attacks, sick children, routine medical needs, car accidents, accidents in general, sepsis, meningitis etc as all the beds are FULL. There are no more, anywhere. All staff maxed out, there are no more, anywhere.

People then die who wouldn't have along with those who die anyway because of Covid. Those extra with Covid, they die too. The more Covid spreads the WORSE the impact on the economy and the longer it lasts. The trick is to suppress the virus to a level where things can function as normally as possible, then keep suppressing it (this means social distancing, all the rules, and more local downs if needed).

Public health policy has to delicately balance 2 things: the economy, protecting people (including saving their lives when needed).

FYI - those countries doing well at managing Covid have populations who are willing to follow the rules for the greater good. They don't riot, they don't complain incessantly. Those people are / will be enjoying fewer restrictions on their lives in the long run. Singapore have been did this and it worked. Smart people... they do as the government says, they want their lives back, they want their families to be safe - it's a no brainer. I work with our office in Singapore and it's embarrassing when they bring up UK media coverage. They feel safe, I don't.

I wouldn't want to make these decisions, but I respect those made. I couldn't live with myself putting someone else's life at risk.

Not sure what this says about Britain. Not a lot I suspect.

Hospital beds are reaching capacity, cases are up significantly and more people are dying. That is why we need a 'circuit breaker'.

It took MONTHS of lock down to suppress the inevitable continued spread arising from that contact which simply can't stop (i.e. critical infrastructure and services).

Ask a different question: Do we really want to leave it its as bad as it was in March?

Tfoot75
Do you have a source regarding hospitalisation rates. Google takes me to quite dated data that clearly states 20% need hospitalisation and of that 5 %ICU.

Has this now been discredited as we test more people?

Was just discussing this
Strict lockdown doesn't work (it comes back)
Doing nothing doesn't work
Doing anything in the middle doesn't work and pleases no one.
We're f*cked.

It’s all massively over the top and destroying lives.
I could understand the logic of needing to buy the NHS time but the NHS is there to Protect us not the other way round.

To ensure the cases are brought down and the hospitals are not overwhelmed, as the 1st lockdown did,

@Owlypants

The last lockdown didn't really work because everyone took up cycling and jogging,hardly anyone actually stayed home and followed the rules.

Nobody caught covid because people were out cycling and jogging. Do you really believe this rubbish?

I don't know how some people are completely missing the point and actually discussing it, as if they believe lockdown, circuit breaker is here to eliminate the virus

[quote borntohula]@TheSeedsOfADream well, it's now mandatory to leave your details and wear a mask so they have no choice, I don't blame them for wanting some control over their own lives.[/quote]
Doesn't stop people leaving false details or simply refusing masks by claiming to be exempt when they aren't.

@Unsure33

Also there are reports of the faster tests ( I know this is true because of the industry I work in ) plus hopefully the vaccine . So we may only have to do this a few times more before there is more hope.

A few more times? And you find that acceptable? There will be no business left and half the population will be depressed.

Everything is pointless while kids are in classrooms of 30.

We shut down before but the government thought it more important to hand billions to their mates in failed contracts rather than getting an effective testing/ tracing system working.

So we’ve got to do it all again but the kids have to stay at school this time so everything is an utterly destructive waste of time

@Chosennone

Tfoot75 Do you have a source regarding hospitalisation rates. Google takes me to quite dated data that clearly states 20% need hospitalisation and of that 5 %ICU.

Has this now been discredited as we test more people?

It must have changed as they said on the news other day around 80% of people don't even have symptoms. The most common symptom is no symptoms at all!

MiniMaxi the forecast of 200K + is just that - a guesstimate. There were many different forecasts.

To prevent the NHS becoming overwhelmed. Do you really not know that or are you just being goady?

Interesting.
So surely the individual fatality rate is lower than they originally thought.

@Dinocan

As I understand, it’s to make sure we have enough free hospital beds to accommodate those that need ICUs. I’m not sure how exactly it’s calculated. We are in a medium area but I know our local hospital is already full, so if there were a sudden rise of Covid cases here it wouldn’t be good. They want to avoid the scenes we saw in Italy when the health service was completely overwhelmed.

