AIBU If Lockdowns Worked Why Are We In A Worse Tier Than Before

[Oliversmumsarmy]

Did this lockdown do anything apart from stop a lot of people earning and put more strain on the High Street Retail and Hospitality Sectors.

Aibu in saying if this lockdown had worked why have whole swathes of the country ended up being in a worse Tier and worse off than before the lockdown started.

@Oliversmumsarmy I don't think it is solely prisons, but in any case, does not justify the whole of Kent being in tier 3. Nor should the whole of Lancashire be in tier 3.

Before November 5th there were counties such as Essex where parts were in one tier, parts another. Leicester restrictions were not every ward in the city. No reason why there cannot be some division in counties and unitary authorities now, just a lack of attention to detail by the government as usual.

@wink1970

Because we're obsessed with 'protect the NHS' and so everything has to shut.

My local hospital (according to 2 frontline nurse friends working there) is full of people presenting to A&E because they can't get a GP appointment

... and I'm in Kent, where 3 large prison outbreaks have put us all into tier 3.

I’m in West Kent, nowhere near the prisons. Pembury hospital is on ‘red alert’ because it is at 90% capacity. Darent Valley Hospital is full, with no intensive care beds left. We are in tier 3 not because of the prisons many miles away, but because of the lack of room in local hospitals. Look up the statements from local MPs. Elective surgery is being cancelled. (And ‘elective’ includes stuff like heart surgery you’ll die without, as long as the death isn’t imminent.)

The Government is incompetent and has mismanaged everything, but we are where we are. Wouldn’t it have been nice if they had done a two week lockdown at half term when schools were closed like everybody told them too but instead we had a half-lockdown with very minimal impact.

See you in the January lockdowns :(

No reason why there cannot be some division in counties and unitary authorities now, just a lack of attention to detail by the government as usual

I don’t have any love for this shower of shitbags but I can’t agree with you here.

This is a massive undertaking and needs to be as controlled as possible. Coming out of lockdown this time means that caution is required and to implement that on a national level means that over complicating it by requiring levels within levels makes restrictions less effective. Basic keep it simple strategies are almost always the most effective in any facet of life.

Detail comes with time and evidence neither of which is reliable without the other. This government have already caused harm by being overconfident and implementing restrictions too late I’m happier to see them exercising caution rather than leaping on the gung-ho Tory boy wagon just to feel like their constituents like them.

For reference I’m in a tier two with vulnerable family in three. It’s not easy for anyone but any way through this is not going to be easy. Or quick.

Lockdown didn’t fail here. We were in T1 before it started. We had a tiny infection rate which fell even further during lockdown. Yet, lo and behold here we are now in T2. Bonkers. My MP, who is generally useless, has now found some backbone and is voting against his own party on Tuesday.

Have you forgotten about eat out to help out

No I haven’t forgotten about it. It was marvellous. Saved me.

Did eat out to help out really do that badly. I thought it was September when schools returned that was the big rise in infections.

Eat out to help out was not the main driver for infections. I think estimate is 1 in 6 or something like that. I remember reading that main drivers were schools and household mixing.

Because many places were on too low a tier before

Because the government are desperate to “save Christmas” even if it means harsher restrictions for months either side (I resent months of restrictions so other people can spend time with family who in many cases they’ve been seeing all along)

Because people are fed up and even previously compliant people are now bending the rules so harsher rules give them less wiggle room

Because it wasn’t really a proper lockdown with schools fully open

I think one of the problems before is that they didn't raise the tier levels early enough for a lot of areas which were originally in tier 1. Not too far from me is an urban area which was placed under localised restrictions quite early on (early September maybe ). At that point they had way under 100 cases per 100,000 but at the time it seemed high in comparison with the rest of the country .
My area in comparison had risen to about 250 cases per 100,000 before we were put into tier 2 just before lockdown . There must have been other areas like mine , and if we'd been placed into tier 2 earlier on we may not have needed the lockdown .

None of it should have come as a surprise really. It was spelt out quite clearly, at the end of summer I believe, by Chris Witty acting as spokesperson that we would likely end up in a situation where we would have to chose between what stays open and what shut (in this case schools vs hospitality) to maintain manageable numbers.

I vaguely recall that the same choice could also be made between schools and hospitality and international travel. My personal belief is that the withdrawing of airbridges causing people to rush back to the UK before deadlines may have been the catalyst for the second wave. None of those who made it were required to isolate. I never understood the logic of not implementing those changes straight away instead of creating a window for people to avoid isolation. You’re either in a risky area or you’re not.

I have thought it through

We could go all the way back to the very start, not closing airports, stoping test and trace.

Eat out to help out didn't help, but if tiering had been sooner and harder, we could have stopped it then. Tiers were a response to eat out , which was a response to .....all the way to January ....

Schools.

We were in tier one and had had one case at the start of lockdown. Now cases are popping up left, right and centre and we are sending home more kids (“close contacts” only of course) every day.

Lockdowns can work - it worked in Melbourne. We're now a full 28 days with zero cases. But it has to be a really strict lock down, with lots of testing even for the mildest of symptoms. I've had 3 tests because of a sore throat, all came back negative fortunately. But many others with mild symptoms have been positive and so they can then contact trace. If you're only testing major symptoms you're never going to identify all the cases.

Is that a serious question OP? Do you think the answer might be that we're trying to avoid another national lockdown?

What do you mean by "worked"?

