To think a short, hard, lockdown is better than a soft one dragging on for months?

[PrincessNutNuts]

Would you rather go hard for a shorter duration? (YANBU)
(Stay at home order. Daily exercise outside, only see your bubble, shop as infrequently as you can, work from home if you can, most things closed, schools and universities closed.)

Or have a softer lockdown for longer? YABU)
Unlimited shopping, schools open, Tier 3 rules, I guess.

[quote Floralnomad]@ShivD ,we are tier 4 as well , it’s crazy really . My sister lives in a Tier 4 coastal town and she said that when they went for a walk yesterday they had to come home because the seafront was like a BH weekend , no social distancing etc . May as well open the shops at least that would make the outdoors safer for those of us that do want to be careful as all the morons can go to Bluewater etc[/quote]
Because there’s NOTHING ELSE TO DO. I never walk normally, but I do every day in lockdown/tier 4 as the alternative is sitting in my house 24/7. Close everywhere else - everyone does the one activity still permitted. It’s not rocket science.

It’s like when Boris closed the shops for November and everyone was surprised they were busy in December. Or when he announced at 4pm one day shortly before Christmas that shops would close that evening - funnily enough lots of people rushed there immediately and it was busier than ever.

modgepodge I agree. I'm in a tier 4 area, public spaces are very busy because people have to get out of the house- so they go to the parks. Kids can play and run around and the parents can get some air and peace.

It's a strane of the cold/ flu we get every year and it's seasonal! It would have gone down in the summer anyway

They need to stop this ‘work from home if you can’ bollocks as companies are using it as a loophole.

It's a strane of the cold/ flu we get every year and it's seasonal! It would have gone down in the summer anyway

Wrong. Influenza and coronaviruses are completely different.

Where do you get this information?

A proper hardcore curfew for a month but totally impractical

@OrangeBlossomsinthesun

Schools wouldn't be such a problem if all students had to wear masks all the time.

I don't know how well they work tbh when people are together for long time periods.

I have one child at a school where they have to wear masks all the time and lots of children have had covid. My other child is at a school where they don't and it has been similar.

I think Track and Trace is working to some extent though. When my son got it he was already at home isolating.

Short and hard. So many op-eds on how lockdown 'doesn't work', but we haven't had a proper lockdown. What they should really be saying is soft, half arsed lockdowns don't work. It needs to be a two pronged approach though, hard, total, short term lockdown with that time used to make sure you have a thorough and working track and trace system. Then you suppress the numbers enough for tracing to work, and the tracing helps the numbers stay suppressed enough that you don't lose control and can keep numbers low. You need good backward tracing too, to work out where people are getting it. You also need some way of making sure people actually isolate when told to. It's too late for us, so many half arsed measures done now people wouldn't do it. And possibly culturally not very possible. Our chance was first time round when schools were shut but not enough other places were shut, loads of of workplaces open etc. And we didn't have proper contact tracing to make the most of the suppressed numbers, so cases of course skyrocket as soon as measures lifted. It's a shitshow.

People say "lockdowns don't work because lifting them just starts it again" but with proper contact tracing that doesn't need to be the case. At the moment numbers are too high for contact tracing to be effective, and it all takes too long.

@Didyousaynutella

We had one in November and it did bugger all. I think it’s time to remove any kind of restrictions, let people shield if they want to. The damage to the economy isn’t worth the little difference it makes.

But we didn't in England, because the schools were open

People say "lockdowns don't work because lifting them just starts it again" but with proper contact tracing that doesn't need to be the case.

We need to acknowledge that no Western European country has delivered good contact tracing after a certain point of resurgence.

It is a lot easier for Asian countries who have very different data privacy laws than us and a much wider arsenal of tools at their disposal for tracking people.

@MondieBee

Short and hard. So many op-eds on how lockdown 'doesn't work', but we haven't had a proper lockdown. What they should really be saying is soft, half arsed lockdowns don't work. It needs to be a two pronged approach though, hard, total, short term lockdown with that time used to make sure you have a thorough and working track and trace system. Then you suppress the numbers enough for tracing to work, and the tracing helps the numbers stay suppressed enough that you don't lose control and can keep numbers low. You need good backward tracing too, to work out where people are getting it. You also need some way of making sure people actually isolate when told to. It's too late for us, so many half arsed measures done now people wouldn't do it. And possibly culturally not very possible. Our chance was first time round when schools were shut but not enough other places were shut, loads of of workplaces open etc. And we didn't have proper contact tracing to make the most of the suppressed numbers, so cases of course skyrocket as soon as measures lifted. It's a shitshow.

People say "lockdowns don't work because lifting them just starts it again" but with proper contact tracing that doesn't need to be the case. At the moment numbers are too high for contact tracing to be effective, and it all takes too long.

What part of the March lockdown would you have made stricter? Just out of interest?

No kids in school at all? Ok, but then many doctors, nurses etc couldn’t have worked, thus making pressure in the NHS worse. I don’t remember hearing about many outbreaks in schools between March and May anyway, despite the fact key worker kids would presumably be the most exposed due to their parents jobs.