As someone who needed urgent ICU care for a non covid reason in April I was very glad we had NHS capacity. Otherwise I may not have been here to write this!

it's weird though, my googling must be bad because I can't find stories of people with heart attacks or in car wrecks or having strokes that could not get medical treatment in countries we think of as not handling pandemic well. Not unless the also happened to a person with C19.

Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, India, Iran. They are covid disaster zones, right? But no specific stories about someone in those places who died due to unavailability of other emergency health services due to the covid cases clogging up the services. Or lack of dialysis, even.

Just human stories that were overlooked by the jounos?
My terrible search skills?

zoemum quite agree.
I don’t necessarily think they should shut schools but there is no point in other lockdown measures if they don’t.

@Owlypants

The last lockdown didn't really work because everyone took up cycling and jogging,hardly anyone actually stayed home and followed the rules.

The lockdown got the numbers right down. Where the govt failed us was not having a good, test, trace and isolate system in place when the lockdown restrictions began to be lifted.

A second shorter lockdown will act as break on the rising numbers. However, the govt need to use the time from now onwards to establish a well functioning test, trace and isolate system which can take over once the circuit break is lifted. Otherwise it will be just a repeat of the first lockdown and rising cases as restrictions are eased.

Ye olde trout - Wuhan in March, north Italy, perhaps New York (maybe borderline). That kinda looked like healthcare system meltdown.

You could avoid healthcare system meltdown if you don’t take patients to hospital - ie you could decide to that some people just receive supportive/palliative care at home. But that is quite unpalatable - as some of these people may have survived. I think there may have been some issues about this in Sweden.

I can’t really comment on the places you mentioned, but it depends on how their healthcare is set up, the effectiveness of anti corona measures and the demographic - people say it is more useful to look at excess deaths and compare to a baseline.

Because if we hadn’t had lockdown many thousands more people would be dead.

A second shorter lockdown will act as break on the rising numbers. However, the govt need to use the time from now onwards to establish a well functioning test, trace and isolate system which can take over once the circuit break is lifted. Otherwise it will be just a repeat of the first lockdown and rising cases as restrictions are eased.

The government had six months to do this since April. They haven’t and more to the point they have squandered the trust people gave them then. Circuit breaker’s just the next jazzy but utterly pointless phrase.

Janice Turner’s article yesterday was very good on this.

Pinky - I think the circuit-breaker terminology was taken from Singapore. However theirs was v strict and effective.

They were v cautious lifting restrictions and still have some restrictions on people gathering, though their cases are tiny. But their govt are organised and plan long term. They are starting to allow more travel to low-COVID countries. There has been economic pain, but govt provided re-usable masks and subsidies to citizens.

I'm in NI. The reason we are having a lockdown is because people didn't follow the guidelines - there was far too much mixing at sports events, in homes and at social events. We had a pretty easy run the first time so were very complacent. We now have a big rise in cases and our (dreadful) health service can't cope.

On the flip-side it's still a relatively tiny number who has got it. I personally only know one person. So is this proportionate?

I think they are attempting a short, sharp, shock in the hope it changes behaviour in the medium term.

[quote MiniMaxi]@TheSeedsOfADream it’s amazing isn’t it (not in a good way).

Also for people saying “lockdown didn’t work why did we bother / why should we do that again” - the point of the UK’s lockdown was not to eliminate Covid, it was to reduce incidence to the point the NHS could cope. Covid was always going to re-emerge.

The only way to eliminate Covid is immediate and severe lockdown with subsequent closed borders and no free movement, a la NZ.[/quote]
The NHS (I work in a London hospital) was coping just fine by a month into the lockdown - the wards had emptied and we were able to restart elective treatments. But for reasons unexplained to this day the government decided to extend locking down the country from 3 weeks to 4 months, with school children missing education for almost 6 months. It obviously wasn’t an elimination strategy as borders were kept open and then at the end people were encouraged to resume overseas travel.

If they’d stuck with occasional 2-3 week ‘circuit breakers’ at the beginning 1. The NHS would’ve coped 2. Business wouldn’t have gone under 3. We’d be closer to the talked about ‘herd immunity’ 4. year 10-13 education wouldn’t be fucked 5. people wouldn’t be utterly fucked off with it / terrified they’ll lose their jobs/home / mental health shot to pieces and may have been more willing to comply.