If you mean that the virus somehow disappeared and didn't continue to be transmitted in the population, that was never really on the table.

I'm not sure I understand where people have heard that idea, that if things were done right it would just go away. Pretty much no health officials have thought that would happen. Is it coming from the media somehow?

So long as the virus maintains it's current form, it will continue to be passed round, and all lockdowns can do is knock it back. A vaccine may eventually keep a lid on it to a certain extent, though it still is not likely to be eradicated - only two viruses have ever been eradicated in that way and they were not very similar to covid in their behaviour.

It's also possible the virus could evolve to change it's behaviour, but we have no control over that.

@wink1970

Because we're obsessed with 'protect the NHS' and so everything has to shut.

My local hospital (according to 2 frontline nurse friends working there) is full of people presenting to A&E because they can't get a GP appointment

... and I'm in Kent, where 3 large prison outbreaks have put us all into tier 3.

That might be the case where you are, but as I posted upthread, our local hospital has hundreds of staff self isolating due to positive covid tests, plus admission rates are high in spite of our numbers coming down.

I agree that we should be "obsessed" with protecting the NHS.

@ClaryFairchild

Lockdowns can work - it worked in Melbourne. We're now a full 28 days with zero cases. But it has to be a really strict lock down, with lots of testing even for the mildest of symptoms. I've had 3 tests because of a sore throat, all came back negative fortunately. But many others with mild symptoms have been positive and so they can then contact trace. If you're only testing major symptoms you're never going to identify all the cases.

We had zero cases for months, now we are rising and though our numbers are about the same as they were at the height, they are in the community rather than institutions. It took about a week for things to go right back where they were. They have been very diligent with contact tracing but they are getting to the limit now of what they can do, in terms of following up numbers. As a result they've put the affected city back into strict restrictions now.

But there's still no expectations that the same wont happen again in the future.

@Oliversmumsarmy

Did this lockdown do anything apart from stop a lot of people earning and put more strain on the High Street Retail and Hospitality Sectors.

Aibu in saying if this lockdown had worked why have whole swathes of the country ended up being in a worse Tier and worse off than before the lockdown started.

Because as has been explained 100s of times lockdown's don't cure the country of covid. We knew that. They slow the spread from what it would have been if we had done nothing.

You're comparing with the wrong thing. You need to prove it would have been equally as bad with or without lockdown.

Nobody actually knows the answer to your question OP. The government havent it told us.

Because as has been explained 100s of times lockdown's don't cure the country of covid. We knew that. They slow the spread from what it would have been if we had done nothing

What’s the point of slowing the spread?
It is just prolonging the agony.

Slowing the spread gives time before the vaccine.

The point of slowing the spread is firstly that we should come out with a functioning health service

That's very useful long term. Having an overwhelmed heath service would mean no one gets treated for anything, the long term economic impact of that ...well it's probably the def8nition of third world country. Children dying of infections after breaking a bone, never mind cancer deaths

At the same time we will save several hundred thousand lives. 5hat probably matters a lot to those people, and their families.

History ( and indeed looking around the world now ) shows that countries that took the most aggressive action have bounced back much quicker

the way this government has done things is incredibly damaging because it keeps wussing out , which leaves us in harmful cycles of lockdown.

If you actually believe that abandoning lockdown would just kill half a million old and infirm with no economic impact you are deluded. Those coffee shops and pubs in London were starting to lose cash in February as people started taking action to protect themselves and their own families. That was before death rates rose.

It's not prolonging the agony its reducing it. But you know that, God knows enough people have explained it to you in painstaking detail every time you start one of these threads.

Tell me, are you looking to inherit and starting to panic that your elderly relative is going to escape?

@Oliversmumsarmy

Because as has been explained 100s of times lockdown's don't cure the country of covid. We knew that. They slow the spread from what it would have been if we had done nothing

What’s the point of slowing the spread?
It is just prolonging the agony.

Because when the hospitals become overwhelmed (which they would do with uncontrolled spread of covid) things become a lot more painful.

People talk about how much they’re missing out on in healthcare at the moment but if health services become overwhelmed things like car accidents and heart attacks will not have an ambulance urgently (urgent becomes meaningless when you have no free ambulances) dispatched to them because they’ll be tied up on calls related to covid and other emergencies. That’s one consequence before you’ve even put a foot inside an actual hospital. It doesn’t get any better once you’re inside.

Restrictions have been sold as an emotional, comprehensive, message to save lives from covid, that’s only part of the issue. Resources are finite and once they’re used that’s it, they’re just not there any more.

We are close to a vaccine, taking the option of letting it do its thing would amount to genocide at this point.

The point of slowing the spread is firstly that we should come out with a functioning health service

You have to be joking.
We haven’t had a functioning health service for years.

If you actually believe that abandoning lockdown would just kill half a million old and infirm with no economic impact you are deluded

Where on earth are you getting those figures.

You know that it doesn’t kill all old people. It doesn’t even kill the majority it kills at worse 16% and the older people I know would rather take that risk than live in this prolonged lockdown world where they can’t go out, can’t live what remains of there life.

Porcupineinwaiting
No I haven’t got anyone to inherit from. As above, the chances of people dying from this anyway is very low.

As I have said to you before, just because people you know say one thing that doesn't mean that all eldery people are prepared to take the risk

The number of likely dead is easily calculated from population size broken down by age , death rate on infection broken down by age and a working assumption that the virus would die out of it had infected 80% of the population.

And actually we do have a pretty good health service, you just don't know your born