People not allowed out to exercise? Massive hit on mental and physical health, and again, I don’t think outbreaks were being caused by people walking past each other for a few seconds. Spain did this, and their situation was no better than ours.

I’m not sure which workplaces were open in the original lockdown. Estate agents etc were all closed. All my friends who work in offices were wither furloughed or working from home. There were no dentists, vets etc open except for emergencies, and all but emergency health care was suspended.

@PrincessNutNuts

Would you rather go hard for a shorter duration? (YANBU) (Stay at home order. Daily exercise outside, only see your bubble, shop as infrequently as you can, work from home if you can, most things closed, schools and universities closed.)

Or have a softer lockdown for longer? YABU)
Unlimited shopping, schools open, Tier 3 rules, I guess.

But that's how it's been for months in some parts of the country except schools open . So it seams we live in a non lockdown life . No mixing households since the summer unless outside which this time of year is no fun . Restaurants have been shut since October . So I'm not sure what a tougher lockdown is unless schools close but then that makes working even more difficult for so many. So many think they have a better idea of what to do but until the majority of us have been vaccinated this is how it is like it or not .

@Chanjer

If they don't shut schools and most work places it's completely pointless having any sort of lockdown

This. Lockdown without schools is pointless.

I live in NZ and we had a 4 week, hard lockdown back in March. Borders were closed and we were told to stay at home in our bubble and only leave the house if it was for groceries or medicine. We were allowed out to exercise but had to keep our distance. I know that our population is very very different from the UK but it worked for us! We had another small outbreak a couple of months later and did lockdown again (not to the same extreme) and that got it under control too. I think going hard and early is the key to keeping the pandemic under control.

We now only have cases in managed isolation who are kiwis arriving back in the country and we are almost back to normality. Hugs and support to everyone going through lockdowns at the moment - they aren’t easy but trust me they are worth it!

@PuppyMonkey

Yes, the point the “kicking the can down the road” brigade aren’t acknowledging is that we should have people vaccinated on that road soon. That will be the game changer. A tough lockdown knowing it WILL end in xx weeks would be much more acceptable imho.

This. Totally agree that the 'kicking the can down the road' crew are short sighted. This is exactly what we should be doing whilst the vaccine programmer ramps up.

If they did a short, hard lockdown, followed by proper test, track and trace, and increased the list of symptoms, it might work.

If it has to be one of those two, then short and hard. But I think long and hard is the only way we're really going to be able to move on. The trouble with short and hard is that people then think they can do anything they like as soon as it's over, and it only takes one person to still be infected to start the whole cycle again.

What part of the March lockdown would you have made stricter?

Banning unnecessary shopping, people used to boast popping to Boots and others to buy make-up, or used to boast going to the corner shop 3 times a day to grab once a pint of milk, the next a bar of chocolate...
and willingly confuse essential shopping and essential ITEMS. That has been done to death.

FINE
heavy fines for unnecessary shopping, for illegal gatherings, for illegal sleepovers, for visiting friends and family miles away, for organising group barbecues on a field (true story, I saw that myself!).

A very hard lockdown until spring during which time we bust our ass to get the vaccine to as many people as possible is the only way I can see it will work but this would kill our economy and severely affect the mental health of the nation.

Closing all schools for first two weeks of January term would be helpful. I’m really nervous about going back.

I think whatever we do, we need to stick to it for a while.

I'm in Scotland and in a way it's almost easier to have the more or less full lockdown, than the nonsense of tiers where - living in Edinburgh- it gradually became apparent that due to proximity to other areas and perhaps a certain amount of political glad handing when it came to Glasgow, that no matter what happened to our numbers we were never getting out of Tier 3.

A poster said up thread that we should have relaxed restrictions more in summer and I totally agree with that. Hard lockdowns really only work if there is a discernible difference between the lockdown and not lockdown period.

Once the new vaccine gets signed off what I'd really like to see is all parts of the UK pulling together for the fastest way to get this rolled out as possible. Won't happen though when there is any political capital to be gained from not doing that. Also do they need to review the rollout strategy - at the minute it's focused purely on mortality rates, maybe it needs to be changed to include teachers and those who can't avoid contact with others, which by necessity means it will be rolled out a bit more slowly to the elderly.

What part of the March lockdown would you have made stricter?

"Police in Greater Manchester have been called out to nearly 500 house parties during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Between March 25 and April 7, officers also had to deal with 166 street parties, 122 group gatherings for sporting activities and 173 gatherings in parks."

It's too late to be choose. The chances are, nothing will be really effective except a vaccine.

@modgepodge but that’s no excuse for not SD / wearing masks , if I go to walk my dog somewhere and it looks busy I go somewhere else I don’t just join in .

@StormBaby wfh should be obligatory unless you are in certain trades or are face to face customer facing. Any exceptions should be limited to say one day a week. I am sure all companies where people have been told to come into the office because they have micro-managers, bully bosses or cannot be bothered to enable remote working would fix these issues.

The other one I would have is where quarantine applies, you are put in a hotel for the period, not relied on to not go out.

Though given the government has almost no-one who did a normal day job, I am not hopeful of